Nor _in the beginning_ does it much or at all matter whether the vehicle was prose or verse.

In fact they mostly wrote in verse because prose was not ready.
In the minor romances and tales (taking English versions only) from _Havelok_ to _Beryn_ there is a whole universe of situation, scenario, opportunity for "business." That they have the dress and the scene-backing of one particular period can matter to no one who has eyes for anything beyond dress and scene-backing.

And when we are told that they are apt to run too much into grooves and families, it is sufficient to answer that it really does not lie in the mouth of an age which produces grime-novels, problem-novels, and so forth, as if they had been struck off on a hectograph, possessing the not very exalted gift of varying names and places--to reproach any other age on this score.

But we have only limited room here for generalities and still less for controversy; let us turn to our proper work and survey the actual turn-out in fiction--mostly as a result of mere fashion, verse, but partly prose--which the Middle Ages has left us as a contribution to this department of English literature.
It has been said that few people know the treasures of English romance, yet there is little excuse for ignorance of them.

It is some century since Ellis's extremely amusing, if sometimes rather prosaic, book put much of the matter before those who will not read originals; to be followed in the same path by Dunlop later, and much later still by the invaluable and delightful _Catalogue of_ [British Museum] _Romances_ by Mr.Ward.It is nearly as long since the collections of Ritson and Weber, soon supplemented by others, and enlarged for the last forty years by the publications of the Early English Text Society, put these originals themselves within the reach of everybody who is not so lazy or so timid as to be disgusted or daunted by a very few actually obsolete words and a rather large proportion of obsolete spellings, which will yield to even the minimum of intelligent attention.