There is here the complete scenario, and a good deal more, for a novel as long as _Clarissa_ and much more interesting, capable of being worked out in the manner, not merely of Richardson himself, but of Mr.Meredith or Mr.
Hardy.

It _is_ a great romance, if not the greatest of romances: it has a great novel, if not the greatest of novels, written in sympathetic ink between the lines, and with more than a little of the writing sometimes emerging to view.
Little in the restricted space here available can be, though much might be in a larger, said about the remaining attempts in English fiction before the middle of the sixteenth century.

The later romances, down to those of Lord Berners, show the character of the older with a certain addition of the "conjuror's supernatural" of the _Amadis_ school.

But the short verse-tales, especially those of the Robin Hood cycle, and some of the purely comic kind, introduce an important variation of interest: and even some of the longer, such as that _Tale of Beryn_, which used to be included in Chaucer's works, vary the chivalrous model in a useful way.

Still more important is the influence of the short _prose_ tale:--first Latin, as in the _Gesta Romanorum_ (which of course had older and positively mediaeval forerunners), then Italian and French.
The prose saved the writer from verbiage and stock phrase; the shortness from the tendency to "watering out" which is the curse of the long verse or prose romance.