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 mediæval 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. Moreover, to get point and appeal, it was especially necessary to _throw up_ the subject--incident, emotion, or whatever it was--to bring it out; not merely to meander and palaver about it. But language and literature were both too much in a state of transition to admit of anything capital being done at this time. It was the great good fortune of England, corresponding to that experienced with Chaucer in poetry three quarters of a century earlier, that Malory came to give the sum and substance of what mediæval fiction could do in prose. For more, the times and the men had to come. CHAPTER II FROM LYLY TO SWIFT