At any rate, by these and other means she attained that great result of the novel which has been noted in Defoe, in Richardson, and in others--the result of what the French vividly call _enfisting_ the reader--getting hold of his attention, absorbing him in a pleasant fashion. The mechanism was often too mechanical: taken with the author's steady and honest, but somewhat inartistic determination to explain everything it sometimes produces effects positively ridiculous to us. With the proviso of _valeat quantum_, it is not quite unfair to dwell, as has often been dwelt, on the fact that the grand triumph of Mrs. Radcliffe's terrormongering--the famous incident of the Black Veil--is produced by a piece of wax-work. But the result resulted--the effect _was_ produced: and it was left to those who were clever enough to improve upon the means. For the time these means were "improved upon" in another sense; we shall glance at some of the caricatures, intended and unintended, later. For the present we may turn to other varieties of the curiously swarming novel-production of these two last decades of the century, and especially of the very last. If Scott had not established Richard Cumberland's _Henry_ (1795) in the fortress of the Ballantyne Novels, it would hardly be necessary to notice "Sir Fretful Plagiary's" contributions to the subject of our history. He preluded it with another, _Arundel_ (1789), and followed it much later with a third, _John de Lancaster_: but there is no need to say anything of these. _Henry_ displays the odd hit-_and_-miss quality which seems to have attached itself to Cumberland everywhere, whether as novelist, dramatist, essayist, diplomatist, poet, or anything else. It is, though by no means a mere "plagiarism," an obvious and avowed imitation of Fielding, and the writer is so intent on his _pastiche_ that he seems quite oblivious himself, and appears to expect equal oblivion on the part of his readers, of the fact that nearly two generations had passed. Henry is Joseph; Susan May is a much more elaborate and attractive Betty; the doctor's wife a vulgarised and repulsive Lady Booby; Ezekiel Daw, whom Scott admired, a _dissenting_ Adams--the full force of the outrage of which variation Sir Walter perhaps did not feel. There are some good things in the story, but, as a whole, it is chiefly valuable as an early example of that great danger of modern literature--the influence of the "printed book" itself: and in a less degree of that forging ahead of the novel generally in public favour which we are chronicling. If the kind had not been popular, and if Fielding had not been its great prophet, one may be pretty sure that _Henry_ would never have existed. The causes are important: the effect not quite so.