But these "ados" are most cunningly made (her last book, _The Italian_, is, perhaps, the best place to look for them, if the reader is not taking up the whole subject with a virtuous thoroughness), and Mrs.Radcliffe's great praise is that she induced her original readers to suspend their critical faculties sufficiently to enable them to take it all seriously.

Scott, who undoubtedly owed her something, assigned her positive genius: and modern critics, while, perhaps, seldom experiencing much real delectation from her work, have discovered in it not a few positive and many more indirect and comparative merits.

The influence on Scott is not the least of these: but there is even a more unquestionable asset of the same kind in the fact that the Byronic villain-hero, if not Byron himself, is Mrs.Radcliffe's work.

Schedoni did much more than beget or pattern Lara: he _is_ Lara, to all intents and purposes, in "first state" and before the final touch has been put by the greater master who took the plate in hand.
But there is more to be said for Mrs.Radcliffe than this.

Her "explained supernatural," tiresome as it may be to some of us nowadays, is really a marvel of patience and ingenuity: and this same quality extends to her plots generally.