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.