This is one of the not rare, but certainly one of the most consummate, instances of fashion caricaturing itself in total unconsciousness.

But it _was_ the fashion: and Mackenzie, though perhaps he helped to bring it to an end, no doubt caused the shedding, by "the fair" of the time, of an ocean of tears as great as the ocean of port wine which was contemporaneously absorbed by "the brave." Moore saw a good deal of continental society--he is indeed one of the first-hand witnesses for the events of the French Revolution--and he had a more considerable influence on the novel than has always been allowed him.

_Zeluco_ chiefly survives because of the exquisitely ludicrous and human trait of the English sailor who, discussing the French army, pronounces white uniforms "absurd" and blue "only fit for the artillery and the blue horse." But it is not quite certain that its villain-hero had not something, and perhaps a good deal, to do with those of Mrs.
Radcliffe who were soon to follow, and, through these, with Byron who was not to be very long after.

The later books are of much less importance, if only because they follow the outburst of fiction which the French Revolution itself ushered.

But Moore, who was intimately connected with Smollett, carried on the practice of making national or sub-national characteristics important elements of novel interest: and is thus noteworthy in more ways than one.
He is a late instance--he was born in 1729 and so was only a few years younger than Smollett himself--of the writers who had, for all but half a century after Richardson's appearance, accumulated patterns and examples of the novel in all sorts of forms, hardly one of which lacked numerous and almost innumerable imitators and followers.