Precaution Part 1

Precaution.

by James Fenimore Cooper.

"Be wise to-day. It is madness to defer; To-morrow's caution may arrive too late."

W. C. Bryant's Discourse on the Life, Genius, and Writings of James Fenimore Cooper,

Delivered at Metropolitan Hall, N.Y., February 25, 1852.

It is now somewhat more than a year, since the friends of JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, in this city; were planning to give a public dinner to his honor.

It was intended as an expression both of the regard they bore him personally, and of the pride they took in the glory his writings had reflected on the American name. We thought of what we should say in his hearing; in what terms, worthy of him and of us, we should speak of the esteem in which we held him, and of the interest we felt in a fame which had already penetrated to the remotest nook of the earth inhabited by civilized man.

To-day we a.s.semble for a sadder purpose: to pay to the dead some part of the honors then intended for the living. We bring our offering, but he is not here who should receive it; in his stead are vacancy and silence; there is no eye to brighten at our words, and no voice to answer. "It is an empty office that we perform," said Virgil, in his melodious verses, when commemorating the virtues of the young Marcellus, and bidding flowers be strewn, with full hands, over his early grave. We might apply the expression to the present occasion, but it would be true in part only. We can no longer do anything for him who is departed, but we may do what will not be without fruit to those who remain. It is good to occupy our thoughts with the example of great talents in conjunction with great virtues. His genius has pa.s.sed away with him; but we may learn, from the history of his life, to employ the faculties we possess with useful activity and n.o.ble aims; we may copy his magnanimous frankness, his disdain of everything that wears the faintest semblance of deceit, his refusal to comply with current abuses, and the courage with which, on all occasions, he a.s.serted what he deemed truth, and combated what he thought error.

The circ.u.mstances of Cooper's early life were remarkably suited to confirm the natural hardihood and manliness of his character, and to call forth and exercise that extraordinary power of observation, which acc.u.mulated the materials afterwards wielded and shaped by his genius. His father, while an inhabitant of Burlington, in New Jersey, on the pleasant banks of the Delaware, was the owner of large possessions on the borders of the Otsego Lake in our own state, and here, in the newly-cleared fields, he built, in 1786, the first house in Cooperstown. To this home, Cooper, who was born in Burlington, in the year 1789, was conveyed in his infancy, and here, as he informs us in his preface to the _Pioneers_, his first impressions of the external world were obtained. Here he pa.s.sed his childhood, with the vast forest around him, stretching up the mountains that overlook the lake, and far beyond, in a region where the Indian yet roamed, and the white hunter, half Indian in his dress and mode of life, sought his game,--a region in which the bear and the wolf were yet hunted, and the panther, more formidable than either, lurked in the thickets, and tales of wanderings in the wilderness, and encounters with these fierce animals, beguiled the length of the winter nights. Of this place, Cooper, although early removed from it to pursue his studies, was an occasional resident throughout his life, and here his last years were wholly pa.s.sed.

At the age of thirteen he was sent to Yale College, where, notwithstanding his extreme youth,--for, with the exception of the poet Hillhouse, he was the youngest of his cla.s.s, and Hillhouse was afterwards withdrawn,--his progress in his studies is said to have been honorable to his talents. He left the college, after a residence of three years, and became a mids.h.i.+pman in the United States navy. Six years he followed the sea, and there yet wanders, among those who are fond of literary anecdote, a story of the young sailor who, in the streets of one of the English ports, attracted the curiosity of the crowd by explaining to his companions a Latin motto in some public place. That during this period he made himself master of the knowledge and the imagery which he afterwards employed to so much advantage in his romances of the sea, the finest ever written, is a common and obvious remark; but it has not been so far as I know, observed that from the discipline of a seaman's life he may have derived much of his readiness and fertility of invention, much of his skill in surrounding the personages of his novels with imaginary perils, and rescuing them by probable expedients. Of all pursuits, the life of a sailor is that which familiarizes men to danger in its most fearful shapes, most cultivates presence of mind, and most effectually calls forth the resources of a prompt and fearless dexterity by which imminent evil is avoided.

In 1811, Cooper, having resigned his post as mids.h.i.+pman, began the year by marrying Miss Delaney, sister of the present bishop; of the diocese of Western New York, and entered upon a domestic life happily pa.s.sed to its close. He went to live at Mamaroneck, in the county of Westchester, and while here he wrote and published the first of his novels, ent.i.tled _Precaution_. Concerning the occasion of writing this work, it is related, that once, as he was reading an English novel to Mrs. Cooper, who has, within a short time past, been laid in the grave beside her ill.u.s.trious husband, and of whom we may now say, that her goodness was no less eminent than his genius, he suddenly laid down the book, and said, "I believe I could write a better myself." Almost immediately he composed a chapter of a projected work of fiction, and read it to the same friendly judge, who encouraged him to finish it, and when it was completed, suggested its publication. Of this he had at the time no intention, but he was at length induced to submit the ma.n.u.script to the examination of the late Charles Wilkes, of this city, in whose literary opinions he had great confidence.

Mr. Wilkes advised that it should be published, and to these circ.u.mstances we owe it that Cooper became an author.

I confess I have merely dipped into this work. The experiment was made with the first edition, deformed by a strange punctuation--a profusion of commas, and other pauses, which puzzled and repelled me. Its author, many years afterwards, revised and republished it, correcting this fault, and some faults of style also, so that to a casual inspection it appeared almost another work. It was a professed delineation of English manners, though the author had then seen nothing of English society. It had, however, the honor of being adopted by the country whose manners it described, and, being early republished in Great Britain, pa.s.sed from the first for an English novel. I am not unwilling to believe what is said of it, that it contained a promise of the powers which its author afterwards put forth.

Thirty years ago, in the year 1821, and in the thirty-second of his life, Cooper published the first of the works by which he will be known to posterity, the _Spy_. It took the reading world by a kind of surprise; its merit was acknowledged by a rapid sale; the public read with eagerness and the critics wondered. Many withheld their commendations on account of defects in the plot or blemishes in the composition, arising from want of practice, and some waited till they could hear the judgment of European readers. Yet there were not wanting critics in this country, of whose good opinion any author in any part of the world might be proud, who spoke of it in terms it deserved. "Are you not delighted," wrote a literary friend to me, who has since risen to high distinction as a writer, both in verse and in prose, "are you not delighted with the _Spy_, as a work of infinite spirit and genius?" In that word genius lay the explanation of the hold which the work had taken on the minds of men. What it had of excellence was peculiar and unborrowed; its pictures of life, whether in repose or activity, were drawn, with broad lights and shadows, immediately from living originals in nature or in his own imagination. To him, whatever he described was true; it was made a reality to him by the strength with which he conceived it. His power in the delineation of character was shown in the princ.i.p.al personage of his story, Harvey Birch, on whom, though he has chosen to employ him in the ign.o.ble office of a spy, and endowed him with the qualities necessary to his profession,--extreme circ.u.mspection, fertility in stratagem, and the art of concealing his real character--qualities which, in conjunction with selfishness and greediness, make the scoundrel, he has bestowed the virtues of generosity, magnanimity, an intense love of country, a fidelity not to be corrupted, and a disinterestedness beyond temptation. Out of this combination of qualities he has wrought a character which is a favorite in all nations, and with all cla.s.ses of mankind.

It is said that if you cast a pebble into the ocean, at the mouth of our harbor, the vibration made in the water pa.s.ses gradually on till it strikes the icy barriers of the deep at the south pole. The spread of Cooper's reputation is not confined within narrower limits. The _Spy_ is read in all the written dialects of Europe, and in some of those of Asia.

The French, immediately after its first appearance, gave it to the mult.i.tudes who read their far-diffused language, and placed it among the first works of its cla.s.s. It was rendered into Castilian, and pa.s.sed into the hands of those who dwell under the beams of the Southern Cross. At length it pa.s.sed the eastern frontier of Europe, and the latest record I have seen of its progress towards absolute universality, is contained in a statement of the _International Magazine_, derived, I presume, from its author, that in 1847 it was published in a Persian translation at Ispahan.

Before this time, I doubt not, they are reading it in some of the languages of Hindostan, and, if the Chinese ever translated anything, it would be in the hands of the many millions who inhabit the far Cathay.

I have spoken of the hesitation which American critics felt in admitting the merits of the _Spy_, on account of crudities in the plot or the composition, some of which, no doubt, really existed. An exception must be made in favor of the _Port Folio_, which, in a notice written by Mrs.

Sarah Hall, mother of the editor of that periodical, and author of _Conversations on the Bible_, gave the work a cordial welcome; and Cooper, as I am informed, never forgot this act of timely and ready kindness.

It was perhaps favorable to the immediate success of the _Spy_, that Cooper had few American authors to divide with him the public attention.

That crowd of clever men and women who now write for the magazines, who send out volumes of essays, sketches, and poems, and who supply the press with novels, biographies, and historical works, were then, for the most part, either stammering their lessons in the schools, or yet unborn. Yet it is worthy of note, that just about the time that the _Spy_ made its appearance, the dawn of what we now call our literature was just breaking.

The concluding number of Dana's _Idle Man_, a work neglected at first, but now numbered among the best things of the kind in our language, was issued in the same month. The _Sketch Book_ was then just completed; the world was admiring it, and its author was meditating _Bracebridge Hall_. Miss Sedgwick, about the same time, made her first essay in that charming series of novels of domestic life in New England, which have gained her so high a reputation. Percival, now unhappily silent, had just put to press a volume of poems. I have a copy of an edition of Hallock's _f.a.n.n.y_, published in the same year; the poem of _Yamoyden,_ by Eastburn and Sands, appeared almost simultaneously with it. Livingston was putting the finis.h.i.+ng hand to his _Report on the Penal Code of Louisiana,_ a work written with such grave, persuasive eloquence, that it belongs as much to our literature as to our jurisprudence. Other contemporaneous American works there were, now less read. Paul Allen's poem of _Noah_ was just laid on the counters of the booksellers. Arden published, at the same time, in this city, a translation of Ovid's _Tristia_, in heroic verse, in which the complaints of the effeminate Roman poet were rendered with great fidelity to the original, and sometimes not without beauty. If I may speak of myself, it was in that year that I timidly intrusted to the winds and waves of public opinion a small cargo of my own--a poem ent.i.tled _The Ages,_ and half a dozen shorter ones, in a thin duodecimo volume, printed at Cambridge.

We had, at the same time, works of elegant literature, fresh from the press of Great Britain, which are still read and admired. Barry Cornwall, then a young suitor for fame, published in the same year his _Marcia Colonna_; Byron, in the full strength and fertility of his genius, gave the readers of English his tragedy of _Marino Faliero_, and was in the midst of his spirited controversy with Bowles concerning the poetry of Pope. The _Spy_ had to sustain a comparison with Scott's _Antiquary_, published simultaneously with it, and with Lockhart's _Valerius_, which seems to me one of the most remarkable works of fiction ever composed.

In 1823, and in his thirty-fourth year, Cooper brought out his novel of the _Pioneers_, the scene of which was laid on the borders of his: own beautiful lake. In a recent survey of Mr; Cooper's works, by one of his admirers, it is intimated that the reputation of this work may have been, in some degree fact.i.tious. I cannot think so; I cannot see how such a work could fail of becoming, sooner or later, a favorite. It was several years after its first appearance that I read the _Pioneers_, and I read it with a delighted astonishment. Here, said I to myself, is the poet of rural life in this country--our Hesiod, our Theocritus, except that he writes without the restraint of numbers, and is a greater poet than they. In the _Pioneers_, as in a moving picture, are made to pa.s.s before us the hardy occupations and spirited, amus.e.m.e.nts of a prosperous settlement, in, a fertile region, encompa.s.sed for leagues around with the primeval wilderness of woods. The seasons in their different aspects, bringing with them, their different employments; forests falling before the axe; the cheerful population, with the first mild; day of spring, engaged in the sugar orchards; the chase of the deer through the deep woods, and into the lake; turkey-shooting, during the Christmas holidays, in which the Indian marksman vied for the prize of skill with the white man; swift sleigh rides under the bright winter sun, and, perilous encounters with wild animals in the forests; these, and other scenes of rural life, drawn, as Cooper knew how to draw them, in the bright and healthful coloring of which he was master are interwoven with a regular narrative of human fortunes, not unskilfully constructed; and how could such a work be otherwise than popular?

In the _Pioneers_, Leatherstocking; is first introduced--a philosopher of the woods, ignorant of books, but instructed in all that nature, without the aid of, science, could reveal to the man of quick senses and inquiring intellect, whose life has been pa.s.sed under the open sky, and in companions.h.i.+p with a race whose animal perceptions are the acutest and most cultivated of which there is any example. But Leatherstocking has higher qualities; in him there is a genial blending of the gentlest virtues of the civilized man with the better nature of the aboriginal tribes; all that in them is n.o.ble, generous, and ideal, is adopted into his own kindly character, and all that is evil is rejected. But why should I attempt to a.n.a.lyse a character so familiar? Leatherstocking is acknowledged, on all hands, to be one of the n.o.blest, as well as most striking and original creations of fiction. In some of his subsequent novels, Cooper--for he had not yet Attained to the full maturity of his powers--heightened and enn.o.bled his first conception of the character, but in the _Pioneers_ it dazzled the world with the splendor of novelty;

His next work was the _Pilot_, in which he showed how, from the vicissitudes of a life at sea, its perils and escapes, from the beauty and terrors of the great deep, from the working of a vessel on a long voyage, and from the frank, brave, and generous but peculiar character of the seaman, may be drawn materials of romance by which the minds of men may be as deeply moved as by anything in the power of romance to present. In this walk, Cooper has had many disciples but no rival. All who have since written romances of the sea have been but travellers in a country of which he was the great discoverer; and none of them all seemed to have loved a s.h.i.+p as Cooper loved it, or have been able so strongly to interest all cla.s.ses of readers in its fortunes. Among other personages drawn with great strength in the _Pilot_, is the general favorite, Tom Coffin, the thorough seaman with all the virtues and one or two of the infirmities of his profession, superst.i.tious, as seamen are apt to be, yet whose superst.i.tions strike us as but an irregular growth of his devout recognition of the Power who holds the ocean in the hollow of his hand; true-hearted, gentle, full of resources, collected in danger, and at last calmly peris.h.i.+ng at the post of duty, with the vessel he has long guided, by what I may call a great and magnanimous death. His rougher and coa.r.s.er companion, Boltrope, is drawn with scarcely less skill, and with a no less vigorous hand.

The _Pioneers_ is not Cooper's best tale of the American forest, nor, the _Pilot_, perhaps, in all respects, his best tale of the sea; yet, if he had ceased to write here, the measure of his fame would possibly have been scarcely less ample than it now is. Neither of them is far below the best of his productions, and in them appear the two most remarkable creations of his imagination--two of the most remarkable characters in all fiction.

It was about this time that my acquaintance with Cooper began, an acquaintance of more than a quarter of a century, in which his deportment towards me was that of unvaried kindness. He then resided a considerable part of the year in this city, and here he had founded a weekly club, to which many of the most distinguished men of the place belonged. Of the members who have since pa.s.sed away, were Chancellor Kent, the jurist; Wiley the intelligent and liberal bookseller; Henry D. Sedgwick, always active in schemes of benevolence; Jarvis, the painter, a man of infinite humor, whose jests awoke inextinguishable laughter; De Kay, the naturalist; Sands, the poet; Jacob Harvey whose genial memory is cherished by many friends. Of those who are yet living was Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph; Durand, then, one of the first of engravers, and now no less ill.u.s.trious as a painter; Henry James Anderson, whose acquirements might awaken the envy of the ripest scholars of the old world; Halleck, the poet and wit; Verplanck, who has given the world the best edition of Shakspeare for general readers; Dr. King, now at the head of Columbia College, and his two immediate predecessors in that office. I might enlarge the list with many other names of no less distinction. The army and navy contributed their proportion of members, whose names are on record in our national history. Cooper when in town was always present, and I remember being struck with the inexhaustible vivacity of his conversation and the minuteness of his knowledge, in everything which depended upon acuteness of observation and exactness of recollection. I remember, too, being somewhat startled, coming as I did from the seclusion of a country life, with a certain emphatic frankness in his manner, which, however, I came at last to like and to admire. The club met in the hotel called Was.h.i.+ngton Hall, the site of which, is now occupied by part of the circuit of Stewart's marble building.

_Lionel Lincoln_, which cannot be ranked among the successful productions of Cooper, was published in 1825; and in the year following appeared the _Last of the Mohicans_ which more than recovered the ground lost by its predecessor. In this work, the construction of the narrative has signal defects, but it is one of the triumphs of the author's genius that he makes us unconscious of them while we read. It is only when we have had time to awake from the intense interest in which he has held us by the vivid reality of his narrative, and have begun to search for faults in cold blood, that we are able to find them, In the _Last of the Mohicans,_ we have a bolder portraiture of. Leatherstocking than in the _Pioneers_.

This work was published in 1826, and in the same year Cooper sailed with his family for Europe. He left New York as one of the vessels of war, described in his romances of the sea, goes out of port, amidst the thunder of a parting salute from the big guns on the batteries. A dinner was given him just before his departure, attended by most of the distinguished men of the city, at which Peter A. Jay presided, and Dr. King addressed him in terms which some then thought too glowing, but which would now seem sufficiently temperate, expressing the good wishes of his friends, and dwelling on the satisfaction they promised themselves in possessing so ill.u.s.trious a representative of American literature in the old world.

Cooper was scarcely in France when he remembered his friends of the weekly club, and sent frequent missives to be read at its meetings; but the club missed its founder went into a decline, and not long afterwards quietly expired.

The first of Cooper's novels published after leaving America: was the _Prairie_, which appeared early in 1827, a work with the admirers of which I wholly agree. I read it with a certain awe, an undefined sense of sublimity, such as one experiences on entering, for the first time, upon those immense gra.s.sy deserts from which the work takes its name. The squatter and his family--that brawny old man and his large-limbed sons, living in a sort of primitive and patriarchal barbarism, sluggish on ordinary occasions, but terrible when roused, like the hurricane that sweeps the grand but monotonous wilderness in which they dwell--seem a natural growth of ancient fields of the West. Leatherstocking, a hunter in the _Pioneers_, a warrior in the _Last of the Mohicans_, and now, in his extreme old age, a trapper on the prairie, declined in strength, but undecayed in intellect, and looking to the near close of his life, and a grave under the long gra.s.s, as calmly as the laborer at sunset looks to his evening slumber, is no less in harmony with the silent desert in which he wanders. Equally so are the Indians, still his companions, copies of the American savage somewhat idealized, but not the less a part of the wild nature in which they have their haunts.

Before the year closed, Cooper had given the world another nautical tale, the _Red Rover_, which, with many, is a greater favorite than the _Pilot_, and with reason, perhaps, if we consider princ.i.p.ally the incidents, which are conducted and described with a greater mastery over the springs of pity and terror.

It happened to Cooper while he was abroad, as it not unfrequently happens to our countrymen, to hear the United States disadvantageously compared with Europe. He had himself been a close observer of things both here and in the old world, and was conscious of being able to refute the detractors of his country in regard to many points. He published in 1828, after he had been two years in Europe, a series of letters, ent.i.tled _Notions of the Americans, by a Travelling Bachelor_, in which he gave a favorable account of the working of our inst.i.tutions, and vindicated his country from various flippant and ill-natured misrepresentations of foreigners. It is rather too measured in style, but is written from a mind full of the subject, and from a memory wonderfully stored with particulars. Although twenty-four years have elapsed since its publication, but little of the vindication has become obsolete.

Cooper loved his country and was proud of her history and her inst.i.tutions, but it puzzles many that he should have appeared, at different times, as her eulogist, and her censor. My friends, she is worthy both of praise and of blame, and Cooper was not the man to shrink from bestowing either, at what seemed to him the proper time. He defended her from detractors abroad; he sought to save her from flatterers at home.

I will not say that he was in as good humor with his country when he wrote _Home at Found_, as when he wrote his _Notions of the Americans_, but this I will say that whether he commended or censured, he did it in the sincerity of his heart, as a true American, and in the belief that it would do good. His _Notions of the Americans_ were more likely to lessen than to increase his popularity in Europe, inasmuch as they were put forth without the slightest regard to European prejudices.

In 1829, he brought out the novel ent.i.tled the _Wept of Wishton-Wish_, one of the few of his works which we now rarely hear mentioned. He was engaged in the composition of a third nautical tale, which he afterwards published under the name of the _Water-Witch,_ when the memorable revolution of the Three Days of July broke out. He saw a government, ruling by fear and in defiance of public opinion, overthrown in a few hours, with little bloodshed; he saw the French nation, far from being intoxicated with their new liberty, peacefully addressing themselves to the discussion of the inst.i.tutions under which they were to live. A work which Cooper afterwards published, his _Residence in Europe_, gives the outline of a plan of government for France furnished by him at that time, to La Fayette, with whom he was in habits of close and daily intimacy. It was his idea to give permanence to the new order of things by a.s.sociating two strong parties in its support, the friends of legitimacy and the republicans. He suggested that Henry V. should be called to the hereditary throne of France, a youth yet to be educated as the head of a free people, that the peerage should be abolished, and a legislature of two chambers established, with a const.i.tuency of at least a million and a half of electors; the senate to be chosen by the general vote, as the representative of the entire nation, and the members of the other house to be chosen by districts, as the representatives of the local interests. To the middle ground of politics so ostentatiously occupied by Louis Philippe at the beginning of his reign, he predicted a brief duration, believing that it would speedily be merged in despotism, or supplanted by the popular rule. His prophecy has been fulfilled more amply than he could have imagined--fulfilled in both its alternatives.

In one of the controversies of that time, Cooper bore a distinguished part. The _Revue Britannique_, a periodical published in Paris, boldly affirmed the government of the United States to be one of the most expensive in the world, and its people among the most heavily taxed of mankind. This a.s.sertion was supported with a certain show of proof, and the writer affected to have established the conclusion that a republic must necessarily be more expensive than a monarchy. The partisans of the court were delighted with the reasoning of the article, and claimed a triumph over our ancient friend La Fayette, who, during forty years, had not ceased to hold up the government of the United States as the cheapest in the world. At the suggestion of La Fayette, Cooper replied to this attack upon his country in a letter which was translated into French, and, together with, another from General Bertrand, for many years a resident in America, was laid before the people of France.

These, two letters provoked a shower of rejoinders, in which, according to Cooper, misstatements were mingled with scurrility. He commenced a series of letters on the question in dispute, which were published in the _National_, a daily sheet, and gave the first evidence of that extraordinary acuteness in controversy which was no less characteristic of his mind than the vigor of his imagination. The enemies of La Fayette pressed into their service Mr. Leavitt Harris, of New Jersey, afterwards our _charge d'affaires_ at the court of France, but Cooper replied to Mr.

Harris in the _National_ of May 2d, 1832, closing a discussion in which he had effectually silenced those who objected to our inst.i.tutions on the score of economy. Of these letters, which would form an important chapter in political science, no entire copy, I have been told, is to be found in this country.

One of the consequences of earnest controversy is almost invariably personal ill-will. Cooper was told by one who held an official station under the French government, that the part he had taken in this dispute concerning taxation would neither be forgotten nor forgiven. The dislike he had incurred in that quarter was strengthened by his novel of the _Bravo_, published in the year 1831, while he was in the midst of his quarrel with the aristocratic party. In that work, of which he has himself justly said that it was thoroughly American in all that belonged to it, his object was to show how inst.i.tutions, professedly created to prevent violence and wrong, become, when perverted from their natural destination, the instruments of injustice; and how, in every system which makes power the exclusive property of the strong, the weak are sure to be oppressed.

The work is written with all the vigor and spirit of his best novels; the magnificent city of Venice, in which the scene of the story is laid, stands continually before the imagination; and from time to time the gorgeous ceremonies of the Venetian republic pa.s.s under our eyes, such as the marriage of the Doge with the Adriatic, and the, contest of the gondolas for the prize of speed. The Bravo himself and several of the other characters are strongly conceived and distinguished, but the most remarkable of them all is the spirited and generous-hearted daughter of the jailer.

It has been said by some critics, who judge of Cooper by his failures, that he had no skill in drawing female characters. By the same process, it might, I suppose, be shown that Raphael was but an ordinary painter. It must be admitted that when Cooper drew a lady of high breeding, he was apt to pay too much attention to the formal part of her character, and to make her a mere bundle of cold proprieties. But when he places his heroines in some situation in life which leaves him nothing to do but to make them natural and true, I know of nothing finer, nothing more attractive or more individual than the portraitures he has given us.

_Figaro_, the wittiest of the French periodicals, and at that time on the liberal side, commended the _Bravo_; the journals on the side of the government censured it. _Figaro_ afterwards pa.s.sed into the hands of the aristocratic party, and Cooper became the object of its attacks. He was not, however, a man to be driven from any purpose which he had formed, either by flattery or abuse, and both were tried with equal ill success.

In 1832 he published his _Heidenmauer_, and in 1833 his _Headsman of Berne_, both with a political design similar to that of the _Bravo_, though neither of them takes the same high rank among his works.

In 1833, after a residence of seven years in different parts of Europe, but mostly in France, Cooper returned to his native country. The welcome which met him here was somewhat chilled by the effect of the attacks made upon him in France, and remembering with what zeal, and at what sacrifice of the universal acceptance which his works would otherwise have met, he had maintained the cause of his country against the wits and orators of the court party in France, we cannot wonder that he should have felt this coldness as undeserved. He published, shortly after his arrival in this country, _A Letter to his Countrymen_ in which he complained of the censures cast upon him in the American newspapers, gave a history of the part he had taken in exposing the misstatements of the _Revue Britannique_, and warned his countrymen against the too common error of resorting, with a blind deference, to foreign authorities, often swayed by national or political prejudices, for our opinions of American authors.

Going beyond this topic, he examined and reprehended the habit of applying to the interpretation of our own const.i.tution maxims derived from the practice of other governments, particularly that of Great Britain. The importance of construing that instrument by its own principles, he ill.u.s.trated by considering several points in dispute between parties of the day, on which he gave very decided opinions.

The princ.i.p.al effect of this pamphlet, as it seemed to me, was to awaken in certain quarters a kind of resentment that a successful writer of fiction should presume to give lessons in politics. I meddle not here with the conclusions to which he arrived, though must be allowed to say that they were stated and argued with great ability. In 1835 Cooper published _The Monnikins_, a satirical work, partly with a political aim; and in the same year appeared his _American Democrat_, a view of the civil and social relations of the United States, discussing more gravely various topics touched upon in the former work, and pointing out in what respects he deemed the American people in their practice to have fallen short of the excellence of their inst.i.tutions.

He found time, however, for a more genial task--that of giving to the world his observations on foreign countries. In 1836 appeared his _Sketches of Switzerland_, a series of letters in four volumes, the second part published about two months after the first, a delightful work, written in a more fluent and flexible style than his _Notions of the Americans_. The first part of _Gleanings in Europe,_ giving an account of his residence in France, followed in the same year; and the second part of the same work, containing his observations on England, was published in April, 1837. In these works, forming a series of eight volumes, he relates and describes with much of the same distinctness as in his novels; and his remarks on the manners and inst.i.tutions of the different countries, often sagacious, and always peculiarly his own, derive, from their frequent reference to contemporary events, an historical interest.

In 1838 appeared _Homeward Bound_ and _Home as Found_, two satirical novels, in which Cooper held up to ridicule a certain cla.s.s of conductors of the newspaper press in America. These works had not the good fortune to become popular. Cooper did not, and, because he was too deeply in earnest, perhaps would not, infuse into his satirical works that gaiety without which satire becomes wearisome. I believe, however, that if they had been written by anybody else they would have met with more favor; but the world knew that Cooper was able to give them something better, and would not be satisfied with anything short of his best, Some childishly imagined that because, in the two works I have just mentioned, a newspaper editor is introduced, in whose character almost every possible vice of his profession is made to find a place, Cooper intended an indiscriminate attack upon the whole body of writers for the newspaper press, forgetting that such a portraiture was a satire only on those to whom it bore a likeness We have become less sensitive and more reasonable of late, and the monthly periodicals make sport for their readers of the follies and ignorance of the newspaper editors, without awakening the slightest resentment; but Cooper led the way in this sort of discipline, and I remember some instances of towering indignation at his audacity expressed in the journals of that time.

The next year Cooper made his appearance before the public in a new department of writing; his _Naval History of the United States_ was brought out in two octavo volumes at Philadelphia, by Carey and Lea. In writing his stories of the sea, his attention had been much turned to this subject, and his mind filled with striking incidents from expeditions and battles in which our naval commanders had been engaged. This made his task the lighter; but he gathered his materials with great industry, and with a conscientious attention to exactness, for he was not a man to take a fact for granted, or allow imagination to usurp the place of inquiry He digested our naval annals into a narrative, written with spirit it is true, but with that air of sincere dealing which the reader willingly takes as a pledge of its authenticity.

An abridgment of the work was afterwards prepared and published by the author. The _Edinburgh Review_, in an article professing to examine the statements both of Cooper's work and of _The History of the English Navy_, written by Mr. James, a surgeon by profession, made a violent attack upon the American historian. Unfortunately, it took James's narrative as its sole guide, and followed it implicitly. Cooper replied in the _Democratic Review_ for January, 1840, and by a masterly a.n.a.lysis of his statements, convicting James of self-contradiction in almost every particular in which he differed from himself, refuted both James and the reviewer. It was a refutation which admitted of no rejoinder.

Scarce anything in Cooper's life was so remarkable, or so strikingly ill.u.s.trated his character, as his contest with the newspaper press. He engaged in it after provocations, many and long endured, and prosecuted it through years with great energy, perseverance, and practical dexterity, till he was left master of the field. In what I am about to say of it, I hope I shall not give offence to any one, as I shall speak without the slightest malevolence towards those with whom he waged this controversy.

Over some of them, as over their renowned adversary, the grave has now closed. Yet where shall the truth be spoken, if not beside the grave?

I have already alluded to the princ.i.p.al causes which provoked the newspaper attacks upon Cooper. If he had never meddled with questions of government on either side of the Atlantic, and never satirized the newspaper press, I have little doubt that he would have been spared these attacks. I cannot, however, ascribe them all, or even the greater part of them, to personal malignity. One journal followed the example of another, with little reflection, I think, in most cases, till it became a sort of fas.h.i.+on, not merely to decry his works, but to arraign his motives.

It is related that, in 1832, while he was at Paris, an article was shown him in an American newspaper, purporting to be a criticism on one of his works, but reflecting with much asperity on his personal character. "I care nothing," he is reported to have said, "for the criticism, but I am not indifferent to the slander. If these attacks on my character should be kept up five years after my return to America, I shall resort to the New York courts for protection." He gave the newspaper press of this state the full period of forbearance on which he had fixed, but finding that forbearance seemed to encourage a.s.sault, he sought redress in the courts of law.