In the composition of this work Cooper seems to have lost all sense of the ridiculous. The personages whom he wished to make particularly attractive are uniformly disagreeable. A French governess appears in the story, who is simply insufferable. He brings in an American woman, Mrs. Bloomfield, as a representative, according to him, of that class which equals, if it does not surpass, in the brilliancy of its conversation the best to be found in European salons. She is introduced discoursing on the civilization of the country in a way that would speedily (p. 155) empty any of the parlors of her native land. Indeed, throughout the work the characters converse as no rational beings ever conversed under any sort of provocation. But it is in the speeches of the heroine that the language reaches its highest development. She can emphatically be said to talk like a book. She does not guess, she hazards conjectures. She playfully addresses her father as "thoughtless, precipitate parent." When she is asked what she thinks of the country now that an attempt was made to take possession of the Point, she describes her character, as drawn in this novel, as no words of another can. "Miss Effingham," she says, "has been grieved, disappointed, nay, shocked, but she will not despair of the republic." Indeed the only person in the work who has any near kinship to humanity is one of the inferior characters, named Aristobulus Bragg. He is the more attractive because he says bright things unconsciously; while the heavy characters say heavy things under the impression that they are light.

This book had a profound influence upon Cooper's fortunes. From beginning to end it was a blunder. It cannot receive even the negative praise of being a work in which the best of intentions was marred by the worst of taste. Its spirit was a bad spirit throughout. It was dreadful to think some of the things found in it; but it was more dreadful to say them. There was a great deal of truth in its pages, but if the views expressed in it had been actually inspired, the attitude and tone the author assumed would have prevented his making a convert. To some extent this had been true of "Homeward Bound." Greenough expostulated with Cooper, after reading that novel. "I think," he wrote from (p. 156) Florence, "you lose hold on the American public by rubbing down their shins with brickbats as you do." The most surprising thing connected with "Home as Found," however, is Cooper's unconsciousness, not of the probability, but of the possibility, that he would be charged with drawing himself in the character of Edward Effingham, and to some extent in that of John Effingham. The sentiments advanced were his sentiments, the acts described were in many cases his acts. The absence in a foreign land, the return to America, the scene laid at Templeton, with a direct reference to "The Pioneers," the account of the controversy about the Three Mile Point,—all these fixed definitely the man and the place. Variations in matters of detail would not disturb the truth of the general resemblance. Still Cooper not only did not intend to represent himself, he was unaware that he had done so. Nearly three years after in the columns of a weekly newspaper he stoutly defended himself against the imputation. It was useless. From this time forward the name of Effingham was often derisively applied to him in the controversies in which he was engaged.

It was not merely the intemperate spirit exhibited, which destroyed the effect of the shrewd and just comments often appearing in "Home as Found." This was full as much impaired by the display of personal weaknesses. Cooper's foible about descent he could not help exposing. No thoughtful man denies the desirability of honorable lineage, or undervalues the possession of it; but not for the reasons for which the novelist regarded it and celebrated it. There was much in this single story to justify Lowell's sarcasm, uttered ten years later, that (p. 157) Cooper had written six volumes to prove that he was as good as a lord. He traces his families up to remote periods in the past. He thereby shows their superiority to the newly-created family of the English baronet who is brought into the tale. It was to correct the erroneous impression, prevalent in Europe, that there was no stability, no permanent respectability in the society of this country, that he enlarged upon the date to which ancestry could be traced. The difficulty was to persuade anybody that the men who took the pains to look up their forefathers had any superiority to those who shared in the general indifference as to who their forefathers were. He went farther than this in some instances, and expressly implied that blood and birth were necessary to gentility. This was provincialism pushed to an extreme. Whatever we may think of its actual value, English aristocracy resembles in this gold and silver, that it has an accepted value independent of the character of its representatives. It is, therefore, current throughout the civilized world; whereas American aristocracy is like local paper money: worth nothing except in its own country, and even there receiving little recognition or circulation outside of the immediate neighborhood in which it is found. Still, the subject of blood and birth is a solemn one to those who believe in it, and they are absolutely incapable of comprehending the feelings of a world of scoffers, or, if they do, impute them to imperfect mental or spiritual development. On this point Cooper had the misfortune to say what some think but dare not express.

The wrath aroused, especially in New York city, by this particular novel, had about it something both fearful and comic. In one (p. 158) respect Cooper had the advantage, and his critics all felt it. His work was certain to be translated into all the principal languages of modern Europe. The picture he drew of New York society would be the one that foreigners would naturally receive as genuine. By them it would be looked upon as the work of a man familiar with what he was describing, the work of a man, moreover, who had been well known in European circles for his intense Americanism. It was vain to protest that it was a caricature. The protest would not be heeded even if it were heard. His enemies might rage; but they were powerless to influence foreign opinion, and they felt themselves so. Rage they certainly did; and if the assault made upon him had been as effective as it was violent, little would have been left of his reputation. Even as late as 1842, during the progress of the libel suits, some one took the pains to produce a novel in two volumes called "'The Effinghams, or Home as I Found It,' by the Author of the 'Victims of Chancery.'" The whole aim of this tale was to satirise Cooper. Mere malignity, however, has little vitality; and in spite of the fact that the work was widely praised by the journals for its "sound American feeling," and for its hits at "the conceited, disappointed, and Europeanized writer of 'Home as Found,'" it passed so speedily to the paper-makers that antiquarian research would now be tasked to find a copy. About the contemporary newspaper notices there was a certain tiger-like ferocity which almost justified much that Cooper said in denunciation of the American press. A specimen, though a somewhat extreme one, of a good deal of the sort of criticism to which the novelist was subjected, can be found in the "New Yorker" for the 1st of December, 1838. This journal was edited by Horace Greeley, (p. 159) but the article in question came probably from the pen of Park Benjamin. It defended Cooper from the charge of vilifying his country in order to make his works salable in England, but it defended him in this way. No motive of that kind was necessary to be supposed. He had an inborn disposition to pour out his bile and vent his spleen. "He is as proud of blackguarding," the article continued, "as a fishwoman of Billingsgate. It is as natural to him as snarling to a tom-cat, or growling to a bull-dog.... He is the common mark of scorn and contempt of every well-informed American. The superlative dolt!" In this refined and chastened style did the defenders of American cultivation preserve its reputation from its traducer.

Criticism of the kind just quoted, hurts only the man who utters it and the community which tolerates it. It injured the reputation of the country far more than the work could that it criticised. "Home as Found," as a matter of fact, was prevented from doing any harm, partly by its excessive exaggeration but more by its excessive poorness. As a story it stood in marked contrast to its immediate predecessor. It was as difficult to accompany Cooper on land as it had been to abandon him when on the water. The tediousness of the tale is indeed something appalling to the most hardened novel-reader. The only interest it can possibly have at this day is from the opportunity it affords of studying one phase of the author's character, and of accounting for much of the bitter hostility with which he was assailed.

While he was lecturing his countrymen on manners, his own were spoken of in turn in a way that gave especial delight to the enemies he had (p. 160) made by his criticisms. In 1837 Lockhart's "Life of Sir Walter Scott" was appearing. In the diary of that novelist were some references to the American author. "This man," he said, describing his first interview, "who has shown so much genius, has a good deal of the manners, or want of manners, peculiar to his countrymen." Cooper's personal acquaintance with Scott had begun in 1826, just after the latter had set about his gigantic effort to pay off the load of debt in which he had involved himself. The American novelist had made then an attempt to secure for the man he regarded as his master some adequate return from the vast sale of his works in the United States. In this he had been foiled. In the "Knickerbocker Magazine" for April, 1838, he gave an account of these fruitless negotiations. In a later number of the same year he reviewed Lockhart's biography. This work is well known as one of the most entertaining in our literature. But on its appearance it gave a painful shock to the admirers of the great author by the revelations it made of practices which savored more of the proverbial canniness of the Scotchman than of the lofty spirit of the man of honor. Equally surprising was the unconsciousness of the biographer, that there was anything discreditable in what he disclosed. Cooper criticised Scott's conduct in certain matters with a good deal of severity. In regard to some points he took extreme, and what might fairly be deemed Quixotic ground. Yet the general justice of his article will hardly be denied now by any one who is fully cognizant of the facts. Nor, indeed, was it then. "I have just read," wrote Charles Sumner from London to Hillard, in January, 1839, "an article on Lockhart's 'Scott,' written by (p. 161) Cooper in the "Knickerbocker," which was lent me by Barry Cornwall. I think it capital. I see none of Cooper's faults; and I think a proper castigation is applied to the vulgar minds of Scott and Lockhart. Indeed, the nearer I approach the circle of these men the less disposed do I find myself to like them." Sumner subsequently wrote, that Procter fully concurred in the conclusions advanced in the review. But these were not the prevalent opinions, in this country at least. Great was the outcry against Cooper for writing this article; great the outcry against the "Knickerbocker" for printing it. The latter was severely censured for its willingness to prostitute its columns to the service of the former in his slanderous "attempts to vilify the object of his impotent and contemptible hatred." Americans who were averse to Scott's being honestly paid proved particularly solicitous that he should not be honestly criticised. They showed themselves as little scrupulous in defending him after he was dead as they had been in plundering him while he was living.

Cooper had previously aroused the resentment of many because he had failed to express gratification or delight at being termed "the American Scott." He had then been assured again and again that there was no danger of the title being applied to him in future; that in ten years their names would never be coupled together, and that he himself would be totally forgotten. It could hardly have been deemed a compliment in a land where scarcely a petty district can exist peacefully and creditably, with a hill three thousand feet in height, which is not in time rendered disreputable by being saddled with the pretentious name of "The American Switzerland." Personal malice alone, however, could impute his disclaimer either to malice or to envy. His own (p. 162) estimate of his relations to the British novelist, he had given many times; and indirectly at that very time in his account in the first "Knickerbocker" article, of his interview with Sir Walter Scott. The latter had been so obliging, he observed, as to make him a number of flattering speeches, which he, however, did not repay in kind. His reserve he thought Scott did not altogether like. In this he was probably mistaken, but the reason he gave for his own conduct savored little of feelings of envy or rivalry. "As Johnson," he wrote, "said of his interview with George the Third, it was not for me to bandy compliments with my sovereign." No attention was paid to these and similar utterances of a man whom his bitterest enemies never once dared to charge with saying a word he did not mean.

Few at this day will be disposed to deny the justice of a good deal of the criticism that Cooper passed upon his country and his countrymen. Even now, though many of his strictures are directed against things that no longer exist, there is still much in his writings that can be read with profit. The essential justice of what he said is not impaired by the fact that he was usually indiscreet and intemperate in the saying of it. Nor were his motives of a low kind. He loved his country, and nothing lay dearer to his heart than to have her what she ought to be. The people were the source of power; and it was his cardinal principle that power ought always to be censured rather than flattered. It needed to be told the truth, however unwelcome; and in his eyes, that man was no true patriot who was not willing to encounter unpopularity, if it came in the line of duty. At the same time, while doing full justice to the purity of his motives, we cannot shut our eyes to the defects (p. 163) of his method. His abilities, his reputation, his acquaintance with foreign lands, gave him inestimable advantages for influencing his countrymen, and of educating them in matters where they stood sadly in need of it. But the spirit in which he went to work deprived him of the legitimate influence he should have exerted. Excitement, and passion, and indignation led him often to say the wrong thing. More often they caused him to say the right thing in the wrong way. Nor did he escape the special temptation which speedily besets him who starts out to tell his fellow-men unpleasant truths. Duty of this kind soon begins to have a peculiar fascination of its own. The careful reader cannot fail to see that in process of time the more disagreeable was the truth the more delightful it became to Cooper to tell it. Most unreasonable it certainly was to expect that constant fault-finding would be looked upon as a proof of special attachment. The means, moreover, were not always adapted to the end. Men may possibly be lectured to some extent into the acquisition of the virtues, but they never can be bullied into the graces.

Besides all this, in a great deal of Cooper's criticism there were fundamental defects. He constantly confounded the unimportant and the temporary with the important and the permanent. Many of his most violent strictures are devoted to points of little consequence, and the feeling expressed is out of all proportion to the significance of the matter involved. Nothing, for instance, seemed to irritate him more than the preference given by many of his countrymen to the scenery of America over that of Europe. Especially was he indignant with the (p. 164) "besotted stupidity" that could compare the bay of New York with that of Naples. He returned to this topic in book after book. Yet of all the harmless exhibitions of mistaken judgment, that which prefers the scenery of one's own land is what a wise man would be least disposed to find fault with; certainly what he would think least calculated to inspire the wrath of a Juvenal. Cosmopolitanism is well enough in its way. But that ability to see things exactly as they are, which enables a man to criticise his mother with the same impartiality with which he does any other woman, can hardly be thought to mark a high development of his loftier feelings, however creditable it may be to the judicial tone of his mind. Undue preference of the scenery of one's own country is an amiable weakness at which the philosopher may smile, but the patriot can afford to rejoice.

There was, moreover, a certain vagueness about much of Cooper's criticism that deprived it of effect. No more striking illustration of this could be found than his constant charge of provincialism made against this country. He repeated it in season and out of season. For several years he hardly published a work which did not contain a number of references to it or assertions of its existence. Provincial enough we certainly were then, if looked at from the point of view of the present time. We in turn may seem so to our descendants. This possibility shows at once the somewhat unreal nature of the accusation. Provincialism, like vulgarity, is a term that defies exact explanation. It is the indefinite and, therefore, unanswerable charge that men constantly bring against those whose standard of living and thinking is different from their own. It depends upon the point of view of the speaker full (p. 165) as much as upon the conduct and opinions of those spoken of. It changes as manners change. Nations not only impute it to one another, but even to themselves at different periods of their history. Made by itself, therefore, it means nothing. Without a specific description of what in particular is meant by provincialism, the charge cannot and ought not to have any weight with those against whom it is directed.

Certain incidental facts mentioned in these observations bring also to light another marked defect of Cooper's course. This was not in his views but in his method of enforcing them. He could not refrain from the constant repetition of the same censures. He had never learned literary self-restraint; that special criticisms, in order to have their full weight, must not be forced too often upon the attention, and especially at unseasonable times. The mind revolts at having the same exhibition of personal feeling thrust upon it in the most uncalled-for manner and in the most unexpected places. Even when originally disposed to agree with the view expressed, it will, out of a pure spirit of contradiction, take the side opposed to that which is enforced with exasperating frequency. The fullest sympathizer is sure to get tired of this everlasting slaying of the slain. A similar effect is, indeed, likely to be produced upon the victim of the criticism. Instead of being stirred to reflection, repentance, or even indignation, he simply becomes bored. After a man has been told a hundred times that he is provincial, the remark ceases to be exciting. The things, therefore, that Cooper said incidentally are even now the only ones that make any deep impression upon the mind. Like all men, sensitive to the national honor, he felt keenly the (p. 166) refusal of Congress to pass a copyright law. It led him to say twice, but both times very quietly, that in spite of loud profession there was little genuine sympathy in this country with art, or scholarship, or letters. The absence of all heat and excitement gives to the remark a weight that never belongs to his violent utterances and fierce denunciations. We may hope that we have gained since his time; but even at this day we have little to boast of, if the average cultivation of the people, as well as its average morality, finds expression in the laws. The record in these matters of the highest legislative body in the land is still the most discreditable of that of any nation in Christendom. To gratify the greed of a few traders, it has never refused to lay heavy burdens upon scholarship and letters. It has steadily imposed duties on the introduction of everything that could facilitate the acquisition of learning, and further the development of art. It has persistently stabbed literature under the pretence of encouraging intelligence. It has never once been guilty of the weakness of yielding for a moment to the virtuous impulse that would even contemplate the enactment of a copyright law. If it ever does pass one, it will do so, not because foreign authors have rights, but because native publishers have quarrels. Thus consistent in its unwillingness to do an honest thing from an honest motive, it will even then grant to selfishness what has been invariably denied to justice.

There were other than faults of view or faults of statement that mark Cooper's writings at this time. The two novels published during the year 1838 show a radical change in the attitude he assumed to his art. What had been indicated in the stories whose scenes were laid in (p. 167) Europe, was now carried out completely. He may have been unconscious of the difference of his point of view, but none the less did it exist. The novel was no longer something in which he could embody his conceptions of beauty fairer, or truth higher than could actually be found in nature. It no longer served him as a refuge from the din of a clamorous, or the hostility of a censorious world. It became a sort of fortress, from the secure position of which he was enabled to deal out annoyance and defiance to his foes. He had not now so much a story to tell as a sermon to preach; and with him, as with many others, to preach meant to denounce. His spirit for a time became captive to the prejudices and the heated feelings which had been aroused by the sense of the injustice with which he had been treated. Though he at intervals worked himself out of this state of mind, upon much of his later work rested the shadow of the prison-house which he, for a season, had made his abiding-place. The result was that a good deal of what he afterwards wrote was marred by the obtrusion of personal likes and dislikes, and the taint of controversial discussion. These things rarely concerned the story in which they appeared, and they inspired hostility to the writer. Cooper, indeed, never learned to appreciate the fact that a reader has rights which an author is bound to respect. By dragging in irrelevant discussions, moreover, he was taking the surest way to lose the audience he most sought to influence. A little reflection would have taught him that there was little use in a prophet's crying in the wilderness, unless he can succeed in gathering the people together.

While, therefore, there can be no justification for the ferocity with which Cooper was assailed, there was some palliation. His course (p. 168) from his return to the country had been wanting in prudence, and at times in common sense. He had plunged at once as a combatant into one of the bitterest political controversies that ever agitated the republic. Hard blows were given and taken. He could scarcely expect that, in the heat of the strife, regard would in all cases be paid to the proprieties and even the decencies of private life. There was much in his later productions, moreover, to alienate many who were honestly disposed to admire him as a writer. Politics we could get at all times and from everybody. If, again, we were hopelessly provincial, if we were irreclaimably given over to vulgarity, we could find out all about it from the latest English traveler, or the review of his work that had appeared in the latest English periodicals. But by Cooper the life of the wilderness and of the sea had been told as by no other writer. Over the fields and forests and streams of his native land he had thrown the glamour of romantic association and lofty deeds. There was something unpleasant in witnessing a man who could do this turning his attention to the discussion of points of etiquette and manners. Beside the waste of power, which is something always disagreeable to contemplate, the subject itself could hardly be called an attractive one. It was a sandy desert to travel over at best. But even those who thought it a thing worth while to do once, could hardly help feeling surprise at the spirit which could induce a man to go over it again and again, enlarge upon its discomforts, its perpetual sameness and barrenness, and point out its incapacity of being made much better. There were even worse things than this. It could scarcely fail to inspire a sentiment almost like disgust to have the creator of Leather-Stocking argue with heat the (p. 169) question whether it is right for a lady to come into a drawing-room at a party without leaning upon the arm of a gentleman; or discourse solemnly upon the proper way of eating eggs, and announce oracularly that all who were acquainted with polite society would agree in denouncing the wine-glass or egg-glass as a vulgar substitute for the egg-cup. Questions like these are usually left to those who have the taste to delight in them and the mental elevation to grasp the difficulties involved in them. They were the more disagreeable when met with in Cooper, because in addition to the pettiness of the subject, there was an apparent unconsciousness on his part that the limits of his own preferences and conclusions were not necessarily those of the human mind.

Cooper indeed exemplified in his literary career a story he was in the habit of telling of one of his early adventures. While in the navy he was traveling in the wilderness bordering upon the Ontario. The party to which he belonged came upon an inn where they were not expected. The landlord was totally unprepared, and met them with a sorrowful countenance. There was, he assured them, absolutely nothing in his house that was fit to eat. When asked what he had that was not fit to eat, he could only say in reply that he could furnish them with venison, pheasant, wild duck, and some fresh fish. To the astonished question of what better he supposed they could wish, the landlord meekly replied, that he thought they might have wanted some salt pork. The story was truer of Cooper himself than of his innkeeper. Nature he could depict, and the wild life led in it, so that all men stood ready and eager to gaze on the pictures he drew. He chose too often to inflict upon them, instead of it, the most commonplace of moralizing, the stalest (p. 170) disquisitions upon manners and customs, and the driest discussions of politics and theology.

But the moral injury which Cooper received from these controversial discussions and their results was far greater than the intellectual. They swung him off the line of healthful activity. They perverted his judgment. He looked upon the social and political movements that were going on about him with the eye of an irritated and wronged man. Years did not bring to him the philosophic mind, but the spirit of the opinionated partisan and the heated denouncer. He fixed his attention so completely on the tendencies to ill that manifested themselves in the social state, that he often became blind to the counterbalancing tendencies to good. Hence his later judgments were frequently one-sided and partial. He too often took up the role of prophesying disasters that never came to pass. Moreover, this habit of looking at one side not only narrowed his mental vision, but turned it in the direction of petty objects. No reader of his later novels can fail to see how often he excites himself over matters of no serious moment; or which, whether serious or slight, are utterly out of place where they are. By many of these exhibitions the indifferent will be amused, but the admirers of the man will feel pained if not outraged.



CHAPTER IX. (p. 171)

1837-1842.

By the end of 1837 Cooper had pretty sedulously improved every opportunity of making himself unpopular. His criticisms had been distributed with admirable impartiality. Few persons or places could complain that they had been overlooked. The natural satisfaction that any one would have felt in contemplating the punishment inflicted upon his friend or neighbor, was utterly marred by the consideration of the outrage done to himself. There was scarcely a class of Cooper's fellow-citizens whose susceptibilities had not been touched, or whose wrath had not been kindled by something he had said either in public or in private, and by his saying it repeatedly. The sons of the Puritans he had exasperated by styling them the grand inquisitors of private life, and by asserting that a low sort of tyranny over domestic affairs was the direct result of their religious polity. He had roused the resentment of the survivors of the old Federalist party by declaring that its design during the war of 1812 had been disunion, and that in secret many of them still longed for a restoration of monarchy, and sighed for ribbons, stars, and garters. He had not conciliated the party with which he was nominally allied by his incessant attacks upon the doctrine of free-trade. He had made Boston shudder to its remotest suburbs, by stating again and again in the strongest terms that (p. 172) it was in the Middle States alone that the English language was spoken with purity. The New England capital he had further described as a gossiping country town with a tone of criticism so narrow and vulgar as scarcely to hide the parochial sort of venom which engendered it. He had charged upon New Yorkers that their lives were spent in the constant struggle for inordinate and grasping gain; that to talk of dollars was to them a source of endless enjoyment; and that their society had for its characteristic distinction the fussy pretension and swagger that usually mark the presence of lucky speculators in stocks. He had attributed to the whole trading class a jealous and ferocious watchfulness of the pocket, and a readiness to sacrifice at any time the honor of the country for the sake of personal profit. To the native merchants he had denied the name of real merchants. They were simply factors, mere agents, who were ennobled by commerce, but who did not themselves ennoble it. The foreign traders resident here fared no better. They had never read the Constitution of the country they had made their home, and were incapable of understanding it if they should read it. Always judging of American facts in accordance with the antiquated notions in which they had been brought up, they were largely responsible for the erroneous opinions entertained and blundering prophecies made in Europe in regard to the condition and future of the United States. The educated class, above all, he had denounced for its indomitable selfishness and its hatred of the rights of those socially inferior. It was entirely behind the fortunes of the country and still cherished prejudices against democracy that the very stupidest of European conservatives had begun to lay aside. The newspaper (p. 173) press he had assailed with a pungency and vigor which it in vain sought to rival. He was spattered by it, however, with almost every opprobrious term that belongs to the vocabulary of wrath and abuse. Invention was tasked to furnish discreditable reasons for all that he said and did. That inexhaustible capacity of devising base motives for conduct, which is an especial attribute of mean minds, had now opportunity to put forth its full powers in the way of insinuation and assertion. It did not go unimproved. A common charge brought against him after the publication of the "Letter to His Countrymen" was that it had been written for the sake of gaining office. It was even said that Van Buren had a hand in it. Then and afterward, the Whig newspapers represented Cooper as seeking the position of Secretary of the Navy. Denial availed him nothing. It would certainly have not been at all to his discredit to have desired the place; for he knew a great deal about the navy, and its interests were very dear to his heart. For these very reasons his appointment to it would have been in violation of the traditional policy of the government. It was probably never once contemplated by any administration, as it was certainly never asked by Cooper himself.

The two extracts that have already been given are doubtless sufficient to satisfy any curiosity that may exist in regard to the way in which he was spoken of by the press of America. Yet coarse as was its vituperation, it was surpassed by that of Great Britain. Englishmen may have felt, and have felt justly, that Cooper took an unfair view of their social life and political institutions. National character sweeps through a range so vast that a man will usually be able to find in it what he goes to seek. Even under the most favorable conditions (p. 174) the tastes of a coterie or the habits of a class are made the standard by which to estimate the tastes and habits of a whole people. Certain it is that the view of any nation is to be distrusted which is not taken from a station of good-will. But granting that Cooper was unjust in his observations, there was nothing he said which afforded the least excuse for the coarse personality with which he was followed from the time he published his volumes on England. The remarks of the ordinary journals can be dismissed without comment. But brutal vituperation was found in abundance in periodicals which claimed to be the representatives of the highest cultivation and refinement. According to "Blackwood's Magazine," Cooper was a vulgar man, who from having been bred to the sea had been enabled to give some striking descriptions of sea-affairs, and in consequence had unluckily imagined himself a universal genius. It went on to add, that on the strength of the trifling reputation he had acquired by stories descriptive of American life, he had come to Europe, and had since been partly traveling on the Continent to pick up materials for novels, and partly residing in England, actively employed in the effort to introduce himself into society. In this it admitted he might have been partially successful, for the English were a very yielding people and did not take much trouble to resist attempts of this kind. "Blackwood," however, was outdone in this rowdy style of reviewing by "Fraser's Magazine." From that periodical we learn that Cooper was "a passable scribbler of passable novels," a "bilious braggart," a "liar," a "full jackass," "a man of consummate and inbred vulgarity," "a bore of the first magnitude in society," who went about fishing for (p. 175) introductions. "But this," it concluded, speaking of his England, "was his last kick, and we shall not disturb his dying moments." Two years later the magazine seemed to think he had some power of kicking left, for it returned to the charge in consequence of his review of Lockhart's "Life of Scott." In this article he was called a "spiteful miscreant," an "insect," a "grub," a "reptile." The "Quarterly Review" was as virulent and violent as the magazines, but the attack was more skillful as well as longer and more elaborate. By garbling extracts it cleverly insinuated a good deal more than it said, and it so contrived to put several things that the reader could hardly fail to draw inferences which the writer must have known to be false. Even these attacks were equaled if not surpassed at a later period by the "London Times." A nominal review in that journal of "Eve Effingham," as "Home as Found" was entitled in England, was really devoted to personal vituperation of the novelist. It ended with the assertion that he was more vulgar than ever, and was the most "affected, offensive, envious, and ill-conditioned" of authors. Altogether Cooper must have been impressed with the effectiveness of the blow which he had struck by the violence with which it was resented. It seems hard to believe that remarks such as have been quoted should have been thought to establish anything but the vulgarity of the men who wrote them. Yet they apparently answered their purpose. The very latest notice of Cooper's life which has appeared in Great Britain, characterizes his work on England as an "outburst of vanity and ill-temper." It certainly contained some ill-judged remarks which have been made the most of by his enemies; but this estimate, like many other assertions in the same sketch, was (p. 176) not got from reading the work itself, but from what British periodicals had said about it.

Such was the kind of criticism that the novelist now mainly received in the two great English-speaking countries. These flowers of invective do not constitute an anthology which an Englishman or American of today can read with pleasure, or contemplate with pride. It was the comments made by his countrymen that naturally touched Cooper most nearly. His nature was of a kind to feel keenly, and resent warmly insinuations and charges that impugned the purity of his motives. Nor was his a disposition to rest quiet under attack or to assume merely the defensive. He retorted in letters, in works of fiction, and in books of travel. Finally he resorted to libel suits. Never, indeed, was a fiercer fight carried on by an individual against a power more mighty than Cooper carried on with the press. It had a thousand tongues, he had but one; but it often seemed as if his one had the force of a thousand. The epithets he applied to newspapers were not of the kind with which they were in the habit of celebrating themselves. Their enterprise in obtaining news he described as a mercenary diligence in the collection and diffusion of information, whether true or false. Nor were his comments upon those concerned in carrying them on more favorable. What we should call a reporter he, on one occasion, mildly spoke of as a "miscreant who pandered for the press." In the last novel he wrote, he energetically termed this whole class the funguses of letters who flourished on the dunghill of the common mind; and that in their view the sole use for which the universe was created was to furnish paragraphs for newspapers. Men in the higher grades of the profession fared (p. 177) little better. Against the political journals, in particular, he brought the charge that under the pretence of serving the public they were mainly used to aid the ambition or gratify the spite of their editors.

Even as early as 1832, Cooper had awakened the indignation of the press by an incidental remark made in the introduction to "The Heidenmauer." He was describing a journey through a part of Belgium in which the Dutch troops had been operating the week before his arrival. They had been reported as having committed unusual excesses. Of these excesses he said he could find no trace. He went on to add a sentence which has apparently only a slight connection with what had gone before. "Each hour, as life advances," he wrote, "am I made to see how capricious and vulgar is the immortality conferred by a newspaper." This remark was warmly resented. It was asserted to be a declaration, not merely of indifference to the opinion of the press, but of a preference on his part of its censure to its praise. Its business, therefore, was to see that his wishes should be carried out.

After the controversy in regard to the Three Mile Point, the attacks of the Whig journals increased in bitterness. The state of mind it caused in Cooper can be seen in a little volume, published by him in April, 1838, entitled "The American Democrat." This work is made up of a singular mixture of abstract discussions on liberty and equality, on the nature of parties, on forms of government, and of remarks on national habits and manners. It is not an interesting hook. Yet it is fair to say of it, that it is animated throughout by a lofty patriotism, and it manifests a clear view of the dangers and duties of a democracy, (p. 178) with its comparative advantages and disadvantages. But it likewise exhibited some of the most uncompromising traits of the author's character. In writing it, he was not aiming at popularity; it might not be much out of the way to say that he was aiming at unpopularity. The doctrine with which he sets out is, that in this country power rests with the people, and power ought always to be chidden rather than commended. He was accordingly liberal in criticism. But the value of what he said was largely impaired, if not wholly destroyed by the one-sidedness of view and tendency to over-statement into which his ardor of feeling now habitually hurried him. In nothing is this extravagance more strikingly seen than in the comments in this work upon the press. There was a great deal of truth in what he said; but the justice of some of his views was deprived of any effect by the exaggeration and consequent injustice of others. The substance of his remarks was that there were more newspapers in this country than in Europe, but they were generally of a lower character. The multiplication of them was due to the fact that little capital was required in their creation, and little intelligence employed in their management. Their number was, therefore, not a thing to be boasted of but rather to be sorrowed over, since the quality diminished in an inverse ratio to the quantity. Nor was there anything in the methods employed by the press that justified any exultation in its prosperity. It tyrannized over public men, over letters, over the stage, over even private life. Under the pretence of preserving public morals, it corrupted them to the core. Under the semblance of maintaining liberty, it was gradually establishing a despotism as rude, as grasping, and as vulgar as (p. 179) that of any state known. It loudly professed freedom of opinion, but exhibited no tolerance. It paraded patriotism, but never sacrificed interest. But its great fundamental failing was the untrustworthiness of its statements. It existed to pervert truth. Its conductors were mainly political adventurers. They were unscrupulous, but they were not so utterly ignorant that they failed to see the necessity of occasionally making correct assertions. It was, however, this mixture of fact with fiction that was the chief cause of the evil influence exerted. The result of it all was that the entire nation, in a moral sense, breathed an atmosphere of falsehood. He concluded his indictment by declaring that the American press would seem to have been expressly devised by the great agent of mischief, to depress and destroy all that was good, and to elevate and advance all that was evil.

This style of remark was certainly not designed to win newspaper favor or support. But he went even farther in his novels of "Homeward Bound" and "Home as Found." In those two works he drew the portrait of an American editor in the person of Steadfast Dodge of the Active Inquirer. All the baser qualities of human nature were united in this ideal representative of the press. He was a sneak, a spy, a coward, a demagogue, a parasite, a lickspittle, a fawner upon all from whom he hoped help, a slanderer of all who did not care to endure his society. Such a picture did not rise even to the dignity of caricature. Nor is it relieved either in this work or elsewhere by others drawn favorably. The reader of Cooper will search his writings in vain for a portrait which any member of the editorial profession would be glad to recognize as his own.

All this was vigorous enough, but it could hardly be called (p. 180) profitable. Cooper had now cultivated to perfection the art of saying injudicious things as well as the art of saying things injudiciously. His ability in hitting upon the very line of remark that would still further enrage the hostile, and irritate the indifferent and even the friendly, assumed almost the nature of genius. The power of his attacks could not be gainsaid. But while they inspired his opponents with respect, they filled his friends with dismay. He was soon in a singular position. He enjoyed at one and the same time the double distinction of being reviled in England for his aggressive republicanism, and of being denounced in America for aping the airs of the English aristocracy. It hardly seemed a favorable time for beginning hostilities in a new field. Yet it was then that he entered upon his famous legal war with the Whig newspapers of the state of New York.

A detailed account of the libel suits instituted by Cooper would form one of the most striking chapters in the history of the American press; and for some reasons it is to be regretted that the plan he had of writing a full account of them was never carried out. Here only a slight summary can be given. It is well to say at the outset that many assertions ordinarily made about them are utterly false. For certain of these prevalent misconceptions Greeley is responsible. He spoke of these trials with some fullness in commenting upon libel suits in his "Recollections of a Busy Life." But Greeley's life was too busy for him always to recollect accurately. While he had not the slightest intention to say anything untrue, what he said was in some instances of this character; though more often it was misleading rather than false. (p. 181) But outside of what Greeley has written, there are several erroneous assertions current. One of the most common of these is the statement that Cooper's success in them was mainly due to the application of the law maxim, that the greater the truth the greater the libel. There was never any ground for even an insinuation of this kind. Cooper, when his attention was called to it, treated it with contempt. "The pretense," he wrote in 1845, "that our courts have ever overruled that the truth is not a complete defense in a libel suit in the civil action, can only gain credit with the supremely ignorant." In criminal indictments the New York statute of 1805 had expressly declared that the truth might be pleaded in evidence by the defense. The Constitution of 1821 made this provision part of the fundamental law, and it was adopted from that into the Constitution of 1846. The assertion owed its origin wholly to the effort of beaten parties to explain their defeat on some other ground than that they had been found guilty of the offense with which they had been charged.

A more preposterous statement even than this was that the question involved in these suits was the right of editors to criticise the productions of authors. In not one of these trials was the literary judgment passed by the reviewer mentioned as having the slightest bearing on the case. It ought not to be necessary to say that it was the attack upon the character of the man that alone came under the consideration of the courts, and not that upon the character of the book. The impudent pretense was, however, set up at the time that the press had a right to go behind the writer's work, and assail him himself. "Does an author," said "The New Yorker" in February, (p. 182) 1837, "subject himself to personal criticism by submitting a work to the public? If he makes his work the channel of disparagement upon masses of men, he does."

The most marked feature of these trials is that Cooper fought his battle single-handed. With a very few exceptions,—notably the "Albany Argus" and the "New York Evening Post,"—the press of the party with which he was nominally allied, remained neutral. Some of them were even hostile; for the novelist's criticism of editors had known no distinction of politics. On the other hand, the press of the opposition party was united. From East to West they bore down upon Cooper with a common cry. No event in his life showed more plainly the fearless and uncompromising nature of the man; nor again did anything else he was concerned in mark more clearly his versatility and vigor. In these trials he was assisted by his nephew, Richard Cooper, who was his regular counsel. But outside of him, in the civil suits, he had very rarely any help, and in most of them he argued his own cause. Wherever he appeared in person he seems to have come off uniformly victorious. Nor were his victories won over inferior opponents. The reputation of the lawyer is under ordinary conditions limited necessarily to a small circle. Even in that, considering the amount of intellectual acuteness and power displayed, it is an exceedingly transitory reputation. But the men against whom Cooper was pitted stood in the very front rank of their profession. They were leaders of the bar in the greatest state in the Union. Nor have times so far swept by that their names are not still remembered; and stories are still told of their achievements by those who have taken their (p. 183) places. Cooper, not a lawyer by profession, met these men on their own ground and defeated them. It was not long, indeed, after these suits were instituted, that it was claimed by his friends, and often conceded by his foes, that he was the one man in the country best acquainted with the law of libel. Our surprise at his success is increased by the fact that he was not only unpopular himself, but he was engaged in an unpopular cause. The verdicts he won were usually small in amount, but they were wrung from reluctant juries, and frequently in the face of bitter prejudices that had to be overcome before he could hope for a fair consideration of his own side.

At the outset the editorial fraternity were disposed to take these libel suits jocularly. They were looked upon as a gigantic joke. Nor did this feeling die out when the first trial resulted in Cooper's favor. It was proposed that the newspapers throughout the country should contribute each one dollar to a fund to be called "The Effingham Libel Fund," out of which all damages awarded the novelist were to be paid. Every additional suit was welcomed with a shout. As time went on this insolence gave way to apprehension. In nearly every case the plaintiff was coming off successful. The comments of the press began to assume an expostulatory tone. Cooper was gravely informed that were he to be tried in the High Court of Public Opinion—this imaginary tribunal was usually made imposing by dignifying its initial letters—for his libels upon his country and his countrymen, the damages he would have to pay would not only sweep away the amounts given him by the results in the regular courts, but even the profits that had accrued from the sale of his novels. These remonstrances were often animated also by a (p. 184) new-born zeal for his literary fame. He was told he was his own greatest enemy. He was doing himself irreparable injury by the course he was taking. He was so acting as to lose the reputation he had early won. This feeling naturally increased in intensity as suits continued to be decided in his favor. The newspapers at last rose to the full appreciation of the situation. The liberty of the press was actually in danger. The trials were said to be conducted in defiance of law as well as justice. The judges belonged to the Democratic party, and they wrested the statutes from their true intent in order to oppress the Whig editor. There came finally to be something exquisitely absurd in the utterances of the journals on the subject of these suits. One would fancy from reading them that the plaintiff was a monster resembling the bloodthirsty ogre of a fairy tale, bullying judges, overawing juries, maliciously bent on crushing the free-born American who should have the temerity to express an unfavorable opinion of his writings. Coriolanus, indeed, never fluttered the dove-cotes in Corioli more effectively than for some years Cooper did the Whig newspaper offices of the state of New York.

The origin of the suits was as follows: An account of the circumstances connected with the Three Mile Point controversy appeared, immediately after they had taken place, in the "Norwich Telegraph," a paper published in the neighboring county of Chenango. The article began with a reference to Cooper. "This gentleman," it said, "not satisfied with having drawn upon his head universal contempt from abroad, has done the same thing at Cooperstown where he resides." In this spirit it (p. 185) went on to give its report of the events told in the preceding chapter. "So stands the matter at present," it closed its account, "Mr. J. F. C. threatening the citizens on the one hand, and being derided and despised by them on the other." In conclusion it called upon the "Otsego Republican," the Whig newspaper of Cooperstown, to furnish all the facts in the case.

The latter journal was edited by a man named Barber. He was not slow to comply with the request, and in one of the numbers of August, 1837, he republished the article of the "Chenango Telegraph" with additional assertions of his own. The latter belonged more to the realm of fiction than of fact. Three Mile Point he declared had been reserved expressly for the use of the inhabitants of Cooperstown by the father of the novelist. When the notice was published depriving them of their rights, a meeting had been called which had been largely attended. The room was crowded with the industry, intelligence, and respectability of the village. Powerful addresses were made and a series of resolutions were passed. These expressed the feelings of all present. "The remarks," the newspaper continued, "were of a lucid character, and the resolutions, full, pungent, and yet respectful."

Two days after this article had appeared, the editor received a letter from Cooper's counsel which was to the effect that he would be prosecuted for libel unless he retracted his statements. On his side the novelist undertook to make perfectly clear to him that his assertions were untrue; but he expected, after the real facts had been set before him and fully examined, that he would take back what he had said. "No atonement," the letter concluded, "will be accepted, that is not first approved of by the plaintiff in the suit." Barber was not (p. 186) disposed either to retract or to investigate the accuracy of the facts he had stated. He published the letter, however, with the usual solemn declaration that seems to be kept in type in all newspaper offices, that in doing what he had done he had been actuated solely by the noblest motives; that he had not published anything libellous; that if in anything he had been misinformed, he held himself always ready to make the proper correction. "In conclusion," he said, "not being sensible of having injured Mr. Cooper, we consider that we have no atonement to offer." Under these circumstances the suit went on. It did not come to final trial until May, 1839, at the Montgomery circuit of the Supreme Court. Joshua A. Spencer was the principal lawyer for the defense, while Cooper conducted his own case. The jury returned a verdict of four hundred dollars for the plaintiff. Eventually the editor sought to evade in various ways the payment of the whole award, and did succeed in evading the payment of a good part of it. A terrible outcry was, however, raised against Cooper because the sheriff levied upon some money that had been carefully laid away and locked up by Barber in a trunk.

With this begins the famous series of suits that occupied no small share of the few following years of the author's life. At the time the first one was decided, another was pending against the editor of the "Chenango Telegraph." The leading Whig newspapers naturally took the side of their associates. For a time they had a good deal to say about the greatest slanderer of the whole profession pouncing upon one of the fraternity least able to defend himself, simply because in a moment of haste and excitement he had been guilty of what they were pleased to call (p. 187) a technical libel. It did not seem to occur to them, that any one could be so foolhardy as to make them the object of attack. They did not have to wait long to discover that the influence wielded by a journal was no protection. Besides the newspapers already mentioned, Cooper prosecuted the "Oneida Whig," published at Utica. This suit was tried in April, 1842. Though successful in it, the damages awarded were slight, being but seventy dollars. A suit, tried little more than six months before against the "Evening Signal," of New York city, edited by Park Benjamin, had resulted in the recovery of a larger sum. The amount in this case was three hundred and seventy-five dollars. With these exceptions his suits were directed against the "Courier and Enquirer," edited by James Watson Webb; "the Albany Evening Journal," edited by Thurlow Weed; the "Tribune," edited by Horace Greeley, and the "Commercial Advertiser," edited by William Leet Stone. These were the leading Whig journals in the state, and among the most influential in the whole country. It could not be said that Cooper hesitated about flying at high game.

In the controversy with Webb, Cooper had the least success. This was partly due to the fact that it was not a civil action that was brought against the former, but a criminal indictment. Juries might make editors pay for the privilege of expressing their feelings of contempt or hate, but they were not inclined to send them to prison. The indictment in this case was based upon a criticism of "Home as Found." The review, which was of several columns in length, had appeared in the "Courier and Enquirer" of November 22, 1838. There was very little in the way of hostile insinuation and assertion and personal depreciation that (p. 188) could not be found in this article and in some which followed. The attack was moreover a skillful one. It was directed largely against those points where Cooper had fairly laid himself open to ridicule. Especially was this the case in the matter of descent and family. Webb represented the novelist as the son of a humble hawker of fish through the streets of Burlington, who had afterward become a respectable though not a first-class wheelwright. By probity, industry, and enterprise he had finally risen to wealth and position. The maternal grandmother of the author had, according to this same story, for more than twenty years occupied a stall and sold fresh vegetables in the Philadelphia market, and was remarkable for the superior quality of the articles she kept. Webb praised the father at the expense of the son. The former had never been ashamed of his humble origin. On the contrary, he was justly proud of the intelligence and ability which, unaided by any mere external advantages, had raised him to a station in life so much higher than he at first held. Of such a career any child had a right to be proud. These were statements that could not well be resented, conceding that they were injurious, nor could they well be corrected, conceding that they were untrue. Webb, who had recently returned from Europe, asserted, moreover, that he had been present at a dinner-party in London, where "Home as Found" came under discussion. On that occasion he had fallen into a conversation about it with "a nobleman of distinction." The latter informed him that Cooper's attack upon English society had materially injured the sale of his works in that country, and it was evident that he was now seeking to regain the ground and the (p. 189) market he had lost, by praising everything English at the expense of everything American; but as his base motives were now fully understood, no one was led astray. The reported conversation carries internal evidence of its authenticity. It required a very noble lord to impute to a well-known writer motives so very noble; and none but an Englishman could have appreciated so fully the eternal conditions of success in the English market. These remarks of Webb's are, however, merely incidental. His direct personal attack on Cooper rivaled that of the British periodicals in ferocity. "We may and do know him," said he in the only extract for which there is room, "as a base-minded caitiff who has traduced his country for filthy lucre and low-born spleen; but time only can render harmless abroad the envenomed barb of the slanderer who is in fact a traitor to national pride and national character."

For this article Webb was indicted by the grand jury of Otsego County, in February, 1839. In June of the same year a second indictment was found against him for saying that the first was secured by political trickery. The trial, for various reasons, did not come off until November, 1841. Webb made a public retraction of the statements upon which the second indictment was found; and this was accepted on the part of the prosecution. On the trial for the first indictment the jury disagreed. The defendant objected to Cooper's summing up the case, and this objection the court sustained. It was a wise policy: for the trials in the civil suits showed that the novelist was full as effective in addressing a jury orally as he ever was in addressing the public in his most successful stories. One amusing feature of this case was that the two volumes of "Home as Found" were read to the jury from (p. 190) beginning to end by the plaintiffs counsel, Ambrose L. Jordan.

Cooper was not discouraged by the ill result of this trial. The indictment was still pressed. A second trial took place at Cooperstown in June, 1843. Again the jury disagreed. A third trial is reported to have taken place and to have resulted in the acquittal of Webb; but I find no account of it in the newspapers to which I have had access.

The suits brought against the "Albany Evening Journal" were, however, the most striking in this whole contest. They show, too, more clearly than the others, the spirit and methods with which it was waged on both sides. Some features are especially marked. One is the illustration furnished of the onslaughts that were made upon the novelist's character and reputation, not from any real ill-will, but from pure wantonness or at least very slight political hostility. Another is the jaunty superciliousness with which the conductors of the press at first affected to treat the threats of prosecution. More noteworthy than anything else, however, is the view given of the deliberate manner in which Cooper began these suits, and the relentless tenacity with which he followed them up. The "Evening Journal," of which Thurlow Weed was then the head, partly from the political skill of its editor, and partly from its being the organ of the party at the state capital, was, at that time, the most influential Whig journal in New York. Weed published in it, in two different numbers of August, 1837, the articles which had appeared in the "Chenango Telegraph" and the "Otsego Republican" about the Three Mile Point controversy. He accompanied them with some comments of his own in regard to Cooper. "He was, as is known," said he in (p. 191) his second notice, "pretty generally despised abroad. He is now equally distinguished at home." The editor then went on to speak of the act of meanness, as he termed it, which had excited the contempt of the novelist's neighbors; and that the more precise account now furnished by the "Otsego Republican" would rather increase than diminish the measure of scorn that had been aroused. Much was Weed's surprise when, on the 18th of April, 1840, he received a letter from Cooper's counsel requiring a retraction of what had been said in 1837, and a further statement that it must be made within a certain time or a suit for libel would be begun. He treated this notice cavalierly. He was amused by it even more than he was astonished. As it had taken three years for Cooper to bring the suit, he concluded that he would take three weeks at any rate to reply to the demand for a retraction. A second letter from Cooper's counsel, dated the 4th of May, met with the same neglect. Accordingly on the 25th of that month he had the pleasure of announcing that he had been sued for libel by "Mr. John Effingham."

The case after being put off once on a very frivolous pretext, came to trial at the Montgomery circuit of the Supreme Court, held at Fonda, in November, 1841. When it was called Weed was not present, nor was counsel for him. Cooper consented to have the case go over for a day. It was then called again. Nothing was seen of the defendant, nothing had been heard from him. The case was accordingly sent to the jury with a speech from the plaintiff's counsel. A verdict of four hundred dollars was returned. Weed arrived at Fonda the evening of that day, and wrote anonymously to the "New York Tribune" an account of what had taken (p. 192) place. In some of its details it was more entertaining than accurate. The reason he gave for his absence from the trial was that he had been kept at home by severe illness in his family. But the result enabled him to notice in this manner the sum awarded by the jury.

"This meagre verdict under the circumstances is a severe and mortifying rebuke to Cooper, who had everything his own way.

"The value of Mr. Cooper's character, therefore, has been judicially determined.

"It is worth exactly four hundred dollars."

For the publication of this letter a suit was immediately begun against the "Tribune." But though he wrote for that journal an amusing account of the trial, in his own paper Weed gave vent to the anger which the result had excited. The verdicts gained in his various cases by "this man Cooper," he said, had made "deep inroads upon a fame once bright and enviable, but now sadly dim and dilapidated." He then recited in full the misdeeds of the novelist. "For all this," concluded the aggrieved editor, "connected with the attempt to deprive the citizens of a social privilege with which they were invested by his honored father, we said Mr. Cooper was despised. And for this he prosecuted us. And now having again said it he may again prosecute us, if he wants and thinks he can obtain four hundred dollars more."

Weed did not appreciate the fact that he was not dealing with a politician, but with a man indifferent to or rather contemptuous of popular clamor. His challenge was immediately accepted. Early in December, 1841, he was able to announce the fact that he had been (p. 193) sued again. "The sheriff," he said, "has served another writ upon us for an alleged libel upon Cooper. It remains to be seen how much longer courts and juries will sanction this legal persecution of a man, who after libeling his country and calumniating his countrymen, seeks to muzzle a free press." The jocular tone used at first had all vanished. Instead it was replaced by a fierce spirit of wrathfulness and defiance. During the whole of December, 1841, Weed kept constantly republishing extracts from other newspapers reflecting upon and attacking Cooper's character and conduct. These were, he said, "sharp rebukes" of the novelist's "ridiculous and unworthy attempt to disgrace his own country to gain the favor and smiles of the nobility abroad." Some of these newspaper comments furnish very amusing reading now, especially as the impunity of most of the writers was due to their insignificance. "We rejoice," said one of them, "to witness the spirit of independence manifested by the conductors of the press. It proves their incorruptible integrity and their love of principle, their firm hostility to foreign notions, and their detestation of the man who seeks to ape the high and aristocratic manners of English nobility." These valorous declarations came mainly from the country papers of the state of New York, for the "Evening Journal" was the Triton of these minnows. Weed, however, eagerly reproduced everything that came from outside. One article, in particular, from a Chicago paper, was published, in order that Cooper might see "what right-minded and unprejudiced people say and think of him far away in the boundless West."

The appeal was to deaf ears. Neither contracted East nor boundless (p. 194) West affected Cooper's resolution. As fast as the articles were republished, they were carefully examined, and prosecutions begun against the "Evening Journal" for those of them containing libelous matter. By the middle of December five suits had been commenced, and more were under consideration. A little later, if contemporary newspaper reports can be trusted, the number had swelled to seven. The editor began to appreciate the difficulty and danger of the situation. His courage, however, did not falter. In fact he looked upon himself as manfully standing in the gap for freedom of speech. "These suits," he said "will determine whether an Independent Press is to be protected in the free exercise of honest opinion, or whether it is to be overawed and silenced by the persecutions of an inflated, litigious, soured novelist, who, in his better days by the favor of the Press, made the money with which he now seeks to oppress its conductors, and sap its independence." He did not purpose to flinch from his duty. Accordingly he announced that he should continue publishing these attacks until Cooper ceased prosecuting.

In this determination he was encouraged by the result of two suits tried in April, 1842, in the Otsego County Court. Though he was beaten in both, the verdict was for small amounts. In one case it was fifty-five dollars, in the other eighty-seven dollars. This convinced the press that the tide was turning. Again the country newspapers were filled with libelous paragraphs. Again the novelist was denounced for his heartless abuse of his country, and his soulless and contemptible vanity. Again these strictures were carefully collected from every quarter, no matter how insignificant, and republished in the columns of the "Evening (p. 195) Journal." But these cheerful anticipations were speedily dissipated. Another suit, tried at Fonda in the Supreme Court in May, 1842, resulted in a verdict of three hundred and twenty-five dollars for the plaintiff. The country papers were indignant. One of the editors sagely suggested that "if judge and jury are to carry on this war on the press to gratify individual malignity much further, it would be well for all editors to unite in petitioning the legislature to pass a law that judges should discharge their duties impartially, and juries be composed of honest and intelligent men." This profound suggestion marks pretty plainly the intellectual grade to which most of the writers of these paragraphs had attained. Before it could be acted upon another suit had been decided. In the September term of the Supreme Court held at Cooperstown, a further verdict of two hundred dollars was awarded. In the following month a new suit was begun.

Weed had fought his fight manfully. But the business of publishing libelous paragraphs at these rates, low as they were, was ceasing to be either pleasant or profitable. Besides his own counsel fees, the adverse verdicts carried with them heavy costs. He concluded to let the liberty of the press take care of itself. Accordingly, on the 14th of December, 1842, he published, though with a grumbling comment, a retraction of all his previous statements. It had been previously submitted to the eminent lawyer, Daniel Cady, and by him approved. It withdrew, first, the allegations contained the previous year in a specific article in the paper. "On a review of the matter and a better knowledge of the facts," were the words of the retraction, "I feel it to be my duty to withdraw the injurious imputations it contains on the character of Mr. (p. 196) Cooper. It is my wish that this retraction should be as broad as the charges. The 'Albany Evening Journal' having also contained various other articles reflecting on Mr. Cooper's character, I feel it due to that gentleman to withdraw every charge that injuriously affects his character."

The course of instruction had been protracted and expensive, but the lesson had been learned at last. The independence of the press had been crushed by the domineering despot of Cooperstown. The controversy threatened to break out again in 1845, but it seems never to have got beyond words. There is a comic element introduced into the whole affair by the fact that the editor of the "Journal" was a profound and even bigoted admirer of his adversary's novels. So fond was he of quoting from them, that according to Greeley, jokers at that time gravely affirmed that Weed had never read but three authors,—Shakespeare, Scott, and Cooper. In the very heat of the controversy he was said to have sat up all night reading "The Pathfinder," which had come out a little while before. Greeley also asserts that the paragraphs which appeared in the "Evening Journal" were merely designed as gentle reminders to the novelist of the folly of the course he was pursuing. This might find belief in a society in which telling a man that he was an object of universal contempt would be deemed an expression of friendly interest in his welfare. When he says, in addition, that there was no shred, no spice of malice in these assaults, he takes away the sole ground on which a plea of palliation can be brought. If not due to that they had not even the poor excuse of weak human nature. They were the wanton acts of a man who attacks another, not from (p. 197) indignation or wrath, but from the mere desire of inflicting annoyance or pain.

The controversy with the "Commercial Advertiser" belongs not here but to the account of the "Naval History." It has already been said that the "Tribune" had been sued for the publication of Thurlow Weed's letter describing the trial at Fonda in November, 1841. In December, 1842, this case came off at Ballston. Greeley assumed the conduct of the defense. He was unsuccessful. The jury brought in against him a verdict of two hundred dollars and costs. "We went back to dinner," he wrote, "took the verdict in all meekness, took a sleigh and struck a bee-line for New York." No sooner had he reached the city than he published a most entertaining account of the whole trial. It filled eleven columns of the "Tribune," and the demand for it became so great that it was found necessary to publish it in pamphlet form. For some expressions in it Cooper began another suit. In this instance Greeley gave up the plan of defending himself and intrusted the conduct of his side to Seward. The case dragged on for years in the New York courts, and, so far as I have been able to discover, had not been brought to a final trial before the plaintiff's death.

By the end of 1843, Cooper had pretty well reduced the press to silence, so far as comments on his character were concerned. It was insignificance or remoteness alone that protected the libeler. The leading newspapers of the state, however much they might abuse his writings, learned to be very cautious of what they said of him personally. But it was a barren victory he had won. He had lost far more than he had gained. That such would be the result, he knew, while (p. 198) he was engaged in the controversy. It affected, at the time, his literary reputation, and, as a result, the sale of his writings; and since his death it has been a principal agency in keeping alive a distorted and fictitious view of his personal character. A common impression came to be of him something like the description which Greeley's lawyers gave of the estimation in which he was held in Otsego County, in some legal papers bearing the date of July, 1845. This was to the effect that he had acquired and had among his neighbors "the reputation of a proud, captious, censorious, arbitrary, dogmatical, malicious, illiberal, revengeful, and litigious man." This one-sided and hostile view of a strongly-marked character had just enough of truth in it to cause it to be widely received as an accurate and complete picture. In a similar way the notion became current that he sought to ape the manners of the English aristocracy. Whatever Cooper's foibles were, they were none of them imported. He was too proud in feeling and too self-centred in opinion ever to think of aping anything or anybody. But on these points the prejudices and misrepresentations of that day have lasted down to this.

The account given makes it clear that the occasion of bringing the first of these libel suits was accidental. But as time went on the prosecution of them assumed to Cooper the shape of a duty. When once it had taken on that character, no possible degree of unpopularity or odium could have prevented him from persisting in his course. He treated with disdain the common arguments used to persuade him to abandon them. To one of these he referred directly in a novel published in 1844. He was insisting upon the superiority of the past to the present, a sentiment which (p. 199) became a favorite burden of his latter-day utterances. "The public sense of right," he said, "had not become blunted by familiarity with abuses, and the miserable and craven apology was never heard for not enforcing the laws that nobody cared for what the newspapers say." He certainly had some justification for the hardest things he thought and said of the press. The newspapers which circulated the false reports about his father's disposition of the property at Three Mile Point never corrected them after the precise facts had been published. Many of them continued to repeat the original statements after they must have known them to be untrue. Nor did they stop here. As the British press had in his case done all it could to justify the charge Cooper made against it of ferocious blackguardism of personal and political foes, so many of the American editors seemed anxious to realize, so far as it lay in their power, the picture that had been drawn of them in the character of Steadfast Dodge. Papers containing offensive paragraphs about Cooper were carefully sent, not directed to him personally, but to his wife and daughters. The fear of punishment is the only motive by which those who commit acts of this kind can possibly be influenced. On the other hand, it is an idle claim that the character of the press has been elevated by libel suits that Cooper or any one else has ever brought. Such prosecutions may be both justifiable and necessary; but the agencies that form and build up intelligence and taste and high principle are not of this negative and restraining character.



CHAPTER X. (p. 200)

1839-1843.

On the 10th of May, 1839, appeared Cooper's "History of the United States Navy." The work was one which he had long contemplated writing. As far back as 1825 there were newspaper reports that he had the undertaking in mind. He himself, in his parting speech at the dinner given him in May, 1826, just before his departure for Europe, had publicly announced his determination of devoting himself to this subject during his absence abroad. "Encouraged by your kindness," he said, "I will take this opportunity of recording the deeds and sufferings of a class of men to which this nation owes a debt of lasting gratitude—a class of men among whom, I am always ready to declare, not only the earliest, but many of the happiest days of my youth have been passed." The necessity of providing for his family and of paying off debts incurred by others, but for which he was responsible, had prevented the immediate carrying out of this resolution. But it had always been in his thoughts. The delay in the preparation probably added to the value of the history; but its reception would unquestionably have been far different had it been brought out in the height of his popularity.

It was a work which for many reasons it was a hard task to make accurate, and a still harder one to make interesting. With slight exceptions the history could be little more than a record of (p. 201) detached combats; and a string of episodes, no matter how brilliant, can never have the attraction which belongs to unity and grandeur of movement. These last can alone characterize the operations of great fleets.

Still, for the writing of this history Cooper was peculiarly fitted. He had belonged to the navy in his early life. He had never ceased to feel the deepest interest in its reputation and prosperity. He had contributed to the "Naval Magazine," a periodical published during 1836 and 1837, a series of papers connected with the improvement of its condition. He was, moreover, on terms of intimacy with many of the officers who had won for it distinction; and through them he had access to sources of information that could not be gained from written authorities. He had, besides, the characteristic of loving truth for its own sake, and the disposition to endure any amount of drudgery and encounter any sort of toil in order to secure it. To this were added the special qualifications of the historical eye, which enabled him to seize the important facts in an infinite mass of detail, and the power of describing vividly what he saw clearly. Under such circumstances it was reasonable to expect that his work would satisfy all fair-thinking men. It is, perhaps, correct to say that it did so. But it also gave rise to a controversy which stretched over a longer period and surpassed, in the bitter feelings it aroused, any of the wars in which the navy itself had ever been engaged.

There were special difficulties to be encountered with readers on both sides of the ocean. On the one hand, Englishmen had usually forgotten to remember that during the war of 1812 there was any naval combat of importance fought except between the Shannon and the Chesapeake; (p. 202) and even at this day it would be difficult to find in an English writer any account of the naval operations of that war in which that particular engagement does not play the principal part. If any other was forced upon their attention it had become an article of their creed that an American frigate was little else than a line-of-battle ship disguised. Moreover, the effective force of the American vessel was, according to their theory, made up of deserters from the British service. These two explanations of any failure were often combined. It is in this way Captain Brenton, one of their naval historians, calmly shows how it was that the Constitution happened to capture the Guerriere. "We may justly say," he concludes his account, "it was a large British frigate taking a small one." On her part America was not to be outdone in her estimate of national prowess. It had become matter of firm faith with the inhabitants of the United States that their side had suffered no losses worth mentioning during the war of 1812; that the American vessel had been invariably successful, whenever there was any approach to equality of force; and that in every case it was the superior seamanship, courage, and skill of their officers and men that had decided the result in their favor, and not superiority in weight of metal.

Neither of these beliefs was of a kind likely to influence Cooper. He had got to that point of feeling in which he looked upon the public opinion of both England and America with a good deal of contempt. It was not to pamper the vanity or flatter the prejudices of either that he wrote, but to state the truth. For this he neglected nothing that lay in his power. He studied public documents of every kind, official (p. 203) reports, all the printed and manuscript material to which he could get access. From officers of the navy who had shared in the actions described he gathered much information which they alone were able to communicate. In one sense he was fully satisfied with what he had done. He did not pretend that in a work which involved the examination and sifting of an almost infinite number of details he had not made some errors. It was only that he had made none intentionally, and that he had put forth his most strenuous exertions to have what he wrote entirely free from mistake. Nor is it possible for any unprejudiced mind to read the history now and not feel the truth of the assertion. Its accuracy and honesty have sometimes been flippantly questioned, but usually by men who have not spent as many days in the study of the subject as Cooper did months. During his lifetime imputations were made in a few cases upon the correctness of his statements. They met then, however, so speedy and effectual a refutation that it was not thought worth while to repeat the criticisms until he was in his grave. Cooper might be wrong in his conclusions; but it was rarely safe to quarrel with his facts. There is more, however, in this history than freedom from intentional perversion of the truth. There are throughout the whole of it the calmness, the judicial spirit, the absence of partisanship which may not of themselves add anything to the interest of the narrative, but are worth everything for the impression of truthfulness it makes.

Impartiality is a quality, however, little apt to be commended where our own feelings and interests are concerned. Still, the general fairness of the work was admitted in England, with the qualification, of (p. 204) course that a perfectly trustworthy history could not come from this side of the water. A few malignant attacks were made upon it. One of these, which appeared in the "United Service Journal" for November and December, 1839, is of the nature of a prolonged roar rather than a criticism; but it is worth noticing for the incidental evidence it furnishes of the intense rancor felt towards Cooper by many in England on account of his strictures upon that country in the two volumes devoted to it in his "Gleanings in Europe." The writer made the then usual profession of faith, that the work referred to had been completely crushed by the "Quarterly;" moreover, that the novelist had been convicted by it of the blackest ingratitude for traducing the nation which, we learn from this notice, had fostered his talents for romance. No critic of Cooper, either in Europe or in this country, it is to be remarked here, ever seemed willing to concede that the author had any hand in gaining his own reputation. In America the newspapers constantly assured him that it was due entirely to them. Great Britain assumed that it was to her generous appreciation alone that he was known in either hemisphere. The European main-land was not behind the island in this feeling. "Undoubtedly," wrote Balzac, "Cooper's renown is not due to his countrymen nor to the English: he owes it mainly to the ardent appreciation of France." This sentiment of the novelist's obligation to Great Britain was uppermost in the heart of the reviewer in the "United Service Journal." An uneasy impression, however, weighed upon his mind lest Cooper, who had now suffered annihilation several times without injury, might have survived the particular one inflicted by the (p. 205) "Quarterly." He honestly confessed, therefore, that he had waited some months before criticising the "Naval History," so that he might not look at it with a jaundiced or malignant eye in consequence of his recollections of the previous work on England.

It is not worth while to take any further notice of this article, in which wretched criticism was put into still poorer English. But there was one of these reviews to which Cooper felt it incumbent on him to reply. This appeared in the "Edinburgh" for April, 1840. It was studiously fair in tone. It commended the American author's work in many respects. While doing so, however, it attacked him for having made no use of the "Naval History of Great Britain" by William James, a history which it spoke of in a gushing way as approaching "as nearly to perfection in its own line as any historical work perhaps ever did." It also labored heavily to break the force of some of Cooper's statements by charging him with making assertions without evidence or against evidence. James was a veterinary surgeon who had come to this country before the war of 1812 to practice his profession. After the breaking out of hostilities he left it, or rather, as he says, "escaped from it, before being taken prisoner into the interior"—whatever that may mean. In the early part of "the steelyard and arithmetical war," as Cooper phrased it, which has raged with extreme violence ever since the peace of Ghent, James bore a gallant and conspicuous part. He published a pamphlet on the subject, which, in 1817, came out expanded into a volume. In it he showed conclusively that his countrymen had been utterly wrong in supposing that they had met with any naval reverses during the war of 1812. The falsity of this assumption he (p. 206) satisfactorily established by explaining that the Americans were the most inveterate liars upon the face of the earth. By their deceptive and fraudulent accounts they had beguiled the English, a self-distrustful and self-depreciating people, into believing that they had been defeated, where they had really been victorious. Heroes, indeed, can be overcome by sufficient odds; and James was always prepared with ample explanations to account for failure in special cases. He also convicted the officers of the American navy not merely of lying in their official reports—which was a duty expected of them both by government and people—but of cowardice in action, of misconduct in their operations, and of brutality toward enemies whom the chance of war threw into their power. A work like this not merely filled a gap in historical literature, it supplied a national want. It was accordingly received with such favor that its author went on to produce a history of the British navy from 1793 to the accession of George IV. In this he embodied his previous narrative; and a grateful people has never ceased to cherish a work which showed it that it had succeeded where previously it had been laboring under the impression that it had failed.

For James and his history Cooper had unbounded contempt. This horse-doctor, as he termed him, he looked upon as being as well fitted to describe a naval engagement as the proverbial horse-marine would be to take part in one. Besides being incapable, he regarded him as eminently dishonest; as vaunting impartiality while elevating discreditable and improbable hearsay into positive assertion, and fortifying his falsehoods by a pretentious parade of figures and official documents. It is hardly going too far to say that, in (p. 207) Cooper's opinion, the remarks of James on American affairs combined all possible forms of misstatement from undesigned misrepresentation to deliberate falsehood. There may be difference of opinion on this point; on another there can be none. The period covered by the British writer is on the whole the most glorious in the long and brilliant naval history of the greatest maritime power the world has ever known. Never was there a greater contrast between the spirit with which things were done and the spirit with which they were told. In no other history known to man does tediousness assume proportions more appalling, do figures seem more juiceless, do the stories of heroic achievement furnish less inspiration than in this of James. If it be true, as some modern writers say, that history to be of value must be void of interest, it may be conceded that this particular work is entitled to that praise of perfection accorded it by the Edinburgh Reviewer.

The judgment that held up such a history as a model was not likely to impress a man, who was still under the sway of the old-fashioned notion, that there was no absolutely necessary connection between dullness and accuracy. To this particular criticism Cooper replied in the "Democratic Review" for May and June, 1842. In the first article he exposed the ignorance and dishonesty of James. In the second he devoted himself to the assertions of the "Edinburgh." The game was hardly worth the candle. His arguments could not reach the men who alone needed to know them. In international quarrels of any kind there are few who read both sides. The feeling exists that it is not safe to contaminate the purity of one's faith in his country by the doubts that might arise from (p. 208) merely fancying that an opponent has reasons for his course worth considering. So it was in this case. Few people in the United States saw the "Edinburgh Review," none believed what it said. In England fewer knew even of the existence of the "Democratic Review."

The controversy that arose in this country was on an entirely different ground. It was one that could hardly have been foreseen. The personal hostility which Cooper had succeeded in drawing upon himself was never so conspicuously shown as in the treatment which his "Naval History" underwent. At first, indeed, it was received with general favor, though by many it was thought to give too much credit to the English. In a short time, however, attacks were made upon it so virulent, so causeless, and withal so simultaneous, that the mere fact would of itself afford reason for the suspicion that they were concerted. This was practically the case. A certain amount of preliminary detail will make the circumstances clear. The controversy was entirely about the account of a particular action in the war of 1812, and a work containing over fifty chapters was absolutely condemned as partisan and worthless for what was found on a few pages of one chapter.

The battle of Lake Erie was fought and won by Commodore Perry on the 10th of September, 1813. It presented the peculiarity that the Lawrence, the flagship of the victorious squadron, had struck to the enemy in the course of the engagement. There was a feeling prevalent among many at the time that Elliott, the second in rank, had not been cordial in his support of his commander, and had left him to bear for a long while the brunt of the fight without hastening in his vessel, the Niagara, (p. 209) to his help. This was, in particular, the general belief among those on board the Lawrence. Perry did not sanction this view at first. Urged by good-nature, according to the theory of his friends, he praised Elliott's conduct in his official report. He went even farther in a letter of the 19th of September. This was in reply to a note from Elliott stating that rumors were current that the Lawrence had been sacrificed because of the lack of proper exertion on the part of the second in command. "I am indignant," wrote Perry, "that any report should be in circulation prejudicial to your character as respects the action of the 10th instant. It affords me pleasure that I have it in my power to assure you that the conduct of yourself, officers, and crew was such as to merit my warmest approbation. And I consider the circumstance of your volunteering and bringing the smaller vessels up to close action as contributing largely to our victory." Such was the situation at the time. A few years later, however, a bitter quarrel sprang up between Perry and Elliott, which apparently owed a good deal of its rancor to the exertions of good-natured friends of both in communicating to each remarks made, or supposed to be made, by the other. An envenomed correspondence took place in 1818. It led to Elliott's challenging Perry, and Perry preferring charges against Elliott for his conduct at the battle of Lake Erie. In the letter accompanying the charges he gave as his reason for changing his opinion as to the behavior of his second in command, that he had been put into possession of fresh facts. The government took no action in the matter, and in the following year Perry died. In 1834 Elliott became the mark of hostility of the Whig press on account of his putting the figure of Andrew Jackson at the (p. 210) figure-head of the Constitution, the war-ship of which he was in command. The old scandal about his conduct at Erie was revived. Elliott did more than defend himself. A life of him was published in 1835, written by another, but from materials evidently that he himself had furnished. It claimed that the success of the battle of Lake Erie was mainly due to his efforts. It naturally produced a feeling of intense bitterness among Perry's friends and relatives. This was the way matters stood at the time that the "Naval History" was brought out.

Cooper entered upon the account of the battle of Lake Erie with the common prejudice against Elliott. Nor were efforts lacking to keep it alive and strengthen it, when it was reported in naval circles that he had begun to be uncertain about the justice of his original impressions. Captain Matthew Perry, the brother of the Commodore, forwarded him all the sworn documentary evidence that made against Elliott. He neglected to send any that was given in his favor. Cooper was not the man to be satisfied with this way of writing history. As he examined the subject more and more, he was struck by the conflicting character of the testimony, and the doubt that overhung the whole question. He came finally to the conclusion that it was not a matter he could settle, or, perhaps, any one. He accordingly contented himself with giving as accurate an account of the battle of Lake Erie as he could without entering at all into the details of the controversy. He made not the slightest effort to detract from the praise due to Perry, and, indeed, paid the highest tribute to his skill and conduct. Nor did he give to Elliott any prominence whatever.

He had committed, however, the unpardonable sin. He had refused (p. 211) to attack Elliott. He had preferred to accept Perry's original account of the battle, written within five days after it had taken place, to the view he took of it not only five years later, but also after a bitter personal quarrel had sprung up between him and his former second in command. While Cooper had made no special mention of the latter, he had spoken of him respectfully. There was a general feeling that Elliott ought to have been attacked. He was a very unpopular man, and, perhaps, deservedly so; while Perry was both a popular favorite and a popular hero. The refusal of Cooper to join in the general denunciation brought down upon him, not only those who honestly believed him in the wrong, but the whole horde of his own personal enemies who knew little and cared less about this particular subject. In the long list of controversies which the student of literature is under the necessity of examining, none seems so uncalled for and so discreditable to the assailants as this. For it is to be borne in mind that the historian had not made the slightest attempt to injure Perry in the popular estimation, or to elevate the subordinate at the expense of the commander. Yet assertions of this kind were constantly bandied about, though it would not have taken five minutes reading of the work to have shown their falsity. Cooper was frequently spoken of by the press as the detractor of American fame and the slanderer of American character, because he refused to say, on one-sided evidence, that an officer of the United States navy had been willing to sacrifice his superior in a hotly contested battle and imperil the result for the sake of ministering to his own personal ambition, or of gratifying a feeling of personal (p. 212) dislike and envy, of the existence of which at the time there was no proof.