1789-1811.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.

297

writings as could be collected, thirty-three editions of his life in English, and thirteen in French, some twenty editions of "Father Abraham's Speech" and "The Way to Wealth," besides innumerable reprints of his famous tracts and pamphlets. The writings of no other American were so scattered over Europe. Save Irving and Cooper, no other American writer had yet approached him in fame even in England.

James Fenimore Cooper, the son of William and Elizabeth Fenimore Cooper, was born at Burlington, New Jersey, September fifteenth, 1789. He was the eleventh child of a family of twelve, and when little more than a year old was taken by his parents to the shore of Otsego Lake, New York, where four years before his father had laid out the village of Cooperstown. In this frontier settlement, in the heart of the wilderness, the boy grew up, surrounded by the most majestic scenery and in contact with all the incidents and characters of pioneer life. When the rudiments of education had been mastered in the village school-house, Cooper was sent to reside in the family of an Albany minister, and at thirteen entered the class of 1806 at Yale. There a boyish escapade brought his course to a sudden ending, after which his father decided to fit him for the navy.

In those early days, when the academy at Annapolis had no existence, the lad who aspired to rank in the navy began his nautical experience on the deck of a merchant trader, and on such a vessel Cooper as a common seaman sailed from New York, in the autumn of 1806, for "Cowes and a market." A year of experience before the mast furnished him with many an incident for his sea novels, and gained for him a commission as midshipman in the United States navy, in which he served for three years.*

Cooper when he resigned in 1811 was twenty-one, and had as yet shown neither literary tastes nor the smallest disposition to become an author. Indeed, he was thirty before a casual remark of his wife turned him from an idler into one

* The facts regarding Cooper's early life are taken from the Life of Cooper, by Thomas R. Lounsbury, in American Men of Letters. The book is a model biography.

of the most prolific of American writers. The story is told that as he sat one day reading to his wife from an English society novel he laid down the book with the remark, “I believe I could write a better novel myself." "Do so," was the calm reply; and, thus challenged, he went to work, and in November, 1820, “Precaution: a Novel, by an Englishman," appeared in New York. The work as a piece of printing, as a piece of fiction, as a story was bad. It was below the average of the wretched school to which it belonged. Yet, poor as it was, his friends considered it good enough to urge him to go on, and in 1821 he brought out the first truly American novel. In "Precaution " Cooper had gone to England for his incidents and characters, and had attempted to draw a picture of a life of which he knew nothing whatever. We are informed that he was now advised to stay on this side of the Atlantic, and to deal with men and manners well known to him, that he had the good sense to take the advice, and that he chose as the foundation of "The Spy" the adventures of a real spy employed by John Jay during the Revolution.*

As Cooper may be said to have stumbled on the profession of author, so he may be said to have stumbled into fame. Neither he nor the publisher had the smallest conception of the merits of "The Spy," nor of the reception to be given it by the public. The writing of the book was half perfunctory. The manuscript as finished passed to the type-setter unrevised and uncorrected, and the first volume was printed and bound some months before Cooper had the heart to begin on the second. When at last the task was resumed the end seemed so far away that the publisher protested lest the work should exceed all reasonable limits; whereupon Cooper, to satisfy him, actually wrote the last chapter and had it set up, paged, and printed before a word of the intervening chapters were written or the incidents so much as imagined. Nothing short of merit of a high order could save such a piece of composition from contempt. But that merit "The Spy" contained, for it is a story of adventure remarkably well told,

* Lounsbury's Cooper, pp. 28, 29.

1821-23. THE SPY, THE PIONEERS, THE PIRATE.

299

and as such won a speedy recognition. Within six months of the day of issue the book passed through three editions in America, was dramatized and acted with success, was published in England, was translated into French, and gained for the unknown* writer the title of "a distinguished American novelist."

The success of "The Spy" at home was a signal refutation of the charge so long and vigorously made that no American would read a book by one of his countrymen. It was read everywhere, and secured for Cooper a popularity which aroused the greatest expectation when the announcement was made that "The Spy " would soon be followed by "The Pioneers." Such was the eagerness to read the promised book that thirty-five hundred copies were sold during the forenoon of the day of publication. Nor was expectation disappointed. Though by no means the best of the five fine stories known to us as "The Leatherstocking Tales," "The Pioneers" is indeed a vivid picture of frontier life and frontier character drawn by one who knew both well. It was the first truly American book by an intensely American author, and in Leatherstocking the readers of Cooper's day were introduced to the first and only original character our countrymen have ever yet given to literature.+

This of itself would have entitled him to lasting distinction. But while "The Pioneers" was still on the press Cooper began another novel destined to increase his fame yet more, and to make him the founder of a new school of fiction. His biographer assures us that while at a dinner party in New York in 1822 the puzzle of the literary world, Who is the author of the Waverley Novels? came up for solution, and that Cooper attributed them to Scott. Those who denied his authorship cited "The Pirate," pointed to the incidents of the story as proof positive that none but a seafaring man could have written it, and maintained that, as Scott knew nothing of life aboard ship, "The Pirate" could not be his work. Cooper contended that the novel showed no evidence

*The novel was published as The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground, by the author of Precaution. 2 vols. New York: Wiley & Halsted, 1821.

Lounsbury's Cooper, p. 283.

of a knowledge of seamanship, that it was clearly the work of a landsman, and was undoubtedly written by Scott. But his listeners would not be convinced, and, piqued at the small respect paid to him as a sailor and a novelist, produced "The Pilot" to show the world what a sea novel ought to be. Long before Cooper's day the sailor had become a familiar character in fiction. But never before had an author dared to place his reader on the deck of a ship, put to sea, and exhibit to him all the details of life on the great deep, in storm and calm, in the hour of battle, and in time of peace.

"The Pilot " appeared in 1824, and was followed in quick succession by "Lionel Lincoln, the Leaguer of Boston," in 1825, by "The Last of the Mohicans" in 1826, by "The Prairie" in 1827, by "The Red Rover" in 1828, and "The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish" in 1829. This fine array of thoroughly American novels drew from an English reviewer warm praise of Cooper for his Americanism. Hitherto, said he, it was with a sinking heart that we took up a novel, or a poem, or a play by a citizen of the United States. We knew that we should find it English in character, scene, and plot. We knew that it would be crowded with Scotch lairds and Irish rapparees, with lords and ladies, butlers and footmen, and everything else that is not American. The very scenery would be such as never existed anywhere in the New World-yew trees, fish ponds with hedges, blue lakes bordered by green turf, pheasants, cottagers, and such villages as are peculiar to Merry England. The dialect put into the mouths of Yankees and Virginians would be a mixture of Yorkshire, broad Scotch, and cockney. And why? Because the writers of America will persist in writing after bad English models. Because they make use of British material, prose, poetry, incident, character, and plot to the exclusion of better and richer materials lying under their feet. It is American books that we want from America. Not books made in America by Englishmen, or, what is worse, writers who are a sort of bastard English. We want not copies, but great originalsNorth American books which, whatever their faults, are truly American. And why is it that up to this hour we

1825.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

301

have nothing of the sort, save a few stories by Irving, Neal, and Cooper?

*

Cooper was then the foremost man of letters in America. Nor was the position a mean one; for many a writer whose name is now a household word had begun a literary career, and many an oration, poem, and book which posterity has thought worthy of preservation had already been produced. Webster had delivered his Plymouth and Bunker Hill orations and his eulogy of Adams and Jefferson, Drake had written "The Culprit Fay" and his fine poem on the American Flag. Francis Scott Key had composed "The Star Spangled Banner," Catherine Sedgwick had published "A New England Tale" and "Redwood," and Lydia Maria Child "Hobomok," "The Rebels," and a " Juvenile Miscellany." Lydia Huntley Sigourney had come into notice by her "Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse,' her" Traits of the Aborigines," her " Sketch of Connecticut," and a volume of poems. Richard H. Dana, John Howard Payne, Peter Parley, Jacob Abbott, William Gilmore Simms, James K. Paulding, George Bancroft, and Jared Sparks had From Halleck had come begun to write. Fanny" and "Marco Bozzaris"; from Byrant had come "Thanatopsis " and "The Ages"; and from Longfellow, a young man just from college, "A Hymn to the Moravian Nuns."

William Cullen Bryant was born at Cummington, Massachusetts, in 1794, and seems to have inherited from his father both his poetic taste and early politics. He was a precocious lad, and wrote several good rhymes before he was thirteen, when he attracted attention by a satirical poem which he called "The Embargo." The Boston Anthology could not believe that "The Embargo" was the work of a boy of thirteen. The second edition therefore contained the assurance that Mr. Bryant was not fourteen years old, and in evidence of his poetical ability added several other poems long since forgotten.† At seventeen he wrote "Thanatopsis," which was published

*The Museum of Foreign Literature and Science, July to December, 1825. Late American Books. Review of Lionel Lincoln.

The Embargo, or Sketches of the Times. A Satire. Second edition, corrected and enlarged, together with the Spanish Revolution and other poems. By William Cullen Bryant.