has often made Americans so slow to express unpopular opin ions. Cooper, too, had strong prejudices; and when brought face to face with anything he did not like, he was given to expressing disapprobation with a vigour. more characteristic of the English than of ourselves. Though he thoroughly loved his country, he saw in it traits which by no means delighted him. So in his "Notions of the Americans Picked up by a Travelling Bachelor," published in 1828, when his popularity was at its height, he expressed concerning our countrymen views which may be summarised in the statement that Americans, though full of energy and other admirable qualities, have a blind passion for money-seeking, an undue respect for popular opinion, and an irrepressible tendency to brag For this he was called Anglomaniac; his Anglomania did not prevent him from writing just as frankly about the English, of whom his published views may similarly be summarised in the statement that the English are not only the most efficiently powerful nation in the world, but also by far the most snobbish. Both nations resented such comments. Some notion of the amenities of criticisms sixty years ago may be gained from a few phrases which were consequently bestowed upon Cooper both in England and in America. In 1838 the "New Yorker" wrote of him as follows: "He is as proud of blackguarding as a fishwoman is of Billingsgate. It is as natural to him as snarling to a tomcat or growling to a bull-dog. . . He has the scorn and contempt of every well-informed American. The superlative dolt." A little later" Fraser's Magazine " called him a "bilious braggart," a "liar," a "full jackass," an "insect," a "grub," and a "reptile."

The troubles in which he thus involved himself during his last twenty years were enhanced not only by those which sprang from his honest effort to be fair in his History of the Navy, but by quarrels with neighbours at Cooperstown, concerning the public use of some land to which he held a

clear title, and by various infirmities of temper. Intensely aristocratic in personal feeling, he cherished the most democratic general sentiments, believing equally in the rights of man and in the vileness of any actual populace. In politics he was a Democrat, but he hated free trade as blindly as Tory squire ever loved the Corn Laws; and so on. One can begin to see why, after what he must have felt to be a lifetime of misunderstanding and vexation, he wished no biography of him made.

Yet, after all, now that he has been half a century in his grave, little memory is left of his foibles or his troubles. The Cooper who persists and who will persist in popular memory is the author of those wholesome novels of sea and of forest which were the first American writings to win and to keep a truly wide popularity. In touching on them a little while. ago, we remarked the extraordinary truthfulness of their background; and this, probably, is the trait which gives them their highest positive value. It is hardly to so unusual a quality, however, that they have owed their popular vitality. Their plots, though conventional, are put together with considerable skill. In spite of prolixity one constantly feels curious to know what is coming next. In spite even of lifeless characters, this skilful handling of plot makes one again and again feel unexpected interest concerning what these personages are going to do or what is going to happen to them. As we have seen already, too, crucial episodes, such as the wreck of the "Ariel" in "The Pilot," possess, in spite of careless phrasing, a vividness and a bravery sure to appeal to broad human temper.

Cooper's plots, then, if commonplace, are often interesting enough to atone for their prolixity; and whatever the conventionality of his characters, the spirit of his books is vigorously brave and manly. Excellent as these traits are, however, they are not specifically American. Another trait of Cooper's work, less salient, but just as constant, may fairly be regarded as national. From beginning to end of his writings there is

hardly a passage which anybody would hesitate to put into the hands of a child or of a young girl; nor is this pervasive purity apparently deliberate. The scenes of his novels are often laid in very rough places, and as a natural consequence many of his characters and incidents are of a rough, adventurous kind; but, with a freedom from pruriency as instinctive as his robustness, the man avoids those phases of rough human life which recent "decadence" has generally tended either to overemphasise or so studiously to neglect that the neglect amounts to emphasis. Cooper's temper was unaffectedly pure; and purity of temper is probably still characteristic of American letters.

Cooper lived until 1851, and Irving lived eight years longer. Both men wrote until they died. In a certain way, then, their work might be held to extend to a distinctly later period than that in which we are considering them; for here we have treated them as almost contemporary with Brockden Brown, who died in 1810. In another aspect, however, they belong very early in the history of American letters. In 1798, we remember, the year when Wordsworth and Coleridge published the "Lyrical Ballads," appeared also Brockden Brown's "Wieland," the first American book which has survived. In 1832 the death of Sir Walter Scott brought to an end that epoch of English letters which the

Lyrical Ballads" may be said to have opened. In that year, of course, Brown had long been dead; and both Irving and Cooper had still some years to write. The reputation of each, however, was virtually complete. Irving had already published his "Knickerbocker History," his "Sketch Book," his "Bracebridge Hall," his "Tales of a Traveller," his "Life of Columbus," his "Fall of Granada," and his "Alhambra;" nothing later materially increased his reputation. Cooper had published "The Spy," "The Pioneers," "The Pilot," "Lionel Lincoln," "The Last of the Mohicans,” “The Prairie," the "Red Rover," the "Wept of Wish-ton-Wish,"

"The Water Witch," and the "Bravo." When Scott died, then, Cooper, too, had produced enough to make his reputation permanent; nothing which he wrote later much enhanced it.

The three writers whom we have considered — Brockden Brown, Irving, and Cooper were the only Americans who between 1798 and 1832 achieved lasting names in prose. Though they form no school, though they are very different from one another, two or three things may be said of them in common. They all developed in the Middle States; the names of all are associated with the chief city of that region, New York. The most significant work of all assumed a form which in the general history of literatures comes not early but late, prose fiction. This form, meantime, happened to be on the whole that which was most popular in contemporary England. Again, in the previous literature of America, if literature it may be called, two serious motives were expressed. In the first place, particularly in New England, there was a considerable development of theologic thought; the serious Yankee mind was centred on the eternities. A little later, partly in New England, but more in Virginia and in New York, there was admirable political writing. These two motives the one characteristic of the earliest type of native American, the second of that second type which politically expressed itself in the American Revolution - may be regarded as expressions in this country of the two ideals most deeply inherent in our native language,- those of the Bible and of the Common Law. Whatever the ultimate significance of American writing during the seventeenth or the eighteenth centuries, then, such of it as now remains worthy of attention is earnest in purpose, dealing either with the eternal destinies of mankind or with deep problems of political conduct. In our first purely literary expression, on the other hand, a different temper appears. Neither Brown nor Irving nor Cooper has left us anything profoundly significant. All three are

properly remembered as writers of wholesome fiction; and the object of wholesome fiction is neither to lead men heavenward nor to teach them how to behave on earth; it is rather to please. There is a commonplace which divides great literature into the literature of knowledge, which enlarges the intellect, and that of power, which stimulates the emotions until they become living motives. Such work as Brockden Brown's cr Irving's or Cooper's can hardly be put in either category. Theirs is rather a literature of wholesome pleasure. Nor can one long look at them together without tending to the conclusion that the most apt of the forms in which their peculiar literature of wholesome pleasure was cast is that short story which the American Irving first perfected in English.

This prose on which we have now touched was the most important literature produced in New York, or indeed in America, during the period which was marked in England by everything between the "Lyrical Ballads" and the death of Scott. Even in America, however, the time had its poetry. At this we must now glance.