II
Having due regard then for perspective, and trying not to confuse historical importance with the more vital interest which implies permanent claims, it seems pretty safe to come back to Irving and Poe, to Cooper and Hawthorne. Even as in the sketch and tale Irving stands alone with such a masterpiece as "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"; and Poe equally by himself with his tales of psychological horror and mystery, so in longer fiction, Cooper and Hawthorne have made as distinct contributions in the domain of Romance. Their service is as definite for the day of the Romantic spirit, as is that of Howells and James for the modern day of realism so-called. It is not hard to see that Irving even in his fiction is essentially an essayist; that with him story was not the main thing, but that atmosphere, character and style were,—the personal comment upon life. One reads a sketch like "The Stout Gentleman," in every way a typical work, for anything but incident or plot. The Hudson River idyls, it may be granted, have somewhat more of story interest, but Irving seized them, ready-made for his use, because of their value for the picturesque evocation of the Past. He always showed a keen sense of the pictorial and dramatic in legend and history, as the "Alhambra" witnesses quite as truly as the sketches. "Bracebridge Hall" and "The Sketch Book," whatever of the fictional they may contain, are the work of the essayist primarily, and Washington Irving will always, in a critical view, be described as a master of the English essay. No other maker of American literature affords so good an example of the inter-colation of essay and fiction: he recalls the organic relation between the Sir Roger de Coverley Papers and the eighteenth century Novel proper of a generation later.
His service to all later writers of fiction was large in that he taught them the use of promising native material that awaited the story-maker. His own use of it, the Hudson, the environs of Manhattan, was of course romantic, in the main. When in an occasional story he is unpleasant in detail or tragic in trend he seems less characteristic—so definitely was he a romanticist, seeking beauty and wishing to throw over life the kindly glamour of imaginative art. It is worth noting, however, that he looked forward rather than back, towards the coming realism, not to the incurable pseudo-romanticism of the late eighteenth century, in his instinct to base his happenings upon the bedrock of truth—the external truth of scene and character and the inner truth of human psychology.
Admirably a modern artist in this respect, his old-fashionedness, so often dilated upon, can easily be overstated. He not only left charming work in the tale, but helped others who came after to use their tools, furthering their art by the study of a good model.
Nothing was more inevitable then that Cooper when he began fiction in mid-manhood should have written the romance: it was the dominant form in England because of Scott. But that he should have realized the unused resources of America and produced a long series of adventure stories, taking a pioneer as his hero and illustrating the western life of settlement in his career, the settlement that was to reclaim a wilderness for a mighty civilization—that was a thing less to be expected, a truly epic achievement. The Leather Stocking Series was in the strictest sense an original performance—the significance of Fenimore Cooper is not likely to be exaggerated; it is quite independent of the question of his present hold upon mature readers, his faults of technique and the truth of his pictures. To have grasped such an opportunity and so to have used it as to become a great man-of-letters at a time when literature was more a private employ than the interest of the general—surely it indicates genuine personality, and has the mark of creative power. To which we may add, that Cooper is still vital in his appeal, as the statistics of our public libraries show.
Moreover, incorrigible romancer that he was, he is a man of the nineteenth century, as was Irving, in the way he instinctively chose near-at-hand native material: he knew the Mohawk Valley by long residence; he knew the Indian and the trapper there; and he depicted these types in a setting that was to him the most familiar thing in the world. In fact, we have in him an illustration of the modern writer who knows he must found his message firmly upon reality. For both Leather-stocking and Chingachgook are true in the broad sense, albeit the white trapper's dialect may be uncertain and the red man exhibit a dignity that seems Roman rather than aboriginal. The Daniel Boone of history must have had, we feel, the nobler qualities of Bumpo; how otherwise did he do what it was his destiny to do? In the same way, the Indian of Cooper is the red man in his pristine home before the day of fire-water and Agency methods. It may be that what to us to-day seems a too glorified picture is nearer the fact than we are in a position easily to realize. Cooper worked in the older method of primary colors, of vivid, even violent contrasts: his was not the school of subtleties. His women, for example, strike us as somewhat mechanical; there is a sameness about them that means the failure to differentiate: the Ibsenian psychology of the sex was still to come. But this does not alter the obvious excellencies of the work. Cooper carried his romanticism in presenting the heroic aspects of the life he knew best into other fields where he walked with hardly less success: the revolutionary story illustrated by "The Spy," and the sea-tale of which a fine example is "The Pilot." He had a sure instinct for those elements of fiction which make for romance, and the change of time and place affects him only in so far as it affects his familiarity with his materials. His experience in the United States Navy gave him a sure hand in the sea novels: and in a book like "The Spy" he was near enough to the scenes and characters to be studies practically contemporary. He had the born romanticist's natural affection for the appeal of the past and the stock elements can be counted upon in all his best fiction: salient personalities, the march of events, exciting situations, and ever that arch-romantic lure, the one trick up the sleeve to pique anticipation. Hence, in spite of descriptions that seem over-long, a heavy-footed manner that lacks suppleness and variety, and undeniable carelessness of construction, he is still loved of the young and seen to be a natural raconteur, an improviser of the Dumas-Scott lineage and, even tested by the later tests, a noble writer of romance, a man whom Balzac and Goethe read with admiration: unquestionably influential outside his own land in that romantic mood of expression which, during the first half of the nineteenth century, was so widespread and fruitful.