Cooper was fortunate in having been born with a vigorous constitution, and in having kept through life the blessing of robust health. He never suffered from remorse of the stomach or protest of the brain; and his writings are those of a man who always digested his dinner and never had a headache. His novels, like those of Scott, are full of the breeze and sunshine of health. They breathe of manly tastes, active habits, sound sleep, a relish for simple pleasures, temperate enjoyments, and the retention in manhood of the fresh susceptibilities of youth. His genius is thoroughly masculine. He is deficient in acute perception, in delicate discrimination, in fine analysis, in the skill to seize and arrest exceptional peculiarities; but he has in large measure the power to present the broad characteristics of universal humanity. It is to this power that he owes his wide popularity. At this moment, in every public and circulating library in England or America, the novels of Cooper will be found to be in constant demand. He wrote for the many, and not for the few; he hit the common mind between wind and water; a delicate and fastidious literary appetite may not be attracted to his productions, but the healthy taste of the natural man finds therein food alike convenient and savory.
In a manly, courageous, somewhat impulsive nature like Cooper’s we should expect to find prejudices; and he was a man of strong prejudices. Among others, was an antipathy to the people of New England. His characters, male and female, are frequently Yankees, but they are almost invariably caricatures; that is, they have all the unamiable characteristics and unattractive traits which are bestowed upon the people of New England by their ill-wishers. Had he ever lived among them, with his quick powers of observation and essentially kindly judgment of men and life, he could not have failed to correct his misapprehensions, and to perceive that he had taken the reverse side of the tapestry for the face.
Cooper, with a very keen sense of injustice, conscious of inexhaustible power, full of vehement impulses, and not largely endowed with that safe quality called prudence, was a man likely to get involved in controversies. It was his destiny, and he never could have avoided it, to be in opposition to the dominant public sentiment around him. Had he been born in Russia, he could hardly have escaped a visit to Siberia; had he been born in Austria, he would have wasted some of his best years in Spielberg. Under a despotic government he would have been a vehement Republican; in a Catholic country he would have been the most uncompromising of Protestants. He had full faith in the institutions of his own country; and his large heart, hopeful temperament, and robust soul made him a Democrat; but his democracy had not the least tinge of radicalism. He believed that man had a right to govern himself, and that he was capable of self-government; but government, the subordination of impulse to law, he insisted upon as rigorously as the veriest monarchist or aristocrat in Christendom. He would have no authority that was not legitimate; but he would tolerate no resistance to legitimate authority. All his sentiments, impulses, and instincts were those of a gentleman; and vulgar manners, coarse habits, and want of respect for the rights of others were highly offensive to him. When in Europe, he resolutely, and at no little expense of time and trouble, defended America from unjust imputations and ignorant criticism; and when at home, with equal courage and equal energy, he breasted the current of public Opinion where he deemed it to be wrong, and resisted those most formidable invasions of right, wherein the many combine to oppress the one. His long controversy with the press was too important an episode in his life to be passed over by us without mention; though our limits will not permit us to make anything more than a passing allusion to it. The opinion which will be formed upon Cooper’s course in this matter will depend, in a considerable degree, upon the temperament of the critic. Timid men, cautious men, men who love their ease, will call him Quixotic, rash, imprudent, to engage in a controversy in which he had much to lose and little to gain; but the reply to such suggestions is, that, if men always took counsel of indolence, timidity, and selfishness, no good would ever be accomplished, and no abuses ever be reformed. Cooper may not have been judicious in everything he said and did; but that he was right in the main, both in motive and conduct, we firmly believe. He acted from a high sense of duty; there was no alloy of vindictiveness or love of money in the impulses which moved him. Criticism the most severe and unsparing he accepted as perfectly allowable, so long as it kept within the limits of literary judgment; but any attack upon his personal character, especially any imputation or insinuation involving a moral stain, he would not submit to. He appealed to the laws of the land to vindicate his reputation and punish his assailants. Long and gallant was the warfare he maintained,—a friendless, solitary warfare,—and all the hydra-heads of the press hissing and ejaculating their venom upon him,—with none to stand by his side and wish him God-speed. But he persevered, and, what is more, he succeeded: that, is to say, he secured all the substantial fruits of success. He vindicated the principle for which he contended: he compelled the newspapers to keep within the pale of literary criticism; he confirmed the saying of President Jackson, that “desperate courage makes one a majority.”
Two of his novels, “Homeward Bound” and “Home as Found,” bear a strong infusion of the feelings which led to his contest with the press. After the publication of these, he became much interested in the well-known Anti-Rent agitation by which the State of New York was so long shaken; and three of his novels, “Satanstoe,” “The Chainbearer,” and “The Redskins,” forming one continuous narrative, were written with reference to this subject. Many professed novel-readers are, we suspect, repelled from these books, partly because of this continuity of the story, and partly because they contain a moral; but we assure them, that, if on these grounds they pass them by, they lose both pleasure and profit. They are written with all the vigor and spirit of his prime; they have many powerful scenes and admirably drawn characters; the pictures of colonial life and manners in “Satanstoe” are animated and delightful; and in all the legal and ethical points for which the author contends he is perfectly right. In his Preface to “The Chainbearer” he says,—“In our view, New York is at this moment a disgraced State; and her disgrace arises from the fact that her laws are trampled under foot, without any efforts—at all commensurate with the object—being made to enforce them.” That any commonwealth is a disgraced State against which such charges can with truth be made no one will deny; and any one who is familiar with the history of that wretched business will agree, that, at the time it was made, the charge was not too strong. Who can fail to admire the courage of the man who ventured to write and print such a judgment as the above against a State of which he was a native, a citizen, and a resident, and in which the public sentiment was fiercely the other way? Here, too, Cooper’s motives were entirely unselfish: he had almost no pecuniary interest in the question of Anti-Rentism; he wrote all in honor, unalloyed by thrift. His very last novel, “The Ways of the Hour,” is a vigorous exposition of the defects of the trial by jury in cases where a vehement public sentiment has already tried the question, and condemned the prisoner. The story is improbable, and the leading character is an impossible being; but the interest is kept up to the end,—it has many most impressive scenes,—it abounds with shrewd and sound observations upon life, manners, and politics,—and all the legal portion is stamped with an acuteness and fidelity to truth which no professional reader can note without admiration.
Cooper’s character as a man is the more admirable to us because it was marked by strong points which are not common in our country, and which the institutions of our country do not foster. He had the courage to defy the majority: he had the courage to confront the press: and not from the sting of ill-success, not from mortified vanity, not from wounded self-love, but from an heroic sense of duty. How easy a life might he have purchased by the cheap virtues of silence, submission, and acquiescence! Booksellers would have enriched him; society would have caressed him; political distinction would have crowned him: he had only to watch the course of public sentiment, and so dispose himself that he should seem to lead where he only followed, and all comfortable things would have been poured into his lap. But he preferred to breast the stream, to speak ungrateful truths. He set a wholesome example in this respect; none the less valuable because so few have had the manliness and self-reliance to imitate him. More than twenty years ago De Tocqueville said,—“I know of no country in which there is so little true independence of mind and freedom of discussion as in America”: words which we fear are not less true to-day than when they were written. Cooper’s dauntless courage would have been less admirable, had he been hard, cold, stern, and impassive: but he was none of these. He was full of warm affections, cordial, sympathetic, and genial; he had a woman’s tenderness of heart; he was the most faithful of friends; and in his own home no man was ever more gentle, gracious, and sweet. The blows he received fell upon a heart that felt them keenly; but he bared his breast none the less resolutely to the contest because it was not protected by an armor of insensibility.
But we must bring this long paper to a close. We cannot give to it the interest which comes from personal recollections. We saw Cooper once, and but once. This was the very year before he died, in his own home, and amid the scenes which his genius has made immortal. It was a bright midsummer’s day, and we walked together about the village, and around the shores of the lake over which the canoe of Indian John had glided. His own aspect was as sunny as that of the smiling heavens above us; age had not touched him with its paralyzing finger: his vigorous frame, elastic step, and animated glance gave promise of twenty years more of energetic life. His sturdy figure, healthy face, and a slight bluffness of manner reminded one more of his original profession than of the life and manners of a man of letters. He looked like a man who had lived much in the open air,—upon whom the rain had fallen, and against whom the wind had blown. His conversation was hearty, spontaneous, and delightful from its frankness and fulness, but it was not pointed or brilliant; you remembered the healthy ring of the words, but not the words themselves. We recollect, that, as we were standing together on the shores of the lake,—shores which are somewhat tame, and a lake which can claim no higher epithet than that of pretty,—he said: “I suppose it would be patriotic to say that this is finer than Como, but we know that it is not.” We found a chord of sympathy in our common impressions of the beauty of Sorrento, about which, and his residence there, he spoke with contagious animation. Who could have thought that that rich and abundant life was so near its close? Nothing could be more thoroughly satisfying than the impression he left in this brief and solitary interview. His air and movement revealed the same manly, brave, true-hearted, warm-hearted man that is imaged in his books. Grateful are we for the privilege of having seen, spoken with, and taken by the hand the author of “The Pathfinder” and “The Pilot”: “it is a pleasure to have seen a great man.” Distinctly through the gathering mists of years do his face and form rise up before the mind’s eye: an image of manly self-reliance, of frank courage, of generous impulse; a frank friend, an open enemy; a man whom many misunderstood, but whom no one could understand without honoring and loving.
[PER TENEBRAS, LUMINA.]
I know how, through the golden hours
When summer sunlight floods the deep,