Mr. Cooper describes things to the life, but he puts no motion into them. While he is insisting on the minutest details, and explaining all the accompaniments of an incident, the story stands still. The elaborate accumulation of particulars serves not to embody his imagery, but to distract and impede the mind. He is not so much the master of his materials as their drudge: He labours under an epilepsy of the fancy. He thinks himself bound in his character of novelist to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Thus, if two men are struggling on the edge of a precipice for life or death, he goes not merely into the vicissitudes of action or passion as the chances of the combat vary; but stops to take an inventory of the geography of the place, the shape of the rock, the precise attitude and display of the limbs and muscles, with the eye and habits of a sculptor. Mr. Cooper does not seem to be aware of the infinite divisibility of mind and matter; and that an ‘abridgment’ is all that is possible or desirable in the most individual representation. A person who is so determined, may write volumes on a grain of sand or an insect’s wing. Why describe the dress and appearance of an Indian chief, down to his tobacco-stopper and button-holes? It is mistaking the province of the artist for that of the historian; and it is this very obligation of painting and statuary to fill up all the details, that renders them incapable of telling a story, or of expressing more than a single moment, group, or figure. Poetry or romance does not descend into the particulars, but atones for it by a more rapid march and an intuitive glance at the more striking results. By considering truth or matter-of-fact as the sole element of popular fiction, our author fails in massing and in impulse. In the midst of great vividness and fidelity of description, both of nature and manners, there is a sense of jejuneness,—for half of what is described is insignificant and indifferent; there is a hard outline,—a little manner; and his most striking situations do not tell as they might and ought, from his seeming more anxious about the mode and circumstances than the catastrophe. In short, he anatomizes his subjects; and his characters bear the same relation to living beings that the botanic specimens collected in a portfolio do to the living plant or tree. The sap does not circulate kindly; nor does the breath of heaven visit, or its dews moisten them. Or, if Mr. Cooper gets hold of an appalling circumstance, he, from the same tenacity and thraldom to outward impressions, never lets it go: He repeats it without end. Thus, if he once hits upon the supposition of a wild Indian’s eyes glaring through a thicket, every bush is from that time forward furnished with a pair; the page is studded with them, and you can no longer look about you at ease or in safety. The high finishing we have spoken of is particularly at variance with the rudeness of the materials. In Richardson it was excusable, where all was studied and artificial; but a few dashes of red ochre are sufficient to paint the body of a savage chieftain; nor should his sudden and frantic stride on his prey be treated with the precision and punctiliousness of a piece of still life. There are other American writers, (such as the historiographer of Brother Jonathan,) who carry this love of veracity to a pitch of the marvellous. They run riot in an account of the dishes at a boarding-house, as if it were a banquet of the Gods; and recount the overturning of a travelling stage-waggon with as much impetuosity, turbulence, and exaggerated enthusiasm, as if it were the fall of Phaeton. ’ In the absence of subjects of real interest, men make themselves an interest out of nothing, and magnify mole-hills into mountains. This is not the fault of Mr. Cooper: He is always true, though sometimes tedious; and correct, at the expense of being insipid. His Pilot is the best of his works; and truth to say, we think it a masterpiece in its kind. It has great unity of purpose and feeling. Every thing in it may be said
——‘To suffer a sea-change
Into something new and strange.’
His Pilot never appears but when the occasion is worthy of him; and when he appears, the result is sure. The description of his guiding the vessel through the narrow strait left for her escape, the sea-fight, and the incident of the white topsail of the English man-of-war appearing above the fog, where it is first mistaken for a cloud, are of the first order of graphic composition; to say nothing of the admirable episode of Tom Coffin, and his long figure coiled up like a rope in the bottom of the boat. The rest is common-place; but then it is American common-place. We thank Mr. Cooper he does not take every thing from us, and therefore we can learn something from him. He has the saving grace of originality. We wish we could impress it, ‘line upon line, and precept upon precept,’ especially upon our American brethren, how precious, how invaluable that is. In art, in literature, in science, the least bit of nature is worth all the plagiarism in the world. The great secret of Sir Walter Scott’s enviable, but unenvied success, lies in his transcribing from nature instead of transcribing from books.
Anterior to the writers above mentioned, were other three, who may be named as occupying (two of them at least) a higher and graver place in the yet scanty annals of American Literature. These were Franklin, the author (whoever he was) of the American Farmer’s Letters, and Jonathan Edwards.
Franklin, the most celebrated, was emphatically an American. He was a great experimental philosopher, a consummate politician, and a paragon of common sense. His Poor Robin was an absolute manual for a country in leading-strings, making its first attempts to go alone. There is nowhere compressed in the same compass so great a fund of local information and political sagacity, as in his Examination before the Privy Council in the year 1754. The fine Parable against Persecution, which appears in his miscellaneous works, is borrowed from Bishop Taylor. Franklin is charged by some with a want of imagination, or with being a mere prosaic, practical man; but the instinct of the true and the useful in him, had more genius in it than all the ‘metre-ballad-mongering’ of those who take him to task.
The American Farmer’s Letters, (published under a feigned name[[30]] a little before the breaking out of the American war,) give us a tolerable idea how American scenery and manners may be treated with a lively, poetic interest. The pictures are sometimes highly coloured, but they are vivid and strikingly characteristic. He gives not only the objects, but the feelings, of a new country. He describes himself as placing his little boy in a chair screwed to the plough which he guides, (to inhale the scent of the fresh furrows,) while his wife sits knitting under a tree at one end of the field. He recounts a battle between two snakes with an Homeric gravity and exuberance of style. He paints the dazzling, almost invisible flutter of the humming-bird’s wing: Mr. Moore’s airiest verse is not more light and evanescent. His account of the manners of the Nantucket people, their frank simplicity, and festive rejoicings after the perils and hardships of the whale-fishing, is a true and heartfelt picture. There is no fastidious refinement or cynical contempt: He enters into their feelings and amusements with the same alacrity as they do themselves; and this is sure to awaken a fellow-feeling in the reader. If the author had been thinking of the effect of his description in a London drawing-room, or had insisted on the most disagreeable features in the mere littleness of national jealousy, he would have totally spoiled it. But health, joy, and innocence, are good things all over the world, and in all classes of society; and, to impart pleasure, need only be described in their genuine characters. The power to sympathize with nature, without thinking of ourselves or others, if it is not a definition of genius, comes very near to it. From this liberal unaffected style, the Americans are particularly cut off by habitual comparisons with us, or upstart claims of their own;—by the dread of being thought vulgar, which necessarily makes them so, or the determination to be fine, which must for ever prevent it. The most interesting part of the author’s work is that where he describes the first indications of the breaking out of the American war—the distant murmur of the tempest—the threatened inroad of the Indians like an inundation on the peaceful back-settlements: his complaints and his auguries are fearful. But we have said enough of this Illustrious Obscure; for it is the rule of criticism to praise none but the over-praised, and to offer fresh incense to the idol of the day.
It is coming more within canonical bounds, and approaching nearer the main subject of this notice, to pay a tribute to the worth and talents of Jonathan Edwards; the well-known author of the Treatise on the Will, who was a Massachusetts divine and most able logician. Having produced him, the Americans need not despair of their metaphysicians. We do not scruple to say, that he is one of the acutest, most powerful, and, of all reasoners, the most conscientious and sincere. His closeness and candour are alike admirable. Instead of puzzling or imposing on others, he tries to satisfy his own mind. We do not say whether he is right or wrong; we only say that his method is ‘an honest method:’ there is not a trick, a subterfuge, a verbal sophism in his whole book. Those who compare his arguments with what Priestley or Hobbes have written on the same question, will find the one petulant and the other dogmatical. Far from taunting his adversaries, he endeavours with all his might to explain difficulties; and acknowledges that the words Necessity, Irresistible, Inevitable, &c., which are applied to external force, acting in spite of the will, are misnomers when applied to acts, or a necessity emanating from the will itself; and that the repugnance of his favourite doctrine to common sense and feeling, (in which most of his party exult as a triumph of superior wisdom over vulgar prejudice,) is an unfortunate stumbling-block in the way of truth, arising out of the structure of language itself. His anxiety to clear up the scruples of others, is equal, in short, to his firmness in maintaining his own opinion.
We could wish that Dr. Channing had formed himself upon this manly and independent model, instead of going through the circle of reigning topics, to strike an affected balance between ancient prejudice and modern paradox; to trim to all opinions, and unite all suffrages; to calculate the vulgar clamour, or the venal sophistry of the British press, for the meridian of Boston. Dr. Channing is a great tactician in reasoning; and reasoning has nothing to do with tactics. We do not like to see a writer constantly trying to steal a march upon opinion without having his retreat cut off—full of pretensions, and void of offence. It is as bad as the opposite extreme of outraging decorum at every step; and is only a more covert mode of attracting attention, and gaining surreptitious applause. We never saw any thing more guarded in this respect than Dr. Channing’s Tracts and Sermons—more completely suspended between heaven and earth. He keeps an eye on both worlds; kisses hands to the reading public all round; and does his best to stand well with different sects and parties. He is always in advance of the line, in an amiable and imposing attitude, but never far from succour. He is an Unitarian; but then he disclaims all connexion with Dr. Priestley, as a materialist; he denounces Calvinism and the Church of England; but to show that this proceeds from no want of liberality, makes the amende honorable to Popery and Popish divines;—is an American Republican and a French Bourbonist—abuses Bonaparte, and observes a profound silence with respect to Ferdinand—likes wit, provided it is serious—and is zealous for the propagation of the Gospel and the honour of religion; but thinks it should form a coalition with reason, and be surrounded with a halo of modern lights. We cannot combine such a system of checks and saving clauses. We are dissatisfied with the want not only of originality of view, but of moral daring. And here we will state a suspicion, into which we have been led by more than one American writer, that the establishment of civil and religious liberty is not quite so favourable to the independent formation, and free circulation of opinion, as might be expected. Where there is a perfect toleration—where there is neither Censorship of the press nor Inquisition, the public take upon themselves the task of surveillance, and exercise the functions of a literary police, like so many familiars of the Holy Office. In a monarchy, or mixed government, there is an appeal open from the government to the people; there is a natural opposition, as it were, between prejudice, or authority, and reason: but when the community take the power into their own hands, and there is but one body of opinion, and one voice to express it, there can be no reaction against it; and to remonstrate or resist, is not only a public outrage, but sounds like a personal insult to every individual in the community. It is differing from the company; you become a black sheep in the flock. There is no excuse or mercy for it. Hence the too frequent cowardice, jesuitism, and sterility, produced by this republican discipline and drilling. Opinions must march abreast—must keep in rank and file, and woe to the caitiff thought that advances before the rest, or turns aside! This uniformity, and equal purpose on all sides, leads (if not checked) to a monstrous Ostracism in public opinion. Whoever outstrips, or takes a separate path to himself, is considered as usurping an unnatural superiority over the whole. He is treated not with respect or indulgence, but indignity.
We like Dr. Channing’s Sermons best; his Criticisms less; his Politics least of all. We think several of his Discourses do great honour to himself and his profession, and are highly respectable models of pulpit-composition. We would instance more particularly, and recommend to the perusal of our readers, that On the Duties of Children. The feeling, the justness of observation, the tenderness, and the severity, are deserving of all praise. The author here appears in a truly amiable and advantageous light. This composition alone makes us believe, that he is a good, and might, with proper direction and self-reliance, have been even a great man. We shall give a long extract with the more pleasure, as we are assuredly actuated by no ill-will towards the reverend author, and only wish to point out how very considerable ability, and probable uprightness of intention, may be warped and injured by a wrong bias, and candidateship for false and contradictory honours.