indeed, so said in direct terms.

Comparison with Scott, therefore, always put the one compared at a great
disadvantage. This, however, is a method of judging that is necessary
to some and easy to all. Genuine appreciation demands study and thought.
For these comparison is a cheap substitute. To call Cooper the American
Scott in compliment in the days of his popularity, and in derision in the
days of his unpopularity, was a method of criticism which enabled men to
praise or undervalue without taking the trouble to think. Stories were
invented and set in circulation of how he himself rejoiced in being so
designated. Great, accordingly, was the indignation felt and expressed
by these gentry at the presumption of the American author, when at a
later period he asserted that so far from taking pride in the title,
it merely gave him just as much gratification as any nickname could
give a gentleman.

It would be, moreover, far from truth to say that in this most (p. 060)
prosperous portion of his career his popularity was unmixed in his own
country. Even then his success had aroused a good deal of envy. In 1823
he was attacked, in common with many prominent citizens of New York,
in a satire called "Gotham and the Gothamites." This was the work of a
man of the name of Judah, who, in 1822, had published a dramatic poem
styled "Odofried the Outcast." The title was ominous of the fate which
the production met. The author naturally felt that the age was
unappreciative. To relieve his mind he wrote eleven or twelve hundred
lines of fresh drivel, in which he assailed everything and everybody.
The satire was of that dreadful kind which requires notes and commentaries
to point out who is hit and what is meant; and the annotation, as is
usual in such cases, took up much more space than the text. This
work--for which the author was sent to jail, though a lunatic asylum
would have been a far fitter place--is only of interest here because
it bears direct and positive evidence to the fact that at this time
Cooper was the most widely read of American authors.

But jealousy of his fame could be found among men of much higher
pretensions than this wretched poetaster. "The North American Review"
had at that time been ponderously revolving through space for several
years. It was then a periodical respectable, classical, and dull, all
three in an eminent degree. Towards Cooper it struggled in a feeble
way to be just, but for all that it wa