published his volumes on England. The remarks of the ordinary journals
can be dismissed without comment. But brutal vituperation was found in
abundance in periodicals which claimed to be the representatives of the
highest cultivation and refinement. According to "Blackwood's Magazine,"
Cooper was a vulgar man, who from having been bred to the sea had been
enabled to give some striking descriptions of sea-affairs, and in
consequence had unluckily imagined himself a universal genius. It went
on to add, that on the strength of the trifling reputation he had
acquired by stories descriptive of American life, he had come to Europe,
and had since been partly traveling on the Continent to pick up
materials for novels, and partly residing in England, actively employed
in the effort to introduce himself into society. In this it admitted he
might have been partially successful, for the English were a very
yielding people and did not take much trouble to resist attempts of this
kind. "Blackwood," however, was outdone in this rowdy style of reviewing
by "Fraser's Magazine." From that periodical we learn that Cooper was "a
passable scribbler of passable novels," a "bilious braggart," a "liar,"
a "full jackass," "a man of consummate and inbred vulgarity," "a bore of
the first magnitude in society," who went about fishing for (p. 175)
introductions. "But this," it concluded, speaking of his England, "was
his last kick, and we shall not disturb his dying moments." Two years
later the magazine seemed to think he had some power of kicking left,
for it returned to the charge in consequence of his review of Lockhart's
"Life of Scott." In this article he was called a "spiteful miscreant,"
an "insect," a "grub," a "reptile." The "Quarterly Review" was as
virulent and violent as the magazines, but the attack was more skillful
as well as longer and more elaborate. By garbling extracts it cleverly
insinuated a good deal more than it said, and it so contrived to put
several things that the reader could hardly fail to draw inferences
which the writer must have known to be false. Even these attacks were
equaled if not surpassed at a later period by the "London Times." A
nominal review in that journal of "Eve Effingham," as "Home as Found"
was entitled in England, was really devoted to personal vituperation of
the novelist. It ended with the assertion that he was more vulgar than
ever, and was the most "affected, offensive, envious, and
ill-c