transformation. Not an incident was altered, not a sentiment modified.

Such ignorance on the part of a contemporary and personal friend, if
it proves nothing else, shows certainly the little hold this novel has
had upon the public taste. Nevertheless, the first work of any
well-known author must always have a certain interest belonging to it,
entirely independent of any value the work may have in itself. In this
case, moreover, the character of the tale and the circumstances
attending its production are of no slight importance, when taken in
connection with the literary history of the times. It was accident
that led to the selection of the subject; but as things then were,
Cooper was not unlikely, in any event, to have chosen it or one very
similar. The intellectual dependence of America upon England at that
period is something that it is now hard to understand. Political
supremacy had been cast off, but the supremacy of opinion remained
absolutely unshaken. Of creative literature there was then very little
of any value produced: and to that little a foreign stamp was
necessary, to give currency outside of the petty circle in which it
originated. There was slight encouragement for the author to write;
there was still less for the publisher to print. It was indeed a
positive injury ordinarily to the commercial credit of a bookseller to
bring out a volume of poetry or of prose fiction which had been
written by an American; for it was almost certain to fail to pay
expenses. A sort of critical literature was struggling, or rather (p. 019)
gasping, for a life that was hardly worth living; for its most marked
characteristic was its servile deference to English judgment and dread
of English censure. It requires a painful and penitential examination
of the reviews of the period to comprehend the utter abasement of mind
with which the men of that day accepted the foreign estimate upon
works written here, which had been read by themselves, but which it
was clear had not been read by the critics whose opinions they echoed.
Even the meekness with which they submitted to the most depreciatory
estimate of themselves was outdone by the anxiety with which they
hurried to assure the world that they, the most cultivated of the
American race, did not presume to have so high an opinion of the
writings of some one of their countrymen as had been expressed by
enthusiasts, whose patriotism had proved too much for their
discernment. Never