, however
celebrated in its day, is looked upon with contempt, or at best with a
patronizing approval, by the following age, which is always confident
that it at least has reached the supreme standard of correct taste,
and asks no aid in making up its judgments from those who have gone
before. But the philosophy which shows this to be true never lessened
one iota the pain which the man of sensitive nature suffers. The
extent to which Cooper was affected by hostile criticism is something
remarkable, even in the irritable race of authors. He manifested under
it the irascibility of a man not simply thin-skinned, but of one whose
skin was raw. Meekness was never a distinguishing characteristic of
his nature; and attack invariably stung him into defiance or
counter-attack. Unfriendly insinuations contained in obscure journals
could goad him into remarks upon them, or into a reply to them, which
at this date is the only means of preserving the original charge. (p. 043)
It was in his prefaces that he was apt to express his resentment most
warmly, for he well knew that this was the one part of a book which
the reviewer is absolutely certain to read. In these he frequently
took occasion to point out to the generation of critical vipers the
various offenses of which they were guilty, the stupidities that
seemed to belong to their very nature, and that utter lack of literary
skill which prevented them from giving a look of sense to the most
plausible nonsense they concocted. By Cooper, indeed, the preface was
looked upon not as a place to conciliate the reader, but to hurl scorn
at the reviewer. In his hands it became a trumpet from which he blew
from time to time critic-defying strains, which more than made up in
vigor for all they lacked in prudence. This characteristic was early
manifested. In the short preface to the second edition of "The Spy,"
he could not refrain from referring to the friends who had given him
good advice, and who had favored him with numberless valuable hints,
by the help of which the work might be made excellent. But it is the
letter to the publisher, with which "The Pioneers" originally opened,
that was the first of his regular warlike manifestoes. Though not very
long, two thirds of it was devoted to the men who had publicly found
fault with his previous works. He pointed out their discrepancies in
taste and the metaphysical obscurity of their opinions. At the
conclusion he wrote a sentence which some o