to personal malignity. One journal followed the example of another,
with little reflection, I think, in most cases, till it became a sort of
fashion, not merely to decry his works, but to arraign his motives.

It is related that, in 1832, while he was at Paris, an article was shown
him in an American newspaper, purporting to be a criticism on one of his
works, but reflecting with much asperity on his personal character. "I
care nothing," he is reported to have said, "for the criticism, but I am
not indifferent to the slander. If these attacks on my character should be
kept up five years after my return to America, I shall resort to the New
York courts for protection." He gave the newspaper press of this state the
full period of forbearance on which he had fixed, but finding that
forbearance seemed to encourage assault, he sought redress in the courts
of law.

When these litigations were first begun, I recollect it seemed to me that
Cooper had taken a step which would give him a great deal of trouble, and
effect but little good. I said to myself--

"Alas! Leviathan is not so tamed!"

As he proceeded, however, I saw that he had understood the matter better
than I. He put a hook into the nose of this huge monster, wallowing in his
inky pool and bespattering the passers-by; he dragged him to the land and
made him tractable. One suit followed another; one editor was sued, I
thinly half-a-dozen times; some of them found themselves under a second
indictment before the first was tried. In vindicating himself to his
reader, against the charge of publishing one libel, the angry journalist
often floundered into another. The occasions of these prosecutions seem to
have been always carefully considered, for Cooper was almost uniformly
successful in obtaining verdicts. In a letter of his, written in February,
1843, about five years, I think, from the commencement of the first
prosecutions, he says, "I have beaten every man I have sued, who has not
retracted his libels."

In one of these suits, commenced against the late William L. Stone of the
_Commercial Advertiser_, and referred to the arbitration of three
distinguished lawyers, he argued himself the question of the authenticity
of his account of the battle of Lake Erie, which was the matter in
dispute. I listened to his opening; it was clear, skilful, and persuasive,
but his closing argument was said to be splendidly eloquent. "I have heard
nothing like it,