All the later novels, _Jack Tier_, _The Sea Lions_, _Oak Openings_, and _The Ways of the Hour_, are hard reading, yet the least happy of them has passages betraying the master’s hand. _The Sea Lions_ stands out by virtue of the powerful descriptions of an Antarctic winter; but neither Captain Spike’s mission to the gulf, nor the revelation of fat, profane Jack’s true station and sex, nor yet the malapropisms of Mrs. Budd (she would say ‘It blew what they call a Hyson in the Chinese seas’), can make _Jack Tier_ more than tolerable. * * * * * Cooper’s greatest achievements were his stories of the sea and the forest. His real creations are sailors, backwoodsmen, old soldiers, and Indians. Whether his red men are conceived in the spirit of modern ethnological science can matter but little now. They are neither so close to Chateaubriand’s idealized savage, nor so far from the real Indian as is generally believed. That Cooper had no skill in representing contemporary society is plain enough; but the failure of _Home as Found_ need not have been as complete as it was. Haste and anger must bear the blame of that literary disaster. Where he deals with manners of the past, as in _Satanstoe_, he is often most felicitous. With his novel of _The Bravo_ he was in line with the Romantic movement. How far he comprehended that movement, or was influenced by it, is a more intricate problem. Modern literature can show but few authors more popular than Cooper. He has been praised extravagantly; but the fact that Miss Mitford thought him as good as Scott ought not to prejudice us against him. And he has been damned without measure; but over against Mark Twain’s unchivalrous attack on his great fellow countryman may be set the royally generous tributes of Balzac and of Dumas. FOOTNOTES: [7] Judge Cooper’s _A Guide in the Wilderness_, Dublin, 1810, was reprinted in 1897 with an introduction by J. F. Cooper [the Younger], throwing much light on the manners of the times and the character of his ancestor. [8] One of the most extraordinary of the suits arose from criticism of the _Naval History_. Cooper had refused to take the popular side of a heated controversy and to join in assailing Elliott, Perry’s second in command at the Battle of Lake Erie. The suit, against Stone of the ‘Commercial Advertiser,’ was settled by arbitration, and in Cooper’s favor. Lounsbury’s _Cooper_, pp. 200–230. [9] Park Theatre, New York, March, 1822. [10] Burton’s Theatre, New York, June, 1850. IV _George Bancroft_ REFERENCES: =W. M. Sloane=: ‘George Bancroft in Society, in Politics, in Letters,’ ‘The Century Magazine,’ January, 1887. =S. S. Green=: ‘George Bancroft,’ _Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society_, April 29, 1891. =A. McF. Davis=: ‘George Bancroft,’ _Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences_, vol. xxvi, 1891. I