James Fenimore Cooper: American Men of LettersLounsbury, Thomas Raynesford
General
James Fenimore Cooper: American Men of Letters
Lounsbury, Thomas Raynesford
Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851; Novelists, American -- 19th century -- Biography
do I find myself to like them." Sumner subsequently wrote, that Procter
fully concurred in the conclusions advanced in the review. But these
were not the prevalent opinions, in this country at least. Great was the
outcry against Cooper for writing this article; great the outcry against
the "Knickerbocker" for printing it. The latter was severely censured
for its willingness to prostitute its columns to the service of the
former in his slanderous "attempts to vilify the object of his impotent
and contemptible hatred." Americans who were averse to Scott's being
honestly paid proved particularly solicitous that he should not be
honestly criticised. They showed themselves as little scrupulous in
defending him after he was dead as they had been in plundering him while
he was living.
Cooper had previously aroused the resentment of many because he had
failed to express gratification or delight at being termed "the American
Scott." He had then been assured again and again that there was no
danger of the title being applied to him in future; that in ten years
their names would never be coupled together, and that he himself would
be totally forgotten. It could hardly have been deemed a compliment in a
land where scarcely a petty district can exist peacefully and
creditably, with a hill three thousand feet in height, which is not in
time rendered disreputable by being saddled with the pretentious name of
"The American Switzerland." Personal malice alone, however, could
impute his disclaimer either to malice or to envy. His own (p. 162)
estimate of his relations to the British novelist, he had given many
times; and indirectly at that very time in his account in the first
"Knickerbocker" article, of his interview with Sir Walter Scott. The
latter had been so obliging, he observed, as to make him a number of
flattering speeches, which he, however, did not repay in kind. His
reserve he thought Scott did not altogether like. In this he was
probably mistaken, but the reason he gave for his own conduct savored
little of feelings of envy or rivalry. "As Johnson," he wrote, "said of
his interview with George the Third, it was not for me to bandy
compliments with my sovereign." No attention was paid to these and
similar utterances of a man whom his bitterest enemies never once dared
to charge with saying a word he did not mean.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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