[Footnote 2: Poe wrote a review of _Wyandotte_ which appeared in _Graham's Magazine_ for November, 1843. As notices of Cooper's novels then went, this may be regarded as a favorable one, though in it the critic took occasion to divide works of fiction into two classes: one of a popular sort which anybody could write, and the other of a kind intrinsically more worthy and artistic, and capable of being produced only by the few. At the head of the former class he placed Cooper, but had the grace not to include his own name in the latter class which he had created for himself. The reader will be edified to learn from a life of Poe, written by John H. Ingram (2 vols., London, 1880), that the writing of this review was an act of heroic and even desperate hardihood. Poe, it seems, had before valorously depreciated Halleck; but his crowning act of courage is introduced with the statement that "he dared all _published_ opinion, and in the very teeth of Cooper's supreme popularity ventured upon saying" the remarks which have already been referred to, and which are quoted in full by the biographer, to whom is also to be given the credit of the italicized word in the foregoing quotation. No small share of the common belief in regard to Cooper's character and career is based upon assertions about as trustworthy as this.]