Newspapers, however, usually establish a literary reputation not by original poetry, but by literary criticism, and we may well stop to examine the _Evening Post’s_ record in this field. It was slightly handicapped by the fact that between 1801 and the appearance of “The Spy” in 1821 there was virtually nothing worth criticizing. Charles Brockden Brown had finished his career as a novelist before the _Evening Post_ was fairly launched. Irving was silent after his publication of the Knickerbocker “History” until the first part of “The Sketch-Book” appeared in 1819. In verse almost nothing but that marvelous piece of boyish inspiration, “Thanatopsis,” is now remembered. Patriotic Americans of the day, like Coleman, made a painful effort to believe that Allston’s “Sylphs of the Seasons,” Paine’s “Juvenile Poems,” Mrs. Sigourney’s “Moral Pieces,” and Pierpont’s “Airs of Palestine” were very nearly as good as the literature coming from the pens of Byron, Coleridge, Scott, Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley; but the pretense was a ghastly mockery. Most of the early book notices in the _Evening Post_ were of two useful kinds: they were either an examination of political pamphlets for party ends, or a gutting of new books of travel, biography, and history for their news value. From the very commencement of the journal, many columns of matter were furnished by the various pamphlets called forth by Vice-President Burr’s attempted suppression of John Wood’s “History of the Administration of John Adams”; for this internecine warfare among Democrats delighted all Federalists. In the first days of 1803 pamphlets upon the annexation of Louisiana began to demand selection and comment. Then came pamphlets upon the embargo, non-intercourse, impressment, and the conduct of the British minister, Jackson. The original publication of the very effective pamphlet by a “New England Farmer” upon “Mr. Madison’s War” was in installments in the _Evening Post_ during the summer of 1812. Gouverneur Morris inspired the newspaper’s careful attention to the Erie Canal question; one evidence of its interest in the subject was a series of articles in the spring of 1807, reviewing the writings of “Agricola” upon it. The books which were gutted were sometimes exceedingly interesting. Thus in 1816 Coleman published copious extracts from James Simpson’s “Visit to Flanders,” a vivid account of Waterloo and other battlefields as they appeared the month after Napoleon’s defeat. In 1817 much was made of Cadwallader Colden’s “Life of Fulton,” and two years later of M. M. Noah’s entertaining “Travels in England, France, Spain, and the Barbary States.” The extracts from O’Meara’s memoirs of Napoleon, printed in 1822, led Coleman into an attack upon Napoleon’s jailer at St. Helena, Sir Hudson Lowe; and when Col. Wm. L. Stone of the _Commercial Advertiser_ came to Lowe’s defense, an animated controversy followed.