The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 4, October 1837Various
History
The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 4, October 1837
Various
Periodicals
We agree with Mr. COOPER, entirely, in very many of his views in
relation to the society and manners of England and America. The
ridiculous affectation of simplicity, the heartlessness and the
flippancy of the English, whom he met in society, are defects which
lay them bare to the lash, and the lash has been well laid on. This
putting a rein upon the lungs, and drilling of muscles to order,
for mere fashion's sake, is a legitimate theme for satire; and we
are glad to see, by the squirming of the malevoli among the English
critics, who are nibbling away at the excrescences of the work,
that our author's random shots have '_told_' well. Mr. COOPER is
equally just and felicitous in many of his comments upon American
society. The mere tyranny of public opinion he sets forth in its
true light. He very justly, too, repudiates the influence of those
among us, whose narrow souls never moved in a wider circle than
the circumference of a dollar, and who carry their brains in their
pockets; and he ridicules, with proper motives and good grounds, the
American propensity to use 'great swelling words' to express the
commonest ideas, or merest matters of fact, which he illustrates
by a characteristic anecdote. A rail-car companion, at Bordentown,
who wished to say, 'They have laid the foundations of a large
building here,' oracularly observed, instead: 'Judging from external
symptoms, they have commenced the construction, in this place, of
an edifice of considerable magnitude, calculated, most likely,
to facilitate the objects of the rail-road company!' This lingual
magniloquence is proverbial of American parvenus. Some months since,
just as that sweet singer, Mrs. AUSTIN, was leaving New-York in the
steam-boat for a Liverpool packet, lying in the stream, some inflated
personage called out: 'It is proposed to pay a parting tribute to
the distinguished vocalist who has, by her fine powers of music, so
long delighted our citizens, and who is now about to depart from
us!' 'Three cheers for Mrs. AUSTIN!' would have been understood, and
heartily responded to; but this rigmarole only induced a sort of
bastard applause, which fell feebly on the ear, and sent its prompter
away, covered with confusion.
Our author's repeated sneers at the public press, and literary
men, coming from one who is a writer by profession, and sucks his
sustenance through a quill, is in exceeding bad taste; and his
allusion to New-England editors, constitutes a characteristic
specimen of aimless spite, which is quite beneath a person of his
standing as an author. Some one native of New-England, obnoxious,
from some cause, to Mr. COOPER, is undoubtedly at the bottom of this
sweeping allusion. Had we that honor, or had we leisure, we should be
glad to show _who_ are the men whom Mr. COOPER would thus traduce,
_en masse_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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