JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 147 continued litigation seemed to be his normal condition. But these troublesome scenes have to be read in the books, and are not lingering in the minds; of his few remaining contemporaries. In this period he was constantly engaged in writing. Not only was the num- ber of volumes he produced great, but the variety of subject and treatment was no less great. He even wrote a drama. Yet it is to his novels that one turns as the most precious result of these years. Cooper is, above all other Americans, the writer of the novel of adventure. In his own day, at home and abroad, he was often called the American Scott. The metaphor is true in several senses, besides the one point of both the American and the Scotchman standing for the story of objective life and daring. Like Scott, Cooper wrote a tremendous amount ; like Scott, he wrote with great rapidity ; like Scott, he burdened his books with long introductions ; like Scott, he was careless in literary expression ; like Scott, too, into the novel of adventure he put a mighty literary power. It must be said that, unlike the Waverley Novels, Cooper's romances have little of development, and that to the cultivated reader Scott is more attractive. One can- not forbear saying that the women of Cooper's creation are far inferior to Scott's they are women usually narrow in knowledge, weak in brain and heart, and gentle, if not even insipid, in character. They are as proper as well-draped stat- ues, and almost as lifeless. When Cooper, however, passes from this point of weakness to nature herself, he shows himself a master. His descriptions of nature represent his finest work, and are among the finest to be found anywhere. His sea tales are properly named ; they are rather tales of the sea than tales of seamen. The closer, too, is the association of his characters with the scenes of nature the more life-like are they. No one has painted the Indian character, with all its varieties of intellectual and emotional contrasts, with its honor and shame, its ten- derness and its severity, as has the author of " The Last of the Mohicans." No one has created a character in American fiction more original, more certain of immortality, or combining more elements worthy of the novelist's best skill than Leather-Stocking. Among his many stories is large range of excellence. It is usually considered that of his sea tales " The Red Rover " is the best, the product of his early ca- reer, and that of the Indian stories "The Pathfinder " and "The Deerslayer" represent his highest achievement, as they are the work of the last years. But in thus distinguishing certain books, no one can forget that in " The Spy," his second work, or " The Pioneers," or " The Pilot," or " The Last of the Mohi- cans," Cooper has written books which are among the most popular and most powerful of their kind. James Fenimore Cooper, both as a man and as an author, has entered largely into American life and literature. He was thoroughly human. He was strong, and strength with eccentricities and Cooper had these is more attractive and moving than mild weakness attended by the graces of propriety. He was proud without vanity; a good hater, yet beloved to devotion in his home; severe, yet holding himself to a high standard of justice ; of mighty passions, yet
