James Fenimore Cooper | Page 7

he built fences, he drained swamps, he planned a lawn.
The one thing which he did not do was to write.
CHAPTER II.
(p. 016)
1820-1822.
Cooper had now reached the age of thirty. Up to this time he had
written nothing, nor had he prepared or collected any material for
future use. No thought of taking up authorship as a profession had
entered his mind. Even the physical labor involved in the mere act of
writing was itself distasteful. Unexpectedly, however, he now began a
course of literary production that was to continue without abatement
during the little more than thirty years which constituted the remainder
of his life.
Seldom has a first work been due more entirely to accident than that
which he composed at the outset of his career. In his home at Angevine
he was one day reading to his wife a novel descriptive of English
society. It did not please him, and he suddenly laid down the book and
said, "I believe I could write a better story myself." Challenged to make
good his boast, he sat down to perform the task, and wrote out a few
pages of the tale he had formed in his mind. The encouragement of his
wife determined him to go on and complete it, and when completed the
advice of friends decided him to publish it. Accordingly, on the 10th of
November, 1820, a novel in two volumes, entitled "Precaution," made
its appearance in New York. In this purely haphazard way did the most
prolific of American authors begin his literary life.
The work was brought out in a bad shape, and its typographical (p. 017)
defects were unconsciously exaggerated by Cooper in a revised edition
of it, which was published after his return from Europe. In the preface

to the latter he said that no novel of modern times had ever been worse
printed than was this story as it originally appeared. The manuscript, he
admitted, was bad; but the proof-reading could only be described as
execrable. Periods turned up in the middle of sentences, while the
places where they should have been knew them not. Passages, in
consequence, were rendered obscure, and even entire paragraphs
became unintelligible. A careful reading of the edition of 1820 will
show something to suggest, but little to justify, these sweeping
assertions. But the work has never been much read even by the
admirers of the author; and it is a curious illustration of this fact, that
the personal friend, who delivered the funeral discourse upon his life
and writings, avoided the discussion of it with such care that he was
betrayed into exposing the lack of interest he sought to hide. Bryant
confessed he had not read "Precaution." He had merely dipped into the
first edition of it, and had been puzzled and repelled by the profusion of
commas and other pauses. The non-committalism of cautious criticism
could hardly hope to go farther. Punctuation has had its terrors and its
triumphs; but this victory over the editor of a daily newspaper must be
deemed its proudest recorded achievement. The poet went on to say
that to a casual inspection the revised edition, which Cooper afterward
brought out, seemed almost another work. The inspection which could
come to such a conclusion must have been of that exceedingly casual
kind which contents itself with contemplating the outside of a book,
and disdains to open it. As a matter of (p. 018) fact the changes made
hardly extended beyond the correction of some points of punctuation
and of some grammatical forms; it was in a few instances only that the
construction of the sentences underwent transformation. Not an
incident was altered, not a sentiment modified.
Such ignorance on the part of a contemporary and personal friend, if it
proves nothing else, shows certainly the little hold this novel has had
upon the public taste. Nevertheless, the first work of any well-known
author must always have a certain interest belonging to it, entirely
independent of any value the work may have in itself. In this case,
moreover, the character of the tale and the circumstances attending its
production are of no slight importance, when taken in connection with
the literary history of the times. It was accident that led to the selection

of the subject; but as things then were, Cooper was not unlikely, in any
event, to have chosen it or one very similar. The intellectual
dependence of America upon England at that period is something that it
is now hard to understand. Political supremacy had been cast off, but
the supremacy of opinion remained absolutely unshaken. Of creative
literature there was then very little of any value produced: and to that
little a foreign stamp was necessary, to give currency outside of the
petty circle