James Fenimore Cooper | Page 9

however, finally prevailed.
But it was not because the man himself had any innate love of truth, but
because "he had been too much round the person of our beloved
monarch not to retain all the impressions of his youth." Passages such
as these are remarkable when we consider the sentiments in regard to
England that Cooper subsequently came to express. If they do not show
with certainty his opinions at that time, they do show the school in
which he had been brought up: they mark clearly the extent and
violence of the reaction which in after years carried him to the opposite
extreme.
In its plan and development "Precaution" was a compromise between
the purely fashionable novel and that collection of moral disquisitions
of which Hannah More's Coelebs was the great exemplar, and still
remained the most popular representative. As in most tales of high life,
nobody of low condition plays a prominent part in the story, save for
the purpose of setting off the dukes, earls, baronets, generals, and
colonels that throng its pages. A novelist in his first production never
limits his creative activity in any respect; and Cooper, (p. 022)
moreover, knew the public well enough to be aware that a fictitious
narrative which aimed to describe aristocratic society might perhaps
succeed without much literary merit, but would be certain to fail
without an abundance of lords. The leading characters, however,
whether of higher or lower degree, are planned upon the moral model.
They either preach or furnish awful examples. It would certainly be
most unfair to an author to judge him, as in this case, by a work which
he had begun without any view to publication, and which he afterward
learned to think and to speak of slightingly. Still, though, compared
with many of his writings, "Precaution" is a novel of little worth, it is,
in some respects, a better guide to the knowledge of the man than his
better productions. The latter give evidence of his powers; in this are
shown certain limitations of his nature and beliefs. Peculiarities, both of
thought and feeling, which in his other writings are merely suggested,
are here clearly revealed. Some of them will appear strange to those
whose conception of his character is derived from facts connected with
his later life, or whose acquaintance with his works is limited to those
most celebrated.

Cooper was, by nature, a man of deep religious feeling. This
disposition had been strengthened by his training. But there is
something more than deep religious feeling exhibited in his first novel.
There runs through it a vein of pietistic narrowness, which seems
particularly unsuited to the man whom popular imagination, investing
him somewhat with the characteristics of his own creations, has
depicted as a ranger of the forests and a rover of the seas. Yet the
existence of this vein is plainly apparent, though all his surroundings
would (p. 023) seem to have been unfavorable to its birth and
development. He shared, to its fullest extent, in the jealousy which at
that time, far more than now, prevailed between the Middle States and
New England. He was strongly attached to the Episcopal Church, and
he had, or fancied he had, a keen dislike to the Puritans and their
manners and creeds. To these "religionists," as he was wont to call
them, he attributed a great deal that was ungraceful in American life,
and a good deal that was disgraceful. But the Puritan element is an
irrepressible and undying one in English character. It can be found
centuries before it became the designation of a religious body. It can be
traced, under various and varying appellations, through every period of
English history. It is not the name of a sect, it is not the mark of a creed;
it is the characteristic of a race. It is, therefore, never long put under
ban before it comes back, and takes its turn in ruling manners and
society. The revolt against it in the eighteenth century had stripped
from religion everything in the shape of sentiment, and left it merely a
business. The reaction which brought the Puritan element again to the
front was so intensified by hostility to what were called French
principles that the minor literature of the latter half of the reign of
George III. exhibits a cant of intolerance from which many of its
greatest writers were rarely great enough to be wholly free. This
influence is clearly visible in the earliest work of Cooper. There is no
charge, probably, he would have denied sooner or disliked more, but in
his nature he was essentially a Puritan of the Puritans. Their faults and
their virtues, their inconsistencies and their contradictions, were his.
Their earnestness, their intensity, their narrowness, their intolerance,
their