Works (Volume 22) (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1861. Excerpt: ... to the examination of the late Charles Wilkes, of this city, in whose literary opinions he had great confidence. Mr. Wilkes advised that it should be published, and to these circumstances we owe it that Cooper became an author. I confess I have merely dipped into this work. The experiment was made with the first edition, deformed by a strange punctuation--a profusion of commas, and other pauses, which puzzled and repelled me. Its author, many years afterward, revised and republished it, correcting this fault, and some faults of style also, so that to a casual inspection it appeared almost another work. It was a professed delineation of English manners, though the author had then seen nothing of English society. It had, however, the honor of being adopted by the country whose manners it described, and being early republished in Great Britain passed from the first for an English novel. I am not unwilling to believe what is said of it, that it contained a promise of the powers which its author afterward put forth. Thirty years ago, in the year 1821, and in the thirtysecond of his life, Cooper published the first of the works by which he will be known to posterity, the Spy. It took the reading world by a kind of surprise; its merit was acknowledged by a rapid sale; the public read with eagerness and the critics wondered. Many withheld their commendations on account of defects in the plot or blemishes in the composition, arising from want of practice, and some waited till they could hear the judgment of European readers. Yet there were not wanting critics in this country, of whose good opinion any author in any part of the world might be proud, who spoke of it in the terms it deserved. "Are you not delighted," wrote a literary friend to me, who has since risen to high distinction as a wr...