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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
+by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
+
+Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+
+Release Date: April, 2002  [Etext #3172]
+Last Updated: February 24, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FENIMORE COOPER OFFENCES ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES
+
+by Mark Twain
+
+
+
+          The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer stand at the head of Cooper's
+          novels as artistic creations.  There are others of his works
+          which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and
+          scenes even more thrilling.  Not one can be compared with
+          either of them as a finished whole.
+
+          The defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight.
+          They were pure works of art.--Prof. Lounsbury.
+
+
+          The five tales reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention.
+          ...  One of the very greatest characters in fiction, Natty
+          Bumppo....
+
+          The craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper, all the
+          delicate art of the forest, were familiar to Cooper from his
+          youth up.--Prof. Brander Matthews.
+
+          Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction
+          yet produced by America.--Wilkie Collins.
+
+
+It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English
+Literature in Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and
+Wilkie Collins to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature without having
+read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep silent
+and let persons talk who have read Cooper.
+
+Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in 'Deerslayer,' and in the
+restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences
+against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.
+
+There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of
+romantic fiction--some say twenty-two. In Deerslayer Cooper violated
+eighteen of them. These eighteen require:
+
+1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the
+Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air.
+
+2. They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of
+the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the Deerslayer tale is
+not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes
+have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to
+develop.
+
+3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in
+the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell
+the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked
+in the Deerslayer tale.
+
+4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive,
+shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also
+has been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.
+
+5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation,
+the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human
+beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have
+a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of
+relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and
+be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the
+people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has
+been ignored from the beginning of the Deerslayer tale to the end of it.
+
+6. They require that when the author describes the character of a
+personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage
+shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention
+in the Deerslayer tale, as Natty Bumppo's case will amply prove.
+
+7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated,
+gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering
+in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel
+in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the
+Deerslayer tale.
+
+8. They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the
+reader as “the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest,”
+ by either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is
+persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale.
+
+9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves
+to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle,
+the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible
+and reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the Deerslayer
+tale.
+
+10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep
+interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he
+shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad
+ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in
+it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned
+together.
+
+11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly
+defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given
+emergency. But in the Deerslayer tale this rule is vacated.
+
+In addition to these large rules there are some little ones. These
+require that the author shall:
+
+12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.
+
+13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.
+
+14. Eschew surplusage.
+
+15. Not omit necessary details.
+
+16. Avoid slovenliness of form.
+
+17. Use good grammar.
+
+18. Employ a simple and straightforward style.
+
+Even these seven are coldly and persistently violated in the Deerslayer
+tale.
+
+Cooper's gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment; but
+such as it was he liked to work it, he was pleased with the effects,
+and indeed he did some quite sweet things with it. In his little box of
+stage properties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks, artifices
+for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent each other with,
+and he was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things
+and seeing them go. A favorite one was to make a moccasined person tread
+in the tracks of the moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own trail.
+Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick.
+Another stage-property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently
+was his broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his
+effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any book
+of his when somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds
+and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is
+in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is
+sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred handier things to
+step on, but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn
+out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. In
+fact, the Leather Stocking Series ought to have been called the Broken
+Twig Series.
+
+I am sorry there is not room to put in a few dozen instances of the
+delicate art of the forest, as practised by Natty Bumppo and some of the
+other Cooperian experts. Perhaps we may venture two or three samples.
+Cooper was a sailor--a naval officer; yet he gravely tells us how
+a vessel, driving towards a lee shore in a gale, is steered for a
+particular spot by her skipper because he knows of an undertow there
+which will hold her back against the gale and save her. For just pure
+woodcraft, or sailorcraft, or whatever it is, isn't that neat? For
+several years Cooper was daily in the society of artillery, and he ought
+to have noticed that when a cannon-ball strikes the ground it either
+buries itself or skips a hundred feet or so; skips again a hundred feet
+or so--and so on, till finally it gets tired and rolls. Now in one place
+he loses some “females”--as he always calls women--in the edge of a wood
+near a plain at night in a fog, on purpose to give Bumppo a chance to
+show off the delicate art of the forest before the reader. These
+mislaid people are hunting for a fort. They hear a cannonblast, and a
+cannon-ball presently comes rolling into the wood and stops at their
+feet. To the females this suggests nothing. The case is very different
+with the admirable Bumppo. I wish I may never know peace again if he
+doesn't strike out promptly and follow the track of that cannon-ball
+across the plain through the dense fog and find the fort. Isn't it
+a daisy? If Cooper had any real knowledge of Nature's ways of doing
+things, he had a most delicate art in concealing the fact. For instance:
+one of his acute Indian experts, Chingachgook (pronounced Chicago,
+I think), has lost the trail of a person he is tracking through the
+forest. Apparently that trail is hopelessly lost. Neither you nor I
+could ever have guessed out the way to find it. It was very different
+with Chicago. Chicago was not stumped for long. He turned a running
+stream out of its course, and there, in the slush in its old bed, were
+that person's moccasin-tracks. The current did not wash them away, as
+it would have done in all other like cases--no, even the eternal laws
+of Nature have to vacate when Cooper wants to put up a delicate job of
+woodcraft on the reader.
+
+We must be a little wary when Brander Matthews tells us that Cooper's
+books “reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention.” As a rule, I
+am quite willing to accept Brander Matthews's literary judgments and
+applaud his lucid and graceful phrasing of them; but that particular
+statement needs to be taken with a few tons of salt. Bless your heart,
+Cooper hadn't any more invention than a horse; and I don't mean a
+high-class horse, either; I mean a clothes-horse. It would be very
+difficult to find a really clever “situation” in Cooper's books, and
+still more difficult to find one of any kind which he has failed to
+render absurd by his handling of it. Look at the episodes of “the
+caves”; and at the celebrated scuffle between Maqua and those others
+on the table-land a few days later; and at Hurry Harry's queer
+water-transit from the castle to the ark; and at Deerslayer's half-hour
+with his first corpse; and at the quarrel between Hurry Harry and
+Deerslayer later; and at--but choose for yourself; you can't go amiss.
+
+If Cooper had been an observer his inventive faculty would have worked
+better; not more interestingly, but more rationally, more plausibly.
+Cooper's proudest creations in the way of “situations” suffer noticeably
+from the absence of the observer's protecting gift. Cooper's eye was
+splendidly inaccurate. Cooper seldom saw anything correctly. He saw
+nearly all things as through a glass eye, darkly. Of course a man who
+cannot see the commonest little every-day matters accurately is
+working at a disadvantage when he is constructing a “situation.” In the
+Deerslayer tale Cooper has a stream which is fifty feet wide where it
+flows out of a lake; it presently narrows to twenty as it meanders along
+for no given reason; and yet when a stream acts like that it ought to
+be required to explain itself. Fourteen pages later the width of the
+brook's outlet from the lake has suddenly shrunk thirty feet, and become
+“the narrowest part of the stream.” This shrinkage is not accounted for.
+The stream has bends in it, a sure indication that it has alluvial banks
+and cuts them; yet these bends are only thirty and fifty feet long. If
+Cooper had been a nice and punctilious observer he would have noticed
+that the bends were oftener nine hundred feet long than short of it.
+
+Cooper made the exit of that stream fifty feet wide, in the first place,
+for no particular reason; in the second place, he narrowed it to less
+than twenty to accommodate some Indians. He bends a “sapling” to the
+form of an arch over this narrow passage, and conceals six Indians in
+its foliage. They are “laying” for a settler's scow or ark which is
+coming up the stream on its way to the lake; it is being hauled against
+the stiff current by a rope whose stationary end is anchored in the
+lake; its rate of progress cannot be more than a mile an hour. Cooper
+describes the ark, but pretty obscurely. In the matter of dimensions “it
+was little more than a modern canal-boat.” Let us guess, then, that it
+was about one hundred and forty feet long. It was of “greater breadth
+than common.” Let us guess, then, that it was about sixteen feet wide.
+This leviathan had been prowling down bends which were but a third as
+long as itself, and scraping between banks where it had only two feet of
+space to spare on each side. We cannot too much admire this miracle.
+A low-roofed log dwelling occupies “two-thirds of the ark's length”--a
+dwelling ninety feet long and sixteen feet wide, let us say a kind of
+vestibule train. The dwelling has two rooms--each forty-five feet long
+and sixteen feet wide, let us guess. One of them is the bedroom of the
+Hutter girls, Judith and Hetty; the other is the parlor in the daytime,
+at night it is papa's bedchamber. The ark is arriving at the stream's
+exit now, whose width has been reduced to less than twenty feet to
+accommodate the Indians--say to eighteen. There is a foot to spare on
+each side of the boat. Did the Indians notice that there was going to
+be a tight squeeze there? Did they notice that they could make money by
+climbing down out of that arched sapling and just stepping aboard when
+the ark scraped by? No, other Indians would have noticed these things,
+but Cooper's Indians never notice anything. Cooper thinks they are
+marvelous creatures for noticing, but he was almost always in error
+about his Indians. There was seldom a sane one among them.
+
+The ark is one hundred and forty feet long; the dwelling is ninety feet
+long. The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from the
+arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under it at the
+rate of a mile an hour, and butcher the family. It will take the ark a
+minute and a half to pass under. It will take the ninety foot dwelling
+a minute to pass under. Now, then, what did the six Indians do? It would
+take you thirty years to guess, and even then you would have to give it
+up, I believe. Therefore, I will tell you what the Indians did. Their
+chief, a person of quite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian,
+warily watched the canal-boat as it squeezed along under him, and when
+he had got his calculations fined down to exactly the right shade, as
+he judged, he let go and dropped. And missed the house! That is actually
+what he did. He missed the house, and landed in the stern of the scow.
+It was not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly. He lay there
+unconscious. If the house had been ninety-seven feet long he would have
+made the trip. The fault was Cooper's, not his. The error lay in the
+construction of the house. Cooper was no architect.
+
+There still remained in the roost five Indians.
+
+The boat has passed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain
+what the five did--you would not be able to reason it out for yourself.
+No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it. Then No.
+2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still farther astern of it.
+Then No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it. Then
+No. 4 jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern. Then
+even No. 5 made a jump for the boat--for he was a Cooper Indian. In
+the matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the
+Indian that stands in front of the cigarshop is not spacious. The scow
+episode is really a sublime burst of invention; but it does not
+thrill, because the inaccuracy of the details throws a sort of air of
+fictitiousness and general improbability over it. This comes of Cooper's
+inadequacy as an observer.
+
+The reader will find some examples of Cooper's high talent for
+inaccurate observation in the account of the shooting-match in The
+Pathfinder.
+
+          “A common wrought nail was driven lightly into the target, its
+          head having been first touched with paint.”
+
+The color of the paint is not stated--an important omission, but Cooper
+deals freely in important omissions. No, after all, it was not an
+important omission; for this nail-head is a hundred yards from the
+marksmen, and could not be seen by them at that distance, no matter what
+its color might be.
+
+How far can the best eyes see a common house-fly? A hundred yards? It is
+quite impossible. Very well; eyes that cannot see a house-fly that is a
+hundred yards away cannot see an ordinary nailhead at that distance, for
+the size of the two objects is the same. It takes a keen eye to see a
+fly or a nailhead at fifty yards--one hundred and fifty feet. Can the
+reader do it?
+
+The nail was lightly driven, its head painted, and game called. Then the
+Cooper miracles began. The bullet of the first marksman chipped an edge
+off the nail-head; the next man's bullet drove the nail a little way
+into the target--and removed all the paint. Haven't the miracles
+gone far enough now? Not to suit Cooper; for the purpose of
+this whole scheme is to show off his prodigy, Deerslayer--
+Hawkeye--Long-Rifle--Leather-Stocking--Pathfinder--Bumppo before
+the ladies.
+
+          “'Be all ready to clench it, boys!' cried out Pathfinder,
+          stepping into his friend's tracks the instant they were vacant.
+          'Never mind a new nail; I can see that, though the paint is
+          gone, and what I can see I can hit at a hundred yards, though
+          it were only a mosquito's eye.  Be ready to clench!'
+
+“The rifle cracked, the bullet sped its way, and the head of the nail
+was buried in the wood, covered by the piece of flattened lead.”
+
+There, you see, is a man who could hunt flies with a rifle, and command
+a ducal salary in a Wild West show to-day if we had him back with us.
+
+The recorded feat is certainly surprising just as it stands; but it
+is not surprising enough for Cooper. Cooper adds a touch. He has made
+Pathfinder do this miracle with another man's rifle; and not only that,
+but Pathfinder did not have even the advantage of loading it himself.
+He had everything against him, and yet he made that impossible shot; and
+not only made it, but did it with absolute confidence, saying, “Be ready
+to clench.” Now a person like that would have undertaken that same feat
+with a brickbat, and with Cooper to help he would have achieved it, too.
+
+Pathfinder showed off handsomely that day before the ladies. His
+very first feat was a thing which no Wild West show can touch. He was
+standing with the group of marksmen, observing--a hundred yards from the
+target, mind; one Jasper raised his rifle and drove the centre of the
+bull's-eye. Then the Quartermaster fired. The target exhibited no result
+this time. There was a laugh. “It's a dead miss,” said Major Lundie.
+Pathfinder waited an impressive moment or two; then said, in that calm,
+indifferent, know-it-all way of his, “No, Major, he has covered Jasper's
+bullet, as will be seen if any one will take the trouble to examine the
+target.”
+
+Wasn't it remarkable! How could he see that little pellet fly through
+the air and enter that distant bullet-hole? Yet that is what he did; for
+nothing is impossible to a Cooper person. Did any of those people
+have any deep-seated doubts about this thing? No; for that would imply
+sanity, and these were all Cooper people.
+
+          “The respect for Pathfinder's skill and for his 'quickness and
+          accuracy of sight'” (the italics [' '] are mine) “was so
+          profound and general, that the instant he made this declaration
+          the spectators began to distrust their own opinions, and a
+          dozen rushed to the target in order to ascertain the fact.
+          There, sure enough, it was found that the Quartermaster's
+          bullet had gone through the hole made by Jasper's, and that,
+          too, so accurately as to require a minute examination to be
+          certain of the circumstance, which, however, was soon clearly
+          established by discovering one bullet over the other in the
+          stump against which the target was placed.”
+
+They made a “minute” examination; but never mind, how could they know
+that there were two bullets in that hole without digging the latest one
+out? for neither probe nor eyesight could prove the presence of any
+more than one bullet. Did they dig? No; as we shall see. It is the
+Pathfinder's turn now; he steps out before the ladies, takes aim, and
+fires.
+
+But, alas! here is a disappointment; an incredible, an unimaginable
+disappointment--for the target's aspect is unchanged; there is nothing
+there but that same old bullet-hole!
+
+          “'If one dared to hint at such a thing,' cried Major Duncan, 'I
+          should say that the Pathfinder has also missed the target!'”
+
+As nobody had missed it yet, the “also” was not necessary; but never
+mind about that, for the Pathfinder is going to speak.
+
+          “'No, no, Major,' said he, confidently, 'that would be a risky
+          declaration.  I didn't load the piece, and can't say what was
+          in it; but if it was lead, you will find the bullet driving
+          down those of the Quartermaster and Jasper, else is not my name
+          Pathfinder.'
+
+          “A shout from the target announced the truth of this
+          assertion.”
+
+Is the miracle sufficient as it stands? Not for Cooper. The Pathfinder
+speaks again, as he “now slowly advances towards the stage occupied by
+the females”:
+
+          “'That's not all, boys, that's not all; if you find the target
+          touched at all, I'll own to a miss.  The Quartermaster cut the
+          wood, but you'll find no wood cut by that last messenger.”
+
+The miracle is at last complete. He knew--doubtless saw--at the distance
+of a hundred yards--that his bullet had passed into the hole without
+fraying the edges. There were now three bullets in that one hole--three
+bullets embedded processionally in the body of the stump back of the
+target. Everybody knew this--somehow or other--and yet nobody had dug
+any of them out to make sure. Cooper is not a close observer, but he is
+interesting. He is certainly always that, no matter what happens. And he
+is more interesting when he is not noticing what he is about than when
+he is. This is a considerable merit.
+
+The conversations in the Cooper books have a curious sound in our modern
+ears. To believe that such talk really ever came out of people's mouths
+would be to believe that there was a time when time was of no value to
+a person who thought he had something to say; when it was the custom
+to spread a two-minute remark out to ten; when a man's mouth was a
+rolling-mill, and busied itself all day long in turning four-foot pigs
+of thought into thirty-foot bars of conversational railroad iron by
+attenuation; when subjects were seldom faithfully stuck to, but the talk
+wandered all around and arrived nowhere; when conversations consisted
+mainly of irrelevancies, with here and there a relevancy, a relevancy
+with an embarrassed look, as not being able to explain how it got there.
+
+Cooper was certainly not a master in the construction of dialogue.
+Inaccurate observation defeated him here as it defeated him in so many
+other enterprises of his. He even failed to notice that the man who
+talks corrupt English six days in the week must and will talk it on
+the seventh, and can't help himself. In the Deerslayer story he lets
+Deerslayer talk the showiest kind of book-talk sometimes, and at other
+times the basest of base dialects. For instance, when some one asks
+him if he has a sweetheart, and if so, where she abides, this is his
+majestic answer:
+
+          “'She's in the forest-hanging from the boughs of the trees, in
+          a soft rain--in the dew on the open grass--the clouds that
+          float about in the blue heavens--the birds that sing in the
+          woods--the sweet springs where I slake my thirst--and in all
+          the other glorious gifts that come from God's Providence!'”
+
+And he preceded that, a little before, with this:
+
+          “'It consarns me as all things that touches a fri'nd consarns a
+          fri'nd.'”
+
+And this is another of his remarks:
+
+          “'If I was Injin born, now, I might tell of this, or carry in
+          the scalp and boast of the expl'ite afore the whole tribe; or
+          if my inimy had only been a bear'”--and so on.
+
+We cannot imagine such a thing as a veteran Scotch Commander-in-Chief
+comporting himself in the field like a windy melodramatic actor, but
+Cooper could. On one occasion Alice and Cora were being chased by the
+French through a fog in the neighborhood of their father's fort:
+
+          “'Point de quartier aux coquins!' cried an eager pursuer, who
+          seemed to direct the operations of the enemy.
+
+          “'Stand firm and be ready, my gallant 60ths!' suddenly
+          exclaimed a voice above them; wait to see the enemy; fire low,
+          and sweep the glacis.'
+
+          “'Father? father!' exclaimed a piercing cry from out the mist;
+          'it is I!  Alice! thy own Elsie! spare, O! save your daughters!'
+
+          “'Hold!' shouted the former speaker, in the awful tones of
+          parental agony, the sound reaching even to the woods, and
+          rolling back in solemn echo.  ''Tis she! God has restored me my
+          children! Throw open the sally-port; to the field, 60ths, to
+          the field! pull not a trigger, lest ye kill my lambs!  Drive
+          off these dogs of France with your steel!'”
+
+Cooper's word-sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor ear
+for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He
+keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor
+ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you
+perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he
+doesn't say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word-musician. His ear was
+satisfied with the approximate word. I will furnish some circumstantial
+evidence in support of this charge. My instances are gathered from
+half a dozen pages of the tale called Deerslayer. He uses “verbal,”
+ for “oral”; “precision,” for “facility”; “phenomena,” for “marvels”;
+“necessary,” for “predetermined”; “unsophisticated,” for “primitive”;
+“preparation,” for “expectancy”; “rebuked,” for “subdued”; “dependent
+on,” for “resulting from”; “fact,” for “condition”; “fact,” for
+“conjecture”; “precaution,” for “caution”; “explain,” for “determine”;
+“mortified,” for “disappointed”; “meretricious,” for “factitious”;
+“materially,” for “considerably”; “decreasing,” for “deepening”;
+“increasing,” for “disappearing”; “embedded,” for “enclosed”;
+“treacherous;” for “hostile”; “stood,” for “stooped”; “softened,” for
+“replaced”; “rejoined,” for “remarked”; “situation,” for “condition”;
+“different,” for “differing”; “insensible,” for “unsentient”; “brevity,”
+ for “celerity”; “distrusted,” for “suspicious”; “mental imbecility,”
+ for “imbecility”; “eyes,” for “sight”; “counteracting,” for “opposing”;
+“funeral obsequies,” for “obsequies.”
+
+There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper could
+write English, but they are all dead now--all dead but Lounsbury. I
+don't remember that Lounsbury makes the claim in so many words, still he
+makes it, for he says that Deerslayer is a “pure work of art.” Pure, in
+that connection, means faultless--faultless in all details--and language
+is a detail. If Mr. Lounsbury had only compared Cooper's English with
+the English which he writes himself--but it is plain that he didn't;
+and so it is likely that he imagines until this day that Cooper's is as
+clean and compact as his own. Now I feel sure, deep down in my heart,
+that Cooper wrote about the poorest English that exists in our language,
+and that the English of Deerslayer is the very worst that even Cooper
+ever wrote.
+
+I may be mistaken, but it does seem to me that Deerslayer is not a work
+of art in any sense; it does seem to me that it is destitute of every
+detail that goes to the making of a work of art; in truth, it seems to
+me that Deerslayer is just simply a literary delirium tremens.
+
+A work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence,
+or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of
+reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and
+words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author
+claims that they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny;
+its conversations are--oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its
+English a crime against the language.
+
+Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
+by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FENIMORE COOPER OFFENCES ***
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