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 afterwards, 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 afterwards put forth.

Thirty years ago, in the year 1821, and in the thirty-second 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 terms it deserved.  “Are you not delighted,” wrote a literary friend to me, who has since risen to high distinction as a writer, both in verse and in prose, “are you not delighted with the Spy, as a work of infinite spirit and genius?” In that word genius lay the explanation of the hold which the work had taken on the minds of men.  What it had of excellence was peculiar and unborrowed; its pictures of life, whether in repose or activity, were drawn, with broad lights and shadows, immediately from living originals in nature or in his own imagination.  To him, whatever he described was true; it was made a reality to him by the strength with which he conceived it.  His power in the delineation of character was shown in the principal personage of his story, Harvey Birch, on whom, though he has chosen to employ him in the ignoble office of a spy, and endowed him with the qualities necessary to his profession,—­extreme circumspection, fertility in stratagem, and the art of concealing his real character—­qualities which, in conjunction with selfishness and greediness, make the scoundrel, he has bestowed the virtues of generosity, magnanimity, an intense love of country, a fidelity not to be corrupted, and a disinterestedness beyond temptation.  Out of this combination of qualities he has wrought a character which is a favorite in all nations, and with all classes of mankind.