conventional, and not entirely independent of foreign models, especially Godwin, whom Brown greatly admired.  A rapid writer, he soon had the MS. of his next novel in the hands of the publisher.  The first part of ‘Arthur Mervyn:  or Memoirs of the Year 1793’ came out in 1799, and the second part in 1800.  It is the best known of his six novels.  Though the scene is laid in Philadelphia, Brown embodied in it his experience of the yellow fever which raged in New York in 1799.  The passage describing this epidemic can stand beside Defoe’s or Poe’s or Manzoni’s similar descriptions, for power in setting forth the horrors of the plague.

In the same year with the first volume of ‘Arthur Mervyn’ appeared ‘Edgar Huntly:  or Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker.’  Here he deals with the wild life of nature, the rugged solitudes, and the redskins, the field in which he was followed by Cooper.  A thrilling scene in which a panther is chief actor was long familiar to American children in their school reading-books.

In 1801 came out his last two novels, ’Clara Howard:  In a Series of Letters,’ and ‘Jane Talbot.’  They are a departure from his previous work:  instead of dealing with uncanny subjects they treat of quiet domestic and social life.  They show also a great advance on his previous books in constructive art.  In 1799 Brown became editor of the Monthly Magazine and American Review, and contributed largely to it.

In the autumn of 1801 he returned to Philadelphia, to assume the editorship of Conrad’s Literary Magazine and American Review.  The duties of this office suspended his own creative work, and he did not live to take up again the novelist’s stylus.  In 1806 he became editor of the Annual Register.  His genuine literary force is best proved by the fact that whatever periodical he took in charge, he raised its standard of quality and made it a success for the time.

He died in February, 1810.  The work to which he had given the greater part of his time and strength, especially toward the end of his life, was in its nature not only transitory, but not of a sort to keep his name alive.  The magazines were children of a day, and the editor’s repute as such could hardly survive them long.  The fame which belongs to Charles Brockden Brown, grudgingly accorded by a country that can ill afford to neglect one of its earliest, most devoted, and most original workers, rests on his novels.  Judged by standards of the present day, these are far from faultless.  The facts are not very coherent, the diction is artificial in the fashion of the day.  But when all is said, Brown was a rare story-teller; he interested his readers by the novelty of his material, and he was quite objective in its treatment, never obtruding his own personality.  ‘Wieland,’ ‘Edgar Huntly,’ and ’Arthur Mervyn,’ the trilogy of his best novels, are not to be contemned; and he has the distinction of being in very truth the pioneer of American letters.