style, in the handling of the tools of his craft, Cooper never attained a master’s ease and power.  In his first two novels the want of technical skill and literary accomplishment was obvious; and the scenery, subjects, and characters of these novels did not furnish him with the opportunity of turning to account the peculiar advantages which had come to him from the events of his childhood and youth.  In his infancy he was taken to Cooperstown, a spot which his father had just begun to reclaim from the dominion of the wilderness.  Here his first impressions of the external world, as well as of life and manners, were received.  At the age of sixteen he became a midshipman in the United States navy, and remained in the service for six years.  A father who, in training up his son for the profession of letters, should send him into the wilderness in his infancy and to sea at sixteen, would seem to be shooting very wide of the mark; but in this, as in so many things, there is a divinity that shapes our rough-hewn ends.  Had Cooper enjoyed the best scholastic advantages which the schools and colleges of Europe could have furnished, they could not have fitted him for the work he was destined to do so well as the apparently untoward elements we have above adverted to; for Natty Bumppo was the fruit of his woodland experience, and Long Tom Coffin of his sea-faring life.

“The Pioneers” and “The Pilot” were both published in 1823; “Lionel Lincoln” in 1825; and “The Last of the Mohicans” in 1826.  We may put “Lionel Lincoln” aside, as one of his least successful productions; but the three others were never surpassed, and rarely equalled, by any of his numerous subsequent works.  All the powerful, and nearly all the attractive, qualities of his genius were displayed in these three novels, in their highest degree and most ample measure.  Had he never written any more,—­though we should have missed many interesting narratives, admirable pictures, and vigorously drawn characters,—­we are not sure that his fame would not have been as great as it is now.  From these, and “The Spy,” full materials may be drawn for forming a correct estimate of his merits and his defects.  In these, his strength and weakness, his gifts and deficiencies, are amply shown.  Here, then, we may pause, and, without pursuing his literary biography any farther, proceed to set down our estimate of his claims as a writer.  Any critic who dips his pen in ink and not in gall would rather praise than blame; therefore we will dispose of the least gracious part of our task first, and begin with his blemishes and defects.