Every author in the department of imaginative literature, whether of prose or verse, puts more or less of his personal traits of mind and character into his writings.  This is very true of Cooper; and much of the worth and popularity of his novels is to be ascribed to the unconscious expressions and revelations they give of the estimable and attractive qualities of the man.  Bryant, in his admirably written and discriminating biographical sketch, originally pronounced as a eulogy, and now prefixed to “Precaution” in Townsend’s edition, relates that a distinguished man of letters, between whom and Cooper an unhappy coolness had for some time existed, after reading “The Pathfinder,” remarked,—­“They may say what they will of Cooper, the man who wrote this book is not only a great man, but a good man.”  This is a just tribute; and the impression thus made by a single work is confirmed by all.  Cooper’s moral nature was thoroughly sound, and all his moral instincts were right.  His writings show in how high regard he held the two great guardian virtues of courage in man and purity in woman.  In all his novels we do not recall a single expression of doubtful morality.  He never undertakes to enlist our sympathies on the wrong side.  If his good characters are not always engaging, he never does violence to virtue by presenting attractive qualities in combination with vices which in real life harden the heart and coarsen the taste.  We do not find in his pages those moral monsters in which the finest sensibilities, the richest gifts, the noblest sentiments are linked to heartless profligacy, or not less heartless misanthropy.  He never palters with right; he enters into no truce with wrong; he admits of no compromise on such points.  How admirable in its moral aspect is the character of Leatherstocking! he is ignorant, and of very moderate intellectual range or grasp; but what dignity, nay, even grandeur, is thrown around him from his noble moral qualities,—­his undeviating rectitude, his disinterestedness, his heroism, his warm affections!  No writer could have delineated such a character so well who had not an instinctive and unconscious sympathy with his intellectual offspring.  Praise of the same kind belongs to Long Tom Coffin, and Antonio, the old fisherman.  The elements of character—­truth, courage, and affection—­are the same in all.  Harvey Birch and Jacopo Frontoni are kindred conceptions:  both are in a false relation to those around them; both assume a voluntary load of obloquy; both live and move in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust; but in both the end sanctifies and exalts the means; the element of deception in both only adds to the admiration finally awakened.  The carrying out of conceptions like these—­the delineation of a character that perpetually weaves a web of untruth, and yet through all maintains our respect, and at last secures our reverence—­was no easy task; but Cooper’s success is perfect.