[Footnote 209:  T.H.  Lister, Marquis of Normanby, Lady Caroline Lamb, Countess of Morley, Lady Charlotte Bury, Lady Dacre, Mrs. Gore, Lady Blessington.]

VI.

James Fenimore Cooper said in regard to the materials for American fiction:  “There is a familiarity of the subject, a scarcity of events, and a poverty in the accompaniments that drive an author from the undertaking in despair.”  But the truth of this statement has been greatly modified, if not quite refuted, by the work of that great novelist and of several others who have succeeded him.  It is true that American life presents less salient characteristics than that of Europe; that class distinctions are less marked; and that the energies of the nation are still so much confined to strictly utilitarian objects, that life moves along with unpicturesque sameness and evenness.  But mankind remains equally complicated and equally interesting under whatever circumstances it may be placed.  The vast extent of American territory and the infinite variety of its inhabitants afford material to the novelist which yet remains almost untouched.  New England, New York, the Southern States, and, above all, the Great West, are rich in special customs, traditions, and habits of thought with which fiction has only begun to concern itself.  The visitor to Washington cannot fail to be struck by the variety of men who jostle each other in that cosmopolitan city.  The New England farmer, the New York banker, the Southern planter, the Western herder or grain merchant, the California mine-owner, the negro, and perhaps a stray visiting Indian chief, represent widely differing and highly interesting forms of life and opinion.  Whenever native genius has cast aside foreign influence and has found inspiration in American traditions and institutions, the extent and richness of its literary material have been made manifest.

The earliest examples of fiction in the United States were tentative and lacking in originality.  At the close of the eighteenth century, Charles Brockden Brown began the career of the first American novelist with “Wieland.”  His pecuniary necessities and the slight encouragement offered at that time to American authors made it impossible for him to afford the time and care essential to artistic finish.  His novels are of an imaginative and psychological character, often interesting in parts from the intense mental excitement which they describe.  They were much admired by the English novelist Godwin, whose works they resemble in intensity of conception and faultiness of execution.  A novel called “Charlotte Temple,” by Susanna Rowson, obtained a wide circulation in the beginning of the present century, due much more to its foundation on a notorious scandal than to its own literary merit.  “Modern Chivalry; or the Adventures of Captain Farrago and Teague O’Reagan, his Servant”—­a poor imitation of “Don Quixote”—­as a satire directed against the Democratic party by H.H.  Brackenridge.  R.H.  Dana’s “Tom Thornton” and “Paul Felton” have little claim to attention beyond the excitement of their rather sensational stories.