as in England; he was as strongly convinced
as his worst enemy, that as an author he had been extolled there beyond
his merits; nor had he failed to receive quite as much substantial
remuneration as he could properly lay claim to. But the social
atmosphere there prevailing was not the atmosphere he loved. The poet
Moore relates in his diary a story told him by Sydney Smith of the
"touchiness" of "the Republican"--so the American novelist is styled--as
evinced by the indignation of the latter at the conduct of Lord Nugent.
This nobleman, it appears, invited Cooper to take a walk with him to a
certain street. Arriving there he unceremoniously entered the (p. 097)
house of a friend and left his companion to make his way back alone.
Cooper's resentment of the treatment may have been unwisely shown; for
though often termed an aristocrat, he never exhibited in the slightest
degree that reticence which is or is supposed to be the peculiar
characteristic of aristocracy. But few would now be found to deny that
his indignation was both natural and just, and that the act of Lord
Nugent was the act of a boor and not of a gentleman. It was certainly
unreasonable to expect that a society which could rejoice in this method
of rebuking republican pretension could itself be agreeable to a
republican. Cooper could not but be offended by the prejudices he found
existing against his country and the dislike usually felt and sometimes
expressed for it. The only man he met whom he thought well informed
about America was Sir James Mackintosh. The ignorance of some of his
friends was so great that even to him it caused amusement rather than
anger. Many readers will have heard of the practice of "gouging," with
which, according to the veracious English traveler of early days, the
native American gave the charm of diversity and diversion to a life
whose serious thoughts were wholly absorbed in the acquisition of pelf.
Some will remember the definition given of it in Grose's "Dictionary of
the Vulgar Tongue:" "to squeeze out a man's eye with the thumb; a cruel
practice used by the Bostonians in America." A curious illustration of
the belief in this myth occurred to Cooper. One of his friends in
England was an amiable and pleasant man of letters, named William
Sotheby, little heard of in these days; and even in his own days he had
to endure the double degradation of being called a small poet by the
small poets themselves. He was at this time an