y, however, little apt to be commended where our
own feelings and interests are concerned. Still, the general fairness of
the work was admitted in England, with the qualification, of (p. 204)
course that a perfectly trustworthy history could not come from this
side of the water. A few malignant attacks were made upon it. One of
these, which appeared in the "United Service Journal" for November and
December, 1839, is of the nature of a prolonged roar rather than a
criticism; but it is worth noticing for the incidental evidence it
furnishes of the intense rancor felt towards Cooper by many in England
on account of his strictures upon that country in the two volumes
devoted to it in his "Gleanings in Europe." The writer made the then
usual profession of faith, that the work referred to had been completely
crushed by the "Quarterly;" moreover, that the novelist had been
convicted by it of the blackest ingratitude for traducing the nation
which, we learn from this notice, had fostered his talents for romance.
No critic of Cooper, either in Europe or in this country, it is to be
remarked here, ever seemed willing to concede that the author had any
hand in gaining his own reputation. In America the newspapers constantly
assured him that it was due entirely to them. Great Britain assumed that
it was to her generous appreciation alone that he was known in either
hemisphere. The European main-land was not behind the island in this
feeling. "Undoubtedly," wrote Balzac, "Cooper's renown is not due to his
countrymen nor to the English: he owes it mainly to the ardent
appreciation of France." This sentiment of the novelist's obligation to
Great Britain was uppermost in the heart of the reviewer in the "United
Service Journal." An uneasy impression, however, weighed upon his mind
lest Cooper, who had now suffered annihilation several times without
injury, might have survived the particular one inflicted by the (p. 205)
"Quarterly." He honestly confessed, therefore, that he had waited
some months before criticising the "Naval History," so that he might not
look at it with a jaundiced or malignant eye in consequence of his
recollections of the previous work on England.

It is not worth while to take any further notice of this article, in
which wretched criticism was put into still poorer English. But there
was one of these reviews to which Cooper felt it incumbent on him to
reply. This appeared in the "Edinburgh" for April, 1840