ing under the impression that it had failed.

For James and his history Cooper had unbounded contempt. This
horse-doctor, as he termed him, he looked upon as being as well fitted
to describe a naval engagement as the proverbial horse-marine would be
to take part in one. Besides being incapable, he regarded him as
eminently dishonest; as vaunting impartiality while elevating
discreditable and improbable hearsay into positive assertion, and
fortifying his falsehoods by a pretentious parade of figures and
official documents. It is hardly going too far to say that, in (p. 207)
Cooper's opinion, the remarks of James on American affairs combined all
possible forms of misstatement from undesigned misrepresentation to
deliberate falsehood. There may be difference of opinion on this point;
on another there can be none. The period covered by the British writer
is on the whole the most glorious in the long and brilliant naval
history of the greatest maritime power the world has ever known. Never
was there a greater contrast between the spirit with which things were
done and the spirit with which they were told. In no other history known
to man does tediousness assume proportions more appalling, do figures
seem more juiceless, do the stories of heroic achievement furnish less
inspiration than in this of James. If it be true, as some modern writers
say, that history to be of value must be void of interest, it may be
conceded that this particular work is entitled to that praise of
perfection accorded it by the Edinburgh Reviewer.

The judgment that held up such a history as a model was not likely to
impress a man, who was still under the sway of the old-fashioned notion,
that there was no absolutely necessary connection between dullness and
accuracy. To this particular criticism Cooper replied in the "Democratic
Review" for May and June, 1842. In the first article he exposed the
ignorance and dishonesty of James. In the second he devoted himself to
the assertions of the "Edinburgh." The game was hardly worth the candle.
His arguments could not reach the men who alone needed to know them. In
international quarrels of any kind there are few who read both sides.
The feeling exists that it is not safe to contaminate the purity of
one's faith in his country by the doubts that might arise from (p. 208)
merely fancying that an opponent has reasons for his course worth
considering. So it was in this case. Few people in the United Sta