ified by hostility to what were called
French principles that the minor literature of the latter half of the
reign of George III. exhibits a cant of intolerance from which many of
its greatest writers were rarely great enough to be wholly free. This
influence is clearly visible in the earliest work of Cooper. There is
no charge, probably, he would have denied sooner or disliked more, but
in his nature he was essentially a Puritan of the Puritans. Their
faults and their virtues, their inconsistencies and their contradictions,
were his. Their earnestness, their intensity, their narrowness, their
intolerance, their pugnacity, their serious way of looking at (p. 024)
human duties and responsibilities, all these elements corresponded
with elements in his own character. His, also, were their lofty ideas
of personal purity and of personal obligation, extending not merely to
the acts of the life, but to the thoughts of the heart. Like them,
moreover, he was always disposed to appeal directly to the authority
of the Supreme Being. Like them, he had perfect confidence in the
absolute knowledge he possessed of what that Being thought and wished.
Like them, he considered any controverted question as settled, if he
could once bring to bear upon the point in dispute a text beginning,
"Thus saith the Lord." No rational creature, certainly, would think of
contesting a view of the Creator, or acting contrary to a command
coming unmistakably from Him. But at this very point the difficulty
begins; and in nothing did Cooper more resemble the Puritans than in
his incapacity to see that there was any difficulty at all. It never
occurred to him that there might possibly be a vast difference between
what the Lord actually said and what James Fenimore Cooper thought the
Lord said. It is hardly necessary to add, however, that this
characteristic of mind has its advantages as well as disadvantages.

It was not unnatural, accordingly, that "Precaution" should exemplify
in many cases that narrowness of view which seeks to shape narrow
rules for the conduct of life. For its sympathy with this, one of the
most distinguishing and disagreeable features of Puritanism, the novel
has an interest which could never be aroused by it as a work of art.
Extreme sentiments are often expressed by the author in his own
person, though they are usually put into the mouths of various actors
in the story. Their especial representative is a certain Mrs. (p. 02