he wrote forbids the idea that he ever strove earnestly for it. Even the
essential but minor grace of clearness is sometimes denied him. He had
not, in truth, the instincts of the born literary artist. Satisfied with
producing the main effect, he was apt to be careless in the consistent
working out of details. Plot, in any genuine sense of the word "plot,"
is to be found in very few of his stories. He seems rarely to have
planned all the events beforehand; or, if he did, anything was likely to
divert him from his original intention. The incidents often appear to
have been suggested as the tale was in process of composition. Hence the
constant presence of incongruities with the frequent result of bringing
about a bungling and incomplete development. The introduction of certain
characters is sometimes so heralded as to lead us to expect from (p. 276)
them far more than they actually perform. Thus, in "The Two Admirals,"
Mr. Thomas Wychecombe is brought in with a fullness of description that
justifies the reader in entertaining a rational expectation of finding
in him a satisfactory scoundrel, capable, desperate, full of resources,
needing the highest display of energy and ability to be overcome. This
reasonable anticipation is disappointed. At the very moment when
respectable determined villainy is in request, he fades away into a
poltroon of the most insignificant type who is not able to hold his own
against an ordinary house-steward.

The prolixity of Cooper's introductions is a fault so obvious to every
one that it needs here reference merely and not discussion. A similar
remark may be made as to his moralizing, which was apt to be cheap and
commonplace. He was much disposed to waste his own time and to exhaust
the patience of his reader by establishing with great fullness of
demonstration and great positiveness of assertion the truth of
principles which most of the human race are humbly content to regard as
axioms. A greater because even a more constantly recurring fault is the
gross improbability to be found in the details of his stories. There is
too much fiction in his fiction. We are continually exasperated by the
inadequacy of the motive assigned; we are irritated by the unnatural if
not ridiculous conduct of the characters. These are perpetually doing
unreasonable things, or doing reasonable things at unsuitable times.
They take the very path that must lead them into the danger they are
seeking to shun. They en