gage in making love when they ought to be flying
for their lives. His heroes, in particular, exhibit a capacity for going
to sleep in critical situations, which may not transcend (p. 277)
extraordinary human experience, but does ordinary human belief. Nor is
improbability always confined to details. It pervades sometimes the
central idea of the story. In "The Bravo," for instance, the hero is the
most pious of sons, the most faithful of friends, the most devoted of
lovers. The part he has to play in the tale is to appear to be a
cutthroat of the worst type, without doing a single thing to merit his
reputation. It is asking too much of human credulity to believe that a
really good man could long sustain the character of a remorseless
desperado by merely making faces. This improbability, moreover, is most
marked in the tales which are designed to teach a lesson. A double
disadvantage is the result. The story is spoiled for the sake of the
moral; and the moral is lost by the grossly improbable nature of the
story. In the last novel Cooper wrote this is strikingly seen. He who
can credit the possibility of the events occurring that are told in "The
Ways of the Hour" must give up at the same time his belief in the maxim
that truth is stranger than fiction.

It has now become a conventional criticism of Cooper that his characters
are conventional. Such a charge can be admitted without seriously
disparaging the value of his work. In the kind of fiction to which his
writings belong, the persons are necessarily so subordinate to the
events that nearly all novelists of this class have been subjected to
this same criticism. So regularly is it made, indeed, that Scott when he
wrote a review of some of his own tales for the "Quarterly" felt obliged
to adopt it in speaking of himself. He describes his heroes as amiable,
insipid young men, the sort of pattern people that nobody cares a
farthing about. Untrue as this is of many of Scott's creations, (p. 278)
it is unquestionably true of the higher characters that Cooper
introduces. They are often described in the most laudatory terms; but it
is little they do that makes them worthy of the epithets with which they
are honored. Their talk is often of a kind not known to human society.
One peculiarity is especially noticeable. A stiffness, not to say an
appearance of affectation is often given to the conversation by the use
of _thou_ and _thee_. This was probably a survival in