eaguer
of Boston." The first edition had a preliminary title-page, which
contained the inscription, "Legends of the Thirteen Republics,"
followed by this quotation from Hamlet--

"I will fight with him upon this theme
Until my eyelids will no longer wag."

When the plan he had conceived was given up, this addition naturally
disappeared with it. Nothing that industry could do was spared by Cooper
to make this work a success. On this account as well as for its
reception by the public it stands in marked contrast to "The Spy." In
the preparation of it he studied historical authorities, he read state
papers, he pored over official documents of all kinds and degrees of
dreariness. To have his slightest assertions in accordance with fact,
he examined almanacs, and searched for all the contemporary reports as
to the condition of the weather. He visited Boston in order to go over
in person the ground he was to make the scene of his story. As a result
of all this labor he has furnished us an admirable description of the
engagement at Concord Bridge, of the running fight of Lexington, (p. 050)
and of the battle of Bunker's Hill. Of the last, it is, according to
the sufficient authority of Bancroft, the best account ever given. At
this point praise must stop. New England was always to Cooper an
ungenial clime, both as regards his creative activity and his critical
appreciation. The moment he touched its soil, his strength seemed to
abandon him. Whatever excellencies this particular work displayed,
they were not the excellencies of a novel. Accuracy of detail, even in
historical romance, is only a minor virtue. The modern reader is,
indeed, often inclined to doubt whether it is a virtue at all now that
modern research is constantly showing that so much we have been wont
to look upon as fact is nothing more than fable. So superior is the
imagination of man turning out to his memory that one is tempted to
fancy that instead of going to history for our fiction we shall yet
have to turn about and go to fiction for our history.

"Lionel Lincoln" is certainly one of Cooper's most signal failures. In
writing it he had attempted to do what it did not lie in the peculiar
nature of his powers to accomplish. It is the story of crime long hidden
from the knowledge of men, but dogging with unceasing activity the
memories of those concerned in it. But the secret chambers of the soul
into which the guilty man never looks willingly, Coope