The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

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Title: Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences

Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Release Date: April, 2002 [Etext #3172]
Last Updated: February 22, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FENIMORE COOPER OFFENCES ***

Produced by David Widger

FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES

by Mark Twain

The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer stand at the head of Cooper's
novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works
which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and
scenes even more thrilling. Not one can be compared with
either of them as a finished whole.

The defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight.
They were pure works of art.--Prof. Lounsbury.

The five tales reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention.
... One of the very greatest characters in fiction, Natty
Bumppo....

The craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper, all the
delicate art of the forest, were familiar to Cooper from his
youth up.--Prof. Brander Matthews.

Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction
yet produced by America.--Wilkie Collins.

It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English
Literature in Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and
Wilkie Collins to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature without having
read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep silent
and let persons talk who have read Cooper.

Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in 'Deerslayer,' and in the
restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences
against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.

There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of
romantic fiction--some say twenty-two. In Deerslayer Cooper violated
eighteen of them. These eighteen require:

1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arri