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 Collies 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 arrive somewhere. But the
Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air.

2. They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of
the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the Deerslayer tale is
not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes
have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to
develop.

3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in
the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the
corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in
the Deerslayer tale.

4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive,
shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. B