newspaper attacks upon Cooper. If he had never meddled with questions of
government on either side of the Atlantic, and never satirized the
newspaper press, I have little doubt that he would have been spared these
attacks. I cannot, however, ascribe them all, or even the greater part of
them, to personal malignity. One journal followed the example of another,
with little reflection, I think, in most cases, till it became a sort of
fashion, not merely to decry his works, but to arraign his motives.

It is related that, in 1832, while he was at Paris, an article was shown
him in an American newspaper, purporting to be a criticism on one of his
works, but reflecting with much asperity on his personal character. "I
care nothing," he is reported to have said, "for the criticism, but I am
not indifferent to the slander. If these attacks on my character should be
kept up five years after my return to America, I shall resort to the New
York courts for protection." He gave the newspaper press of this state the
full period of forbearance on which he had fixed, but finding that
forbearance seemed to encourage assault, he sought redress in the courts
of law.

When these litigations were first begun, I recollect it seemed to me that
Cooper had taken a step which would give him a great deal of trouble, and
effect but little good. I said to myself--

"Alas! Leviathan is not so tamed!"

As he proceeded, however, I saw that he had understood the matter better
than I. He put a hook into the nose of this huge monster, wallowing in his
inky pool and bespattering the passers-by; he dragged him to the land and
made him tractable. One suit followed another; one editor was sued, I
thinly half-a-dozen times; some of them found themselves under a second