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. But this detail also
has been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.