this failure, by supposing the defect to arise from the author's want
of skill, and, probably, many readers may not be inclined to look
farther. But as the author himself can scarcely be supposed willing to
acquiesce in this final cause, if any other can be alleged, he has
been led to suspect, that, contrary to what he originally supposed,
his subject was injudiciously chosen, in which, and not in his mode of
treating it, lay the source of the want of success.

The manners of a rude people are always founded on nature, and
therefore the feelings of a more polished generation immediately
sympathize with them. We need no numerous notes, no antiquarian
dissertations, to enable the most ignorant to recognize the sentiments
and diction of the characters of Homer; we have but, as Lear says, to
strip off our lendings--to set aside the factitious principles and
adornments which we have received from our comparatively artificial
system of society, and our natural feelings are in unison with those
of the bard of Chios and the heroes who live in his verses. It is the
same with a great part of the narratives of my friend Mr. Cooper. We
sympathize with his Indian chiefs and back-woodsmen, and acknowledge,
in the characters which he presents to us, the same truth of human
nature by which we should feel ourselves influenced if placed in the
same condition. So much is this the case, that, though it is
difficult, or almost impossible, to reclaim a savage, bred from his
youth to war and the chase, to the restraints and the duties of
civilized life, nothing is more easy or common than to find men who
have been educated in all the habits and comforts of improved society,
willing to exchange them for the wild labours of the hunter and the
fisher. The very amusements most pursued and relished by men of all
ranks, whose constitutions permit active exercise, are hunting,
fishing, and, in some instances, war, the natural and necessary