Fenimore Cooper, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. "Elsie Venner" had scarcely made
its appearance at that date. Irving and Cooper were, on the other hand,
somewhat antiquated. Poe and Hawthorne were men of very peculiar genius,
and, however deep the impression they have produced on our literature,
they have never had, because they never can have, imitators. As for the
author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," she was a woman in the first place, and, in
the second place, she sufficiently filled the field she had selected. A
would-be novelist, therefore, possessed of ambition, and conscious of not
being his own father or grandfather, saw an untrodden space before him,
into which he must plunge without support and without guide. No wonder if,
at the outset, he was a trifle awkward and ill-at-ease, and, like a raw
recruit under fire, appeared affected from the very desire he felt to look
unconcerned. It is much to his credit that he essayed the venture at all;
and it is plain to be seen that, with each forward step he took, his self-
possession and simplicity increased. If time had been given him, there is
no reason to doubt that he might have been standing at the head of our
champions of fiction to-day.

But time was not given him, and his work, like all other work, if it is to
be judged at all, must be judged on its merits. He excelled most in
passages descriptive of action; and the more vigorous and momentous the
action, the better, invariably, was the description; he rose to the
occasion, and was not defeated by it. Partly for this reason, "Cecil
Dreeme," the most popular of his books, seems to me the least meritorious
of them all. The story has little movement; it stagnates round Chrysalis
College. The love intrigue is morbid and unwholesome, and the characters
(which are seldom Winthrop's strong point) are more than usually
artificial and unnatural. The _dramatis personae_ are, indeed, little more
than moral or immoral principles incarnate. There is no growth in them, no
human variableness or complexity; it is "Every Man in his Humor" over