Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/367

Rh the king. He died on the 12th February 1841, at the age of seventy-three. He was interred, by his own desire, beneath the chapel of Guy s Hospital ; and a statue by Bailey was erected to his memory in St Paul s Cathedral.

1em  COOPER, (1808-1866), the historian of Cambridge, was born at Great Marlow, 20th March 1808, being descended from a family formerly settled at Bray, Berkshire. Ha received his education at a private school in Reading. la 1826 he fixed his residence afc Cambridge, and in 1836 was elected coroner of the borough. Four years later he was admitted a solicitor, and in course of time he acquired an extensive practice, but his taste and inclination ultimately led him to devote almost the whole of his time to literary research, and especially the elucidation of the history of the university of Cambridge. In 1849 he resigned the office of borough coroner on being elected to the town-clerkship, which he retained till his death on March 21, 1866. His earliest production, A New Guide to the University and Toivn of Cambridge, was published anonymously in 1831. The Annals of Cambridge followed, in 4 vols. 8vo, 1842-52, containing a chronological history of the university and town from the earliest period to the year 1849. His most important work, the Athena? Cantabrigienses, a companion work to the famous Athena? Oxonienses of Anthony a Wood, contains biographical memoirs of the authors and other men of eminence who were educated at the university of Cambridge. The work has not been completed; only two volumes have been published (in 1858 and 1861), embracing the period between 1500 and 1609. Cooper s other works are The Memorials of Cambridge, 3 vols. 1858-66, and a Memoir of Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby, 1874, a posthumous publication. He was a constant contributor to Notes and Queries, the Gentleman s Magazine, and other antiquarian publications, and left an immense collection of MS. materials for a biographical history of Great Britain and Ireland.  COOPER, (1789-1851), an American novelist, was born at Burlington, New Jersey, on the 15th .September 1789. Reared in the wild country round the Otsego Lake, on the yet unsettled estates of his father, a judge and member of Congress, he was sent to school at Albany and at New Haven, and entered Yale College in his thirteenth year, remaining for some time the youngest student on the rolls. Three years afterwards he joined the United States navy ; but after making a voyage or two in a merchant vessel, to perfect himself in seamanship, and obtaining his lieutenancy, he married and resigned his commission (1811). He settled for a while at Westchester, the &quot;Neutral Ground&quot; of his earliest American romance, and produced anonymously (1819) his first book, Precau tion, a novel of the fashionable school. This was followed (1 821) by The Spy, which was very successful at the date of issue ; The Pioneers, the first of the &quot; Leatherstocking &quot; series ; and The Pilot (1823), a bold and dashing sea-story. The next was Lionel Lincoln (1825), a feeble and unattractive work ; and this was succeeded in 1826 by the famous Last of the Mohicans, a book that is often quoted as its author s masterpiece. Quitting America for Europe he published at Paris The Prairie (1826), the best of his books in nearly all respects, and The Red Rover, by no means his worst. At this period the unequal and uncertain talent of Cooper would seem to have been at its best. These excel lent novels were, however, succeeded by one very inferior, The Wept of Wish-ton-Wuh (1827); by The Notions of a Travelling Bachelor (1828), an uninteresting book; and by The Watenvitch (1830), one of the poorest of his many sea-stories. In 1830 he entered the lists as a party writer, defending in a series of letters to the National, a Parisian journal, the United States against a string of charges brought against them by the Revue Britanniyue ; and for the rest of his life he continued skirmishing in print, sometimes for the national interest, sometimes for that of the individual, and not infrequently for both at once. This opportunity of making a political confession of faith appears not only to have fortified him in his own convic tions, but to have inspired him with the idea of imposing them on the public through the medium of his art. His next three novels, The Bravo (1831), The Heidenmauer (1832), and The Headman of Berne (1833), were designed to exalt the people at the expense of the aristocracy. Of these the first is by no means a bad story, but the others are among the dullest ever written ; all were widely read on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1833 Cooper returned to America, and immediately published A Letter to my Countrymen, in which he gave his own version of the controversy he had been engaged in, and passed some sharp censure on his compatriots for their share in it. This attack he followed up with lite Monikins and The American Democrat (1835) ; with several sets of notes on his travels and experiences in Europe, among which may be remarked his England (1837), in three volumes, a burst of vanity and ill-temper;, and with Homeivard Bound, and Home as Found (1838),. noticeable as containing a highly idealized portrait of him self. All these books tended to increase the ill-feeling between author and public ; the press was virulent and scandalous in its comments, and Cooper plunged at once into a series of actions for libel. Victorious in all of them, he returned to his old occupation with something of his old vigour and success. A Naval History of the United States. (1839), supplemented (1846) by a set of Lives of Distin guished American Naval Officers, was succeeded by The Pathfinder, a good &quot;Leatherstocking&quot; novel; by Mercedes of Castile, and The Deer slayer (1841) ; by The Two- Admirals, and by Wing and Wing (1842); by Wyandotte, The History of a Pocket Handkerchief, and Neio Myers (1843) ; and by Afloat and Ashore, and Miles Wallingford (1844). From pure fiction, however, he turned again to the combination of art and controversy in which he had achieved distinction, and in the three Littlepage Stories (1845-6) he fought with a great deal of vigour. His next novel was The Crater, or Vulcan s Peak (1847), in which he attempted to introduce supernatural machinery with indifferent success ; and this was succeeded by Oak Openings and Jack Tier (1848), the latter a curious rifacimento of The Red Rover; by The Sea Lions (1849); and finally by The Ways of the Hour (1850), another novel with a purpose, and his last book. He died of dropsy at Coopers- town, New York, in his sixty-second year. Cooper was certainly one of the most popular authors that have ever written. His stories have been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe and into some of those of Asia, and are even now found worthy the honours of a cheap reprint. Balzac admired him greatly, but with discrimination ; Victor Hugo pronounced him greater than the great master of modern romance, and this verdict was echoed by a multitude of inferior readers, who wero satisfied with no title for their favourite less than that of &quot; the American Scott.&quot; As a satirist and observer he is simply the &quot; Cooper who s written six volumes to prove he s as good as a Lord &quot; of Lowell s clever portrait ; his enormous vanity and his irritability find vent in a sort of dull violence, which is exceedingly tiresome. It is only as a novelist that he deserves consideration. His qualities are not those of the great masters of fiction ; but he had 