Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[99] and where they led the way, the best literary practice has followed. The Edinburgh Review was severe upon him for his accurate descriptions of costume and localities, declared that they were “an epilepsy of the fancy” and maintained that a vague general account would have been far better. “Why describe the dress and appearance of an Indian chief, down to his tobacco-stopper and button-holes?” It now turns out that this very habit has made Cooper's Indian a permanent and distinct figure in literature, while the so — called Indians of his predecessor, Charles Brockden Brown, were merely shadowy and unreal. “Poetry or romance,” continued the Edinburgh Review, “does not descend into the particulars.” Yet Balzac, a far higher authority, and one who handled the details of buttons and tobacco pipes as fearlessly as Cooper, said of The Pathfinder, “Never did the art of writing tread closer upon the art of the pencil. This is the school of study for literary landscape painters.” He says elsewhere: “If Cooper had succeeded in the painting of character to the same extent that he did in the painting of the phenomena of nature, he would ”