Excerpt from American Prose Masters: Cooper Hawthorne Emerson Poe Lowell Henry James The literary standard of his countrymen is undoubt edly far higher than it was in Cooper's own day. No writer at present With a tenth of his ability would com mit his literary faults - faults for Which the standard of his day is largely responsible, since it was oblivious to them and since they are precisely those which any Widely accepted standard would automatically correct. In other words, Cooper wrote as well as, and builded better than, any one required of him - and though genius, ao: hypothesi, escapes the operation of evolutionary law, literary or any other artistic expression is almost as much a matter of supply and demand as railroads or any other means of communication; the demand, that is, produces, controls, and gives its character to the supply. The theory that art is due to artists leaves the origin of artists unexplained. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.