Cooper as a Litigant. — Owing to Mark Twain, James Fenimore Cooper is enjoying a late resurrec tion. Comment on his career is not exactly a cur rent topic, but it may pass as a " preserved " current. Mark Twain makes merry over Leatherstocking's marvelous skill in hitting the painted head of a nail at the distance of a hundred yards, with a rifle ball, and attributes to him the ocular properties which Sam Weller disclaimed in court on the Bardell-Pickwick trial. But it is indisputable that there are now and always have been plenty of marksmen who could hit anything that they can see, at that distance; and now comes Mr. Seymour Van Santwood, a lawyer of Troy, N. Y., who testifies, in the " Troy Times," that he knows by experiment, that he can see a whitepainted ordinary nail-head at that distance, although he modestly admits that he could not hit it. Despite Mark Twain, Leatherstocking will long remain " one of the prize-men in fiction," as Thack eray called him. In that famous death-scene of Col onel Newcome, so much cited and admired, where the Colonel exclaims, ' • Adsum! " Thackeray un questionably cribbed from Cooper, who had previ ously made Leatherstocking, in the death-scene in The Prairie," exclaim " Here! " The resemblance is too close to have been accidental, and Thackeray was always a devout admirer of Cooper's work. It is not generally known by this generation who know not James, that he was one of the sturdiest lit igants who ever flourished in the State of New York. He was continually suing the newspapers for intem perate criticisms of his novels and his " Naval His tory," and of himself under guise of such criticisms. It must be admitted that the criticisms in question were very savage, and that the newspapers in his time were fully as violent and partisan as they now are; but it is apparent that Cooper had not learned the art of regarding such criticisms as good advertise ments, and submitting to them if not welcoming them, as the later writers have done (always except ing Charles Reade), on account of the enhanced sales which they never fail to bring to their literary wares. Cooper's slander or libel suits are reported in no less than five volumes of New York reports, and they af ford amusing reading. In Cooper v. Greeley and McElrath, I Denio, 347 (1845), the novelist sued the proprietors of the " New York Tribune," for stating that he would not be likely to bring a libel suit, which he had begun against them, to trial "in New York, for we are known here, nor in Otsego, for he is known there.' The court held this last expression libellous on demurrer. The original libel suit, as we infer from this report, grew out of still another libel suit, which he had brought against Thurlow Weed, and which was tried at Fonda, which Weed had tried to postpone on account of illness in his family, which
resulted in an inquest and judgment for $400, and in relation to which the "Tribune" people had said playfully : " Knowing what we positively did and do of the severe illness of the wife of Mr. Weed, and the dangerous state of his eldest daughter, at the time of the Fonda trials in question — the jokes attempted to be cut by Fenimore over their condition, his talk of the story growing up from one girl to the mother and three or four daughters, his fun about their prob ably having the Asiatic cholera among them, or some other contagious disease, etc., etc. — however it may have sounded to others, did seem to us rather inhu — hallo there! We had like to put our foot right into it again, after all our tuition." The " Tribune " people, in their plea in this case, averred that Cooper, being known to the inhabitants of Otsego, had acquired "the reputation of a proud, captious, censorious, ar bitrary, dogmatical, malicious, illiberal, revengeful, and litigious man," and was " in bad repute " there, and that was all they meant by the words sued for! Seward appeared for the defendants. Those were the days when the philosopher Greeley, the humani tarian Seward, and the party manager Weed were very friendly and harmonious, loving one another's friends and hating one another's enemies. Jewett, J., required nine pages of print to convince himself and the court that the publication was libellous. It seems that Cooper had brought separate suits against the proprietors and the editors of the " Even ing Journal," for the libel referred to above, for in 2 Howard's Practice Reports, 40, is reported an unsuc cessful motion to consolidate them. On this motion the famous Nicholas Hill, Junior, appeared as coun sel for Cooper, and Marcus T. Reynolds for Weed. R. Cooper was Cooper's attorney. In 1840, was reported the case of Cooper v. Bar ber, 24 Wendell, 105. The defendant, as editor of the "Otsego Republican," had published an article from the " Chenango Telegraph," averring that "This gentleman, not satisfied with having drawn down upon his head universal contempt from abroad, has done the same thing for himself at Cooperstown, where he resides." Barber added some remarks of his own about a controversy between Cooper and some other Cooperstowners in relation to Three-Mile Point, a piece of land projecting into Otsego Lake. There was a verdict for plaintiff, and the Supreme Court now denied a new trial. Here Bronson, J., observed : "Good morals, as well as the law, forbid that the addition of some truth should be deemed a palliation of the wrong of publishing a libel." The European contempt referred to probably grew out of Cooper's patriotic Naval History. In 1840, in Cooper v. Stone, 24 Wendell, 434, we find the report of a libel suit against the editor of the "New York Commercial Advertiser," for criticisms
