SOURCE: "Discourse on the Life, Genius, and Writings of J. Fenimore Cooper," in Precaution: A Novel by J. Fenimore Cooper, D. Appleton and Company, 1881, pp. v-xli.

In the excerpt below, from the text of a lecture delivered in 1852 at a Public Memorial Meeting in honor of Cooper, Bryant surveys Cooper's career and assesses its significance.

It is now somewhat more than a year since the friends of JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, in this city, were planning to give a public dinner in his honor. It was intended as an expression both of the regard they bore him personally, and of the pride they took in the glory his writings had reflected on the American name. We thought of what we should say in his hearing; in what terms, worthy of him and of us, we should speak of the esteem in which we held him, and...