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

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[95] the stage of tearing down. He belabored his fellow-Americans for having ceased to be English, and scolded the English for having remained as they were. As a result, he became equally unpopular in both countries. The London times called him “affected, offensive, curious, and ill-conditioned,” and Fraser's magazine, with a preference for the forcible substantive, pronounced him “a liar, a bilious braggart, a full jackass, an insect, a grub, and a reptile.” These tributes might have seemed to take the burden of reproof from American shoulders; yet it remained for an American, Park Benjamin, to do the best, or the worst, possible under the circumstances. In Greeley's New Yorker he called Cooper, with sweeping conclusiveness, “a superlative dolt, and a common mark of scorn and contempt of every wellinformed American.” Such criticism may safely be left to itself: Cooper was foolish enough to bring it into the courts and to spend much time and money in advertising his traducers. A far keener thrust, touching the very quick of Cooper's weakness, was Lowell's quiet remark: “Cooper has written six volumes to show he's as good as a lord.”