Note 40 — THE EARLY NOVELS OF JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1821–1831)

Erskine, p. 81. “A beautiful conception of old-world grace and courtliness, which Cooper must have drawn with affection,” Erskine remarks, “yet with all of Montcalm’s adroitness, his management of the Indians and his tact in treating with a conquered foe—the reader is made to feel the moral slipperiness which the hearty Englishman resents with a national distrust of French traditional perfidy.”