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Show - ' :.: : Literary Pioneers. 'j Polite literature, so far as this coun- (: try Is concerned, undoubtedlv has ita fountainhead In the writings 'of Wash-, ington Irving: but the first literature! to have the positive American smack and flavor were tho novels of J FeFfT more Cooper. Cooper's novels yere Ji-i revelation to tho old world of the facrj that In the new world a fresh vein had I been struck, something that was aa much American as Dante was mediaeval me-diaeval or Virgil and Cicero classical. I it is not too much to call Cooper the ' Columbus of American literature Charles Brockden Brown. a much greater genius than Cooper, approach- i ing In the subtlety of his intellect tho I greatest of the ancients, was prevent- 1 ed by his morbidity and introspective- ' ness from gaining the palm which Si passed to the author of the "Deer- slayer" and the "Pathfinder." d |