Melville it was who found a truly new mold for historical romance, but he did not do so until his career as a fictionalist was nearly over. He began writing fiction during the '40s, the decade when Scott was suffering a sea change from live literary model to Victorian classic. Although the historical romance continued to be a popular literary genre with the reading public, it no longer presented the fresh challenge and opportunity it had to the preceding generation of American writers. This is not to suggest that young Melville owed nothing to Scott, much less that he was indifferent to the example of Scott's greatest American disciples. The works of Cooper, wrote Melville in 1852, “are among the earliest I can remember, as in my boyhood producing a vivid and awakening power upon my mind … [Cooper] possessed not the slightest weaknesses but those which are only noticeable as the almost infallible indices of pervading greatness.” Thomas Philbrick's study of the thematic and imagistic relationships between Moby Dick and The Sea Lions shows that the “awakening power” of Cooper's example extended well beyond Melville's boyhood imagination.