Retrospective Criticism. 237 



plates before me, I can well believe the fact. He must have 

 lived with a note-book in his pocket and a pencil in his hand. 

 Nothing short of such a period, and of such enthusiasm, could 

 have achieved what he has done." [I. 50.] Now hear Audu- 

 bon himself, in the introductory address of his Biography of 

 Birds, 1831 : — " For a period of nearly twenty years, my life 

 was a succession of vicissitudes. I tried various branches of 

 commerce, but they all proved unprofitable, doubtless because 

 my whole mind was ever filled with my passion for rambling 

 and admiring those objects of nature, from which alone I 

 received the purest gratification." So much for a residence 

 of twenty-five years in the woods of America. 



Now, let us see by Mr. Audubon's own avowal, how much 

 time it required to complete the four hundred designs, con- 

 taining nearly two thousand figures. See Cuvier's report to 

 the Royal Academy of Sciences, Paris, to be found at the end 

 of the Biography of Birds. " An accident," says Audubon in 

 the Introductory Address, " happened to two hundred of my 

 original drawings. A pair of Norway rats had taken posses- 

 sion of the whole, and had reared a young family amongst the 

 gnawed bits of paper, which but a few months before repre- 

 sented nearly a thousand inhabitants of the air." Mr. Audu- 

 bon, in the space of three years, replaced this loss with drawings 

 better executed. " I felt pleased," he assures us, " that I might 

 now make much better drawings than before, and ere a period 

 not exceeding three years had elapsed, I had filled my port- 

 folio again." Here then we have a distinct avowal that Mr. 

 Audubon finished nearly one thousand of his birds in the space 

 of three years. 



His whole work is only to contain two thousand. 



Swainson's review came out in the year 1828, and Audu- 

 bon's Biography of Birds appeared in 1831. Surely, then, 

 there was time enough in the interval for Audubon to have 

 pointed out to Swainson how egregiously he had miscalculated 

 the time necessary to complete the drawings. In lieu, how- 

 ever, of taking such a necessary step, we find Audubon, in his 

 Introductory Address, referring his readers to Swainson's un- 

 fortunate review. He says, " as one of the first ornitholo- 

 gists of the age, who kindly reviewed a few numbers of the 

 plates, has spoken upon this subject in a manner which I 

 cannot here use, I refer you to his observations. The 

 name of Swainson is doubtless known to you." But lest 

 the reader should not have been sufficiently incited by Au- 

 dubon to peruse this review [I. 43 — 52] by Swainson in 

 1828, your correspondent B., in 1835, refers [VIII. 184.] 

 your readers to it. I, for one, have perused it, and I do not 



