Remarks on Audubon's Biography of Birds. 215 



Art. V. On the " Biography of Birds" of J. «/. Audubon. 

 By Charles Waterton, Esq. 



" Quis novus hie nostris successit sedibus hospes ?" Virgil. 



Say who advances to our door, 



With face unknown, from foreign shore ? 



Mr. P. Hunter having requested (p. 83.) that the works 

 of Mr. Audubon may be allowed to speak for themselves; 

 and Professor Rennie, in his " Plan of Study," having de- 

 sired the public to read those works ; I beg permission to say 

 a word or two on the light in which I see them. 



The professor never would have recommended the works 

 of this foreigner to the British reader, — he never would have 

 classed them with those of our worthies, such as Ray and 

 White, — unless he had entertained a very exalted notion of 

 their excellence. Indeed, a gentleman of his never-ceasing 

 application to books cannot fail to be a competent judge of 

 literary merit. Still, I own that I do not see Mr. Audubon's 

 merit as a writer exactly in the same light as that in which 

 the professor sees it ; and, if I have drawn my conclusions 

 from false premises, I trust that either the professor, or some 

 one from the extensive circle of Mr. Audubon's admiring 

 friends, will kindly show me where my error lies. 



Without leaving behind him in America any public reput- 

 ation as a naturalist, Mr. Audubon comes to England, and 

 he is immediately pointed out to us as an ornithological 

 luminary of the first magnitude. Strange it is, that he, who 

 had been under such a dense cloud of obscurity in his own 

 western latitude, should have broken out so suddenly into 

 such dazzling radiance, the moment he approached our 

 eastern island. I ask, what production of Mr. Audubon's is 

 it that has called forth such rapturous applauses from our 

 naturalists, who, not content with their own prostration, 

 would fain persuade the public to bow submissive to the 

 stranger ? His drawings are out of the question, they being 

 solely a work of art. Can it be his paper on the habits of 

 the Fultur Aura, which was written to prove that this bird 

 has hitherto been allowed sadly too much nose ? No : that 

 production is lamentably faulty at almost every point. Its 

 grammar is bad ; its composition poor ; and its statements 

 are so unsatisfactory, that, in my opinion, any person who 

 reads the paper with any moderate share of attention will 

 feel inclined to condemn it to the same kind of fate as that to 

 which the curate and the barber condemned the greater part 

 of Don Quixote's library. 



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