Burns — On Alexander Wilson. 167 



which he altered in 1825. It also appeared separately in a 

 thin 8vo. book dated 1828 and published by Harrison Hall; 

 a reprint or separate of the 1828-1829, "Ord," or "Collins" 

 edition of Wilson's Ornithology — of which the 1817 and 1878 

 Porter and Coates' editions are fac-simile. Despite its many 

 faults, Ord's "Sketch of the Life of Alexander Wilson" is 

 the chief source of American data for later biographies ; and 

 with the modest prefix to an 1816 edition of his early poems, 

 now exceedingly rare, ascribed to Thomas Crichton ; and sepa- 

 rately at greater length in 1819, originally appearing in the 

 Weaver's Ma.'2:azine and Literary Companion of the same 

 year ; formed almost all the knowledge of subsequent writers. 

 "Good old Thomas Crichton," as some of Wilson's biogra- 

 phers called him. was an old Paisley schoolmaster friend, hon- ^ 

 est and true. His first paper was entitled C Account of Life__ ' . 

 and Writings," and his second "Biographical Sketches of the ^t*'^^ -f ^ 

 Late Alexander Wilson." The Belfast edition of 1844 m-CK^ Y,^(- *, 

 forms us that the 181G edition was published by Hugh Crich-/W/^''' ' ^fV • 

 ton, bookseller, Paisley, and edited by Dr. Whyte, who, dying 

 before the work was far advanced in the press, it was com- 

 pleted by Dr. Robert Watt, his partner in business. 



In 1831, Rev. Dr. W. M. Hetherington contributed a 

 "Memoir" for Jameson's edition of Wilson's American Orni- 

 thology ; and a year later Sir William Jardine's edition con- 

 tained "a life," the facts of which were mainly if not wholly 

 derived from earlier writers, and superior in many ways to 

 most of the later productions. 



William Peabody's "Life of Wilson," published in 1839, 

 can be had for a trifle — my copy cost me twenty cents. He 

 cbmments specifically and at length on the ornithological writ- 

 ings of Wilson, but offers no new material. Of the shorter 

 sketches, William Anderson's brief notice in The Popular 

 Scotish Biography, 1842, is one of the best. In 1844, John 

 Henderson brought out "The Political Works of Alexander 

 Wilson : also his Miscellaneous Prose Writings, Journals, Let- 

 ters, Essays, etc.," with an extended memoir of his life and 

 writings said to be by Thomas Smith Hutchinson, though the 



