LIFE OFVILSON. 



friends, who have been in the habit of regarding him as one 

 possessing no small claim to the inspiration of the Muses. But 

 let such remember the determination of a profound critic, that 

 "no question can be more innocently discussed than a dead 

 poet's pretensions to renown; and little regard is due to that 

 bigotry which sets candour higher than truth."* 



When Wilson commenced the publication of his History of 

 the Birds of the United States, he was quite a novice in the 

 study of the Science of Ornithology. This arose from two causes: 

 his poverty, which prevented him from owning the works of 

 those authors, who had particularly attended to the classification 

 and nomenclature of birds; and his contempt of the labours of 

 closet naturalists, whose dry descriptions convey any thing but 

 pleasure to that mind, which has been disciplined in the school 

 of Nature. But the difficulties under which he laboured soon 

 convinced him of the necessity of those helps, which only books 

 can supply; and his repugnance to systems, as repulsive as they 

 are at the first view, gradually gave place to more enlarged no- 

 tions, on the course to be pursued by him, who would not only 

 attain to knowledge, by the readiest means, but who would im- 

 part that knowledge, in the most effective manner, to others. 



As far as I can learn, he had access but to two systems of Or- 

 nithology that of Linneus, as translated by Dr. Turton, and 

 the " General Synopsis" of Dr. Latham, t The arrangement of 

 the latter he adopted in his " General Index" of Land Birds, 

 appended to the sixth volume; and he intended to pursue the 

 same system for the Water Birds, at the conclusion of his work. 



The nature of his plan prevented him from proceeding in re- 

 gular order, according to the system adopted, it being his inten- 



* Johnson's Preface to Shakspeare. 



f The library of Wilson occupied but a small space. On casting my eyes, 

 after his decease, over the ten or a dozen volumes of which it was composed, 

 I was grieved to find that he had been the owner of only one work on Ornitho- 

 logy, and that was Bewick's British Birds. For the use of the first volume of 

 Turton's Linneus, he was indebted to the friendship of Mr. Thomas Say; the 

 Philadelphia Library supplied liim with Latham. 



