lO AI.KXANDER WII^ON : POE^-NATURAUST 



of Princeton University, the Library of Congress and 

 the Pennsylvania Historical Society, to whom I take 

 this opportunity of expressing my obligations. 



To those who shall take the trouble to read this 

 biography, I feel that there is no need to make an ex- 

 cuse for its publication. The life of this self-educated 

 Scotch weaver, who became the distinguished Ameri- 

 can scientist, justifies the telHng by its interest, but the 

 significance of the man's work gives to the record of 

 the life its real importance. He was the first, as he is 

 still among the greatest, of those who have thought 

 the study of our American birds of enough importance 

 to make it a life work, and as a man of letters he 

 has a significance also. He stands with Freneau at 

 the very fountain-head of that branch of American 

 literature which still forms so important a part in our 

 letters, the poetry of nature. Between Wilson and 

 Philip Freneau, however, there is this difference — 

 the son of Princeton represents the poets who give us 

 impressions of nature while Wilson belongs to the 

 number of those who simply paint nature as it is; 

 the one is chiefly subjective, the other, objective. 



What this monograph attempts is to give a fuller 

 record of the man's life than has hitherto been written, 

 and a real picture of the man himself; to show the 

 conditions which made Wilson the kind of man that 

 he was; to secure for him some consideration as a 

 man of letters — historically considered; to clear for- 

 ever the fair name of Thomas Jefferson from the 

 charges of discourtesy and carelessness to science which 

 the early biographers of Wilson brought, and by re- 

 printing a few of the poems to give the reader an op- 

 portunity to secure a first-hand acquaintance with 

 some of the better of Wilson's verses. 



^ The study of conditions in Scotland during the 

 eighteenth century will be, perhaps, as interesting to 



