CHAPTER VIII 

 wii^son's IvITe^rary writings 



Like many another man whose fame was made 

 by his prose works, Alexander Wilson began his 

 literary life as a writer of verse. He will always 

 be remembered as an author chiefly by his vigor- 

 ous, idiomatic prose, which made such a fitting 

 accompaniment to the faithful, lifelike drawings 

 of his "American Ornithology." There was a 

 vivacious picturesqueness about his descriptions, 

 and a lightness of touch, which lifted them above 

 mere scientific writings and established for them 

 a claim to be considered as literature. He loved 

 the birds which he studied, with the intense feel- 

 ing of his strong Scotch nature, and when he made 

 them the subject of his pen, whether in the realm 

 of prose or of poetry, his enthusiasm carried him 

 as though on the borrowed wings of his feathered 

 friends to heights he could never reach when he 

 wrote upon a different theme. 



The ''Ornithology" is written in a popular 

 rather than a scientific style ; indeed of Wilson it 

 may be said that Hke Thoreau he was a poet- 

 naturaHst rather than a scientist. His birds are 

 living creatures of the woods, not dried specimens 

 from museums. Real descriptions of birds that 

 he had actually known and watched are what he 

 rejoiced in writing, not abstract generalizations 

 from the facts and figures which he had collected. 

 He gave these, too, but not with the same evident 



