i72 LIFE OP AUDUBON. 



me, and correct my manuscripts for two guineas per sheet of 

 sixteen pages, and I that day began to write the first volume. 



" A few days after I began writing on the Biography, it was 

 known in Edinburgh that I had arrived, and Professors Jameson, 

 Graham, and others whom I had known, called on me ; and I 

 found at the ' fourteenth hour,' that no less than three editions 

 of ' Wilson's Ornithology ' were about to be published, one by 

 Jameson, one by Sir W. Jardine, and another by a Mr. Brown. 

 Most persons would probably have been discouraged by this 

 information, but it only had a good effect on me, because since 

 I have been in England I have studied the character of English- 

 men as carefully as I studied the birds in America. And I 

 know full well, that in England novelty is always in demand, 

 and that if a thing is well known it will not receive much 

 support. Wilson has had his day, thought I to myself, and now 

 is my time. I will write, and I will hope to be read ; and not 

 only so, but I will push my publication with such unremitting 

 vigour, that my book shall come before the public before 

 Wilson's can be got out. 



" Writing now became the order of the day. I sat at it as 

 soon as I awoke in the morning, and continued the whole long 

 day, and so full was my mind of birds and their habits, that in 

 my sleep I continually dreamed of birds. I found Mr. McGillivray 

 equally industrious, for although he did not rise so early in the 

 morning as I did, he wrote much later at night (this I am told 

 is a characteristic of all great writers) ; and so the manuscripts 

 went on increasing in bulk, like the rising of a stream after 

 abundant rains, and before three months had passed the first 

 volume was finished. Meanwhile your mother copied it all to 

 send to America, to secure the copyright there. 



" I made an arrangement with Mr. Patrick Neill, the printer, 

 who undertook the work, for I was from necessity my own 

 publisher. I offered this famous book to two booksellers, neither 

 of whom woxild give me a shilling for it, and it was fortunate 

 that they would not ; and most happy is the man who can, as I 

 did, keep himself independent of that class of men called the 

 ' gentlemen of the trade.' Poor Wilson, how happy he would 

 have been, if he had had it in his power to bear the expenses of 

 his own beautiful work ! 



