INTRODUCTION 11 
genius of the man, surmounting every difficulty and dis- 
couragement of the author, had found and claimed its 
own. . .. Audubon and his work were one; he lived 
in his work, and in his work will live forever.” ® 
There is no doubt that Audubon regarded an honest 
man as the quintessence of God’s works, and though he 
sometimes set down statements which do not square 
with known facts, this was often the result of lax habits, 
or of saying what was uppermost in his mind without 
retrospection or analysis. When memory failed or 
when more piquancy and color were needed, he may 
have been too apt to resort to varnish, but for every- 
thing written on the spot his mind was as truth-telling 
as his pictures. In considering the good intent of the 
man, his extraordinary capacity for taking pains, and 
his vast accomplishments, criticism on this score seems 
rather captious. On the other hand, when it came to 
dealing with his own early life, that was a subject upon 
which he reserved the right to speak according to his 
judgment, and in a way which will be considered later. 
Audubon left England to settle his family finally 
in America in the autumn of 1839, when he was fifty- 
four years old, and since he lived but twelve years 
longer, probably few are now living who retain more 
than a childish memory of his appearance in advanced 
age. Many Londoners will recall an odd character, an 
aged print dealer who used to sit alone, like a hoary 
spider in its web, in his little shop in Great Russel 
Street, close to the British Museum, and another of 
similar type, who may still haunt a better known land- 
mark, the old ‘“‘naturalist’s shop” in Oxford Street, not 
far from Tottenham Court Road and but a min- 
3 Elliott Coues, Key to North American Birds, 4th ed., p. xxi (Boston, 
1890). 
