LIFE OF "WILSON. 
cxix 
" 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 candor 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 owniug 
the works of those authors, who had particularly attended to the classification 
and nomenclature of birds ; and his contempt of the labors of closet naturalists, 
whose dry descriptions convey anything but pleasure to that mind, which has 
been disciplined in the school of Nature. But the difficulties under which he 
labored 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 notions, on the course to be pursued 
by him, who would not only attain to knowledge, by the readiest means, but 
who would impart that knowledge, in the most effective manner, to others. 
As far as I can learn, he had access but to two systems of Ornithology — that 
of Linnseus, as translated by Dr. Turton, and the " General Synopsis" of Dr. 
Latham. f 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 regular order, 
according to the system adopted, it being his intention to publish as fast as the 
materials accumulated ; and he being in some measure compelled, by motives 
of economy, to apportion his figures to the space they would occupy in the 
plates, he thereby brings to our view, birds not only of different genera, but 
of different habits, associated in a manner not wholly unnatural, but abhorrent 
from the views of those systematists, wlio account every deviation from method 
an inexcusable fault. 
With the art of perspective, it would appear, he was imperfectly acquainted ; 
hence there are errors in his drawings, which the rigid critic cannot overlook. 
These errors occur most frequently in the feet and the tails of his birds, the 
latter of which, with the view of being characteristically displayed, are fre- 
quent distorted in a manner, which no expediency can justify. One can hardly 
forbear smiling at the want of correspondence between the figure of the Sharp- 
shinned Hawk, and the fence upon which it is mounted, the former, instead 
of appearing of the size of nature, for which the author intended it, absolutely 
assuming the bulk of an elephant. 
But notwithstanding these defects, there is a spirit in some of his drawings 
which is admirable. Having been taught drawing from natural models, he of 
course became familiar with natural attitudes : hence his superiority, in this 
* Johnson's Preface to Shakspcare. 
■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 Ornithology, and that was Bewick's 
British Birds. For the use of the first volume of Turton's Linnaius, he was indebted to 
the friendship of i\Ir. Thomas Say ; the Philadelphia Library supplied him with Latham. 
