clxxviii 
LIFE OF WILSON. 
friends, who have been in the habit of regarding him as one 
possessing no small claim to the inspiration of the Muses. But 
let such remember the determination of a profound critic, that 
‘‘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 candour 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 owning the works of 
those authors, who had particularly attended to the classification 
and nomenclature of birds; and his contempt of the labours of 
closet naturalists, whose dry descriptions convey any thing but 
pleasure to that mind, which has been disciplined in the school 
of Nature. But the difficulties under which he laboured soon 
^.onvinced 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 no- 
tions, on the course to be pursued by him, who vt^ould not only 
attain to knowledge, by the readiest means, but who would im- 
part that knowledge, in the most effective manner, to others. 
As far as I can learn, he had access but to two systems of Or- 
nithology — that of Linneus, as translated by Dr. Turton, and 
the “General Synopsis” of Dr. Latham, t 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 re- 
gular order, according to the system adopted, it being his inten- 
* Johnson’s Preface to Shakspeare. 
•j- The library of AVilson occupied but a small space. On casting- my e3^es, 
after Ills 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 Ornitho- 
logy, and that was Bewick’s British Birds. For the use of the first volume of 
Turton’s Linneus, he was indebted to the friendsliip of Mr. Thomas Say; the 
Phlladelpliia Library supplied him witli Latham. 
