Alexander
Wilson

POET - JN ATU R AL I ST

James SoxjTHALLWiLSON

THE LIBRARY
OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

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ALEXANDER WILSON

POET-NATURALIST

From an oil painting by Peale.
The property of tlie American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia.

FRONTISPIECE

ALEXANDER WILSON

POET-NATURALIST

A STUDY OF HIS LIFE
WITH SELECTED POEMS

By JAMES SOUTHALL WILSON, Ph. D.

Assistant Professor in the Department of English and History
at the College of IVilliam and Mary

Wild Fancy formed him for fantastic flight,
He loved the steep's high summit to explore,
To watch the splendor of the orient bright,
The dark deep forest, and the sea-beat shore."

" The Solitary Tutor.

New York and Washington

THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY

1906

Copyright, 1906
By JAMES SOUTHALL WILSON

TO ONE WHOSE PRESENCE GAVE TO THE
PAST, IMMORTALITY; THE MEMORY OF WHOM
MAKES SWEET THE PRESENT, AND FROM
WHOSE FAITH THE FUTURE HAS BORROWED
ITS HOPE, THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED.

MK^'^mi

CONTENTS

Page
Preface, 9

Chronoeogy, 13

Chapter I — Scotland in the Eighteenth

Century, 17

II — Wilson's Early Years in

Scotland, 39

III — New Life in a New Land, ... 53
IV — The Making of an American, 63
V — Wilson and Contemporary

Americans, 74

VI — The Completion of the Orni-
thology, 92

VII — Wilson, the Man, 117

VIII — Wilson's Literary Writings, 128

Bibliography, 151

Selected Poems —

The American Blue-bird, 157

The Osprey, 159

The Invitation 161

The Solitary Tutor, 166

Watty and Meg, 172

PREFACE

A pleasant task is finished ; a heavy burden has been
laid aside. These are the conflicting feelings that one
must needs experience who has completed the writing
of a book. Though there have been no ties of con-
sanguinity between the subject of this monograph and
its writer, yet there has been much to make the work
of real interest, and however tedious the labor has
sometimes grown, the remembrance of the tireless en-
ergy and self-devotion of the spirit over whose life I
was working has still nerved me for fresh endeavor.

The undertaking of this task was suggested to me
by one whose ripe experience and discrimination was
to me a sufficient guarantee that the work was worth
the while, and if the limited public to which such a
book as this can hope to appeal adds its approval to
his I shall be satisfied and the labor shall have received
its reward.

The few lives of Wilson which have preceded this
have been scarcely more than brief sketches written
as introductions to his works. Nor, with the exception
of a desultory essay by Alexander B. Grosart, have
they drawn attention to the pure literary work of the
man. My acknowledginents are due to even the least
of these biographies, for they have taught me, if
nothing else, to keep myself clear from some of the
faults into which they have fallen. To the excellent
"Belfast Edition" of Wilson's poems and to the vol-
umes edited by Grosart I am especially indebted for
the complete text of his poems and for a convenient
arrangement of his correspondence. Whenever it has
been possible, however, I have made use of the orig-
inal manuscripts or the first editions, which I was able
to do largely through the kindness of the librarians

lO ALEXANDER wii^on: poet-naturaust

of Princeton University, the Library of Congress and
the Pennsylvania Historical Society, to whom I take
this opportunity of expressing my obligations.

To those who shall take the trouble to read this
biography, I feel that there is no need to make an ex-
cuse for its publication. The life of this self-educated
Scotch weaver, who became the distinguished Ameri-
can scientist, justifies the telling by its interest, but the
significance of the man's work gives to the record of
the life its real importance. He was the first, as he is
still among the greatest, of those who have thought
the study of our American birds of enough importance
to make it a life work, and as a man of letters he
has a significance also. He stands with Freneau at
the very fountain-head of that branch of American
literature which still forms so important a part in our
letters, the poetry of nature. Between Wilson and
Philip Freneau, however, there is this difference —
the son of Princeton represents the poets who give us
impressions of nature while Wilson belongs to the
number of those who simply paint nature as it is;
the one is chiefly subjective, the other, objective.

What this monograph attempts is to give a fuller
record of the man's life than has hitherto been written,
and a real picture of the man himself; to show the
conditions which made Wilson the kind of man that
he was ; to secure for him some consideration as a
man of letters — historically considered; to clear for-
ever the fair name of Thomas Jefferson from the
charges of discourtesy and carelessness to science which
the early biographers of Wilson brought, and by re-
printing a few of the poems to give the reader an op-
portunity to secure a first-hand acquaintance with
some of the better of Wilson's verses.

The study of conditions in Scotland during the
eighteenth century will be, perhaps, as interesting to

PREI^ACE 1 1

the students of Burns, Fergusson, and Tannahill as
to the admirers of our poet-naturalist. It is an in-
vestigation of a time of doubt and questioning, of a
period whose symbol should be an interrogation mark.
Each of those four poets struggled to solve the same
questions and each attempted to do it in a different
manner. Burns, the truest poet of them all, fell in
the struggle, bruised and broken ; Fergusson, a lesser,
but a no less real, poet, found that his answer led to a
mad-house; Tannahill chose the sickle of self-sought
death with which to cut the Gordian-knot, but it was
the feeblest poet of them all who proved the strongest
man. Alexander Wilson found the freedom that he
sought in a new land. Those early Scotch days, their
problem and its answer, were vital factors in the man's
life.

The letters between Wilson and Jefferson are here
for the first time printed in full and I believe that they
too will be of interest to many readers for other rea-
sons than a mere interest in Wilson and his life. No
admirer of Jefferson, at least, will regret the space
which has been given to them.

In selecting the poems which are reprinted in this
volume, care has been taken to consider first the merits
of the verses and second their character as represent-
ing the nature of Wilson's poetical work. "The
American Blue-bird," "The Osprey," "The Invita-
tion," and "The Solitary Tutor" are examples of the
best that their author accomplished in his mature
years, after he had come to America. "Watty and
Meg" represents both the best that he wrote on his
native soil as well as his most successful use of the
Scotch vernacular. Even the touch of coarseness
which it contains, is characteristic of the early period
of his life.

The texts of "The Invitation" and "The SoHtarv

12 AI^EJXANDER WII^SON : POET-NATURAUST

Tutor" are after the original copies as they appeared
in Charles B. Brown's Literary Magazine. In the
cases of the other poems the wording of later editions
has been used.

So great is my obligation to the kindness and assist-
ance of other people, that it is difificult to do more than
express my thanks to all who have helped me, collec-
tively. Especial acknowledgment is due, however, to
Professor George M. Harper, of Princeton University,
4t whose suggestion this work was begun and whose
advice throughout its writing has greatly influenced its
present form.

I am also indebted for help and suggestions to Pro-
fessor Paul van Dyke and Dr. Charles W. Kennedy,
of Princeton University, to Mr. Worthington C.
Ford, of Washington, D. C, and to the librarians of
Princeton University, of the Norfolk, Virginia, Pub-
lic Library, of the Pennsylvania Historical Society,
and the American Philosophical Society of Philadel-
phia.

I have reserved until the last an acknowledgment
of courtesies which, perhaps, I appreciate the most.
Many of the good people of Paisley, Scotland, have
taken a great interest in this new life of their fellow-
townsman and have helped me in a very real way to
secure information which it would otherwise have been
impossible for me to obtain. To all such I extend
my thanks, but especially to Messrs. John Kent and
Charles M. Stevenson. It is fitting that they who
would honor the memory of our Scotch-American poet
and ornithologist should in sympathy "stretch hands
across the sea."

Williamsburg, Virginia, J. S. W.

October i, ipo6.

CHRONOLOGY

1766, July 6 — Birth, Paisley, Scotland.

1776 — Wilson's mother died,

177 Alexander Wilson, St., marries again.

lyyg — Wilson bound as apprentice to William Dun-
can.

1 779- 1 782 — Learns weaving.

1782 — Apprenticeship expires.

i782-'89 — Weaving and peddling. Contributes to
Glosgozv Advertiser.

1789 — Attempts to publish poems,

1790 — "Poems, Humorous, Satirical and Serious;"
Neilson, publisher.

i79i_"Laurel Disputed." "Watty and Meg."
"Poems," second edition.

1 79 1 -'93 — Weaver and traveler.

i793-'94 — Troubles with Mr. Sharp, a manufac-
turer of Paisley.

1794 — Sails for America in the Szvift from Belfast.

1794, July 14 — Lands at Newcastle. Works with
John Aiken, printer, Philadelphia,

i794-'95 — Weaving at Pennypack Creek, Penn.,
and Sheppardstown, Va. Peddling in
New Jersey. School-teaching at Frank-
fort, Penn.

1795-1801 — Teacher at Milestown, Penn. Survey-
ing. Walks to Ovid, Cayuga County^
N. Y.

i8oi-'o2 — Teaches at Bloomfield, N. J,

1802 — Accepts teaching position at Union School,
Gray's Ferry, near Philadelphia,

14 AI.EXANDER WILSON : POE^T — NATURALIST

1803 — Studies drawing, etc. Plans his "Ornithol-

1804 — First ornithological journey, to Niagara
Falls. Publishes "The Invitation," "The
Rural Walk," and "The Solitary Tutor"
in The Literary Magazine, Philadelphia.

1805 — Writes short poems and studies birds.

1806 — Applies to Jefferson for appointment on
Pike's Expedition. Resigns position at
Gray's Ferry School. Becomes assistant
editor on Ree's Cyclopedia, published by
S. F. Bradford, Philadelphia.

1807 — Begins traveling through Pennsylvania.

1808 — First volume of the "American Ornithol-
ogy" published by Bradford and Inskeep
(first two plates engraved by Wilson's
own hands).
Begins traveling North to solicit subscrip-
tions.
Meets Thomas Payne at Greenwich.

i8o8-'o9 — Travels through the South near the sea
coast.

i8o9-'io — ^Journey through the interior by way of
Pittsburgh to Florida.

1810 — Second volume, "American Ornithology,"

1811 — Third and fourth volumes, "American Orni-
thology."

18 1 2 — Fifth and sixth volumes, "American Orni-
thology." Last ornithological trip, as far
North as Maine. Elected member Ameri-
can Philosophical Society of Philadelphia
and of the Society of Artists of the United
States.

CHRONOLOGY I5

1813 — Seventh volume, "American Ornithology."

1813, Aug. 13 ( ?) — Taken sick with dysentery

after taking cold from exposure. August
23, Alexander Wilson died in Philadel-
phia. Buried in the yard of the Swedes'
Church, Water Street, Philadelphia.
1814 — Eighth volume, "American Ornithology."

1 8 14, May — Ninth volume, "American Ornithol-

ogy," with a life of Wilson by George
Ord.
18 1 6 — Alexander Wilson's father died in Scotland.

ALEXANDER WILSON

POET-NATURALIST

CHAPTER I

SCOTLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

When James Boswell, in defending Scotland to
Dr. Samuel Johnson, spoke of the country's
splendid prospects, the Doctor brought his heavy
fist down on the table with a thud which shook the
room and thundered out, "Sir, let me tell you, the
noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the
high-road that leads him to England." In very
truth it must be said that there was not much in the
appearances of things to give the lie to Dr. John-
son. The Scotland of the early part of the eigh-
teenth century was a bare, dreary country. Its farm
lands were unenclosed and almost without growth,
save where flowered the heath and whin; its towns
were dirty and sewerless ; even from the streets of
such cities as Glasgow and Edinburgh went up the
stench of decayed refuse which had been thrown
from the windows above; the churches were very
frequently disorganized and factious, the schools
poor, and the morals of the people loose and cor-
rupt.

Especially among the lower classes in Scotland,
morality was in a deplorable state. The cold, strict
religion became so formal and forbidding as to be
a harmful rather than a helping influence, and was
regarded by the younger people as a thing to be

l8 AIv^XANDE^R WII^ON: POET-NATURAUST

avoided when possible and endured when necessary.
A church service could not be missed without the
apprehension of seeing the peeking faces of the eld-
ers, and perhaps the minister also, at one's window,
and the fear of enduring the penalties of such dis-
covery. It was not strange under these conditions
that religion with many persons was a synonym for
much that was disagreeable. The rigid parental
regulations which were in vogue allowed little visit-
ing and few gaieties among the youths, and then,
as will always happen when youthful spirits are de-
nied their innocent channels of amusement, they
found some forbidden ways of outlet which were
not always so innocent. "Whistle an' I'll come to
you, my lad," became the accepted order of the day.
Such clandestine meetings, combined with the
Scotch law that an open avowal of marriage is all
that is necessary to make the bonds legal, naturally
resulted in a loose morality, and the troubles of poor
Bobbie Burns were indicative of the conditions that
frequently obtained. One has only to read the let-
ters and journals of the day to become convinced
of the vast extent of this immorality both in the
cities and in the country.

"The English," said a Scotch lady to Capt. Ed-
ward Birt, "often take liberties after they are mar-
ried and seldom before; whereas the Scots women,
when they make a trip, it is while they are single,
and very rarely afterwards,"* It was customary
in most parts of Scotland to require persons guilty
of immoral conduct to do penance by standing in

• "Letters from a Gentleman in North of Scotland," by Captain
Edward Birt, 1759, I, p. 123.

SCOTLAND IN THE EIGHTKKNTH CENTURY I9

sackcloth at the church door on Sundays, rather
than enforce the rigid Scotch laws. This disgrace
was often mitigated or even avoided by the pay-
ment of money to the church treasurer.* Sometimes
several of a young man's friends would stand
around him, and since the public might not know
which was the guilty one in the group the penance
was thus turned into a frolic. Birt informs us also
that, "When a woman has undergone the penance,
with an appearance of repentance she has wiped off
the scandal among all the Godly."t In the midst
of these conditions Alexander Wilson grew up, and
in contending against them in part, and sometimes
in yielding to them, too, his character was formed.
It is this remarkable character of his that is the ex-
planation both of his achievements in science and
of his literary work. For this reason a very care-
ful study of the era in which he lived and the people
who surrounded him, and of whom he was one, is
necessary before we consider the man himself and
what he accomplished. The loose customs of the
day, its immorality and intemperance, played a
great part in the lives of Robert Fergusson and
Burns, and the young poet of Paisley, Robert Tan-
nahill, also, and though the habits of immorality
were more to be noticed in Wilson "in the breach
than the observance," yet their influence upon him
helped to make him the man that he was. Captain
Topham was scandalized by the custom which ex-
isted of indiscriminate kissing between young women

* "Letters from a Gentleman in North of Scotland," by Captain
Edward Birt, 1759, I, p. 234.
t Ibid., p. 123.

20 AIvEXANDE:r WII^ON : POETT-NATURALIST

and men* and Lady Elliott of Minto declared that,
"The misses are the most rotten part of the so-
ciety."t Nor was it in the least uncommon for the
best-bred ladies to accompany young men to the
dirty little oyster cellars below the street, where they
ate and drank together.t

It was among the poorer classes that conditions
were worst. Especially appalling are the figures
which illustrate the number of child-murders which
occurred all through the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. So great was the dread of the church
penance that the worst crimes were committed to
avoid it, and in some parishes it became necessary
to cease enforcing these penances in order that the
murder of babies might be lessened. § This crime
was at its most terrible climax in the latter half of
the seventeenth century. On one day, in Edinburgh
alone, in the year 1681, seven women were executed
for destroying their offspring; four were hanged
in Aberdeen in 1705 in a single day and in 1714
there were executions on the i8th and 24th of June
and the 3rd of July.|| In 1690 a law was passed,
which remained effective in the following century,
making a woman responsible for the death of her
child even though there were no signs of violence,
unless some one was with her at the time of its
death.^ Yet the crime continued so frequent that

* Topham's Letters.

t Graham's Social Life in Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, II,
p. 108.

t Ibid., II, p. 108.

8 "Travels of Rev. James Hall," II, p. 351.

II Graham's "Social Life in Scotland in the Eighteenth Century," II,
p. 223.

11 Ibid., II, p. 223.

SCOTLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 21

the General Assembly found it needful to require
the ministers to read from the pulpit the law against
child-murder.* So widespread was the crime in
the earlier part of the eighteenth century that the
Reverend James Hall declared it to be generally re-
puted that the "Scottish women are the greatest in-
fanticides in the world. "f

It is a significant fact that the severity of the pun-
ishment for immorality was less for the lower orders
than for the more enlightened classes. An amus-
ing story is related of a certain John Pardie who
took appeal in a case in which he was fined as a
gentleman £ioo Scots for being guilty of immoral-
ity. The lords in session tried the appeal and sus-
tained his objection, reducing the fine to £i6 Scots.
They gave as their very good reason that "he had
not the air or face of a gentleman."? So prevalent
was immorality among the poorer classes that its
opposite seems to have been scarcely expected; and
Captain Birt says that when a maid strayed from
the path of rectitude she was received back in the
family by which she was employed just as though
she had shown no signs of frailty. Under such con-
ditions it is no cause for surprise that immorality
steadily increased until near the end of the century.

In 1763 the fines collected by the kirk-treasurers
for illegitimate children in Edinburgh amounted to
£154; for the ten succeeding years they averaged
about £190, while by 1783 the amazing figures show

* Ibid., and "Travels of Rev. James Hall," II.
t "Travels of Rev. James Hall," II, p. 351.

$ Graham's "Social Eife in Scotland in the Eighteenth Century," II,
p. 219.

22 ALE^XANDER WILSON : POET-NATURALIST

an increase of £600.* William Creech, writing of
the period about 1783, declared that "every quarter
of the city and suburbs was infested with multitudes
of females abandoned to vice, and a great many at
a very early period of life, before passion could mis-
lead or reason teach them right from wrong."t

It is a dark picture that I have drawn of Scot-
land's moral condition, but I believe none too dark,
and it illustrates better than anything else can do
the obstacles which such men as Burns and Fer-
gusson, Wilson and Tannahill had to contend
against. For the effects of the conditions per-
meated everything and everywhere, even to the tone
and subjects of the conversation of the day. They
were times when men called "a. spade a spade," and
without the least sense of impropriety they intro-
duced the coarse and revolting into their conversa-
tions and writings. The old "chap-books" and the
poems of the day show that this fondness for the
vulgar continued to the very end of the century;
being illustrated even in many of the verses, written
before he left Scotland, by the young Alexander
Wilson.

There was another feature of Scotch life in that
day that should not be overlooked, the extent of
drunkenness. This, as we are to see, was the last of
the old national vices to be rolled away before the
waves of progress and enlightenment which were
beginning to sweep over Scotland toward the close
of the century. That it was so universal is the less

* Letters to Sir John Sinclair in "Edinburgh Fugitive Pieces^" by
William Creech, reprinted 1785.
t Ibid.

SCOTLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 23

surprising when we learn how it was not only
winl ed at, but even encouraged, by the political au-
thorities. Among the "Culloden Papers," published
in 181 5, there is a most remarkable letter written
by Duncan Forbes, Lord President of the Court of
Sessions of Scotland, on the state of the revenue of
the country. Its date is perhaps about 1742 and
was addressed to the Marquis of Tweeddale.
Forbes bewails the fact that the excise on beer, ale,
and spirits has fallen since 1733 from £40,000 to
about one-half of this amount. He gives as the
reason the increased consumption of tea and de-
clares that the promiscuous custom of drinking it
must be stopped. He recounts how the habit began
with more prominent households, gradually spread-
ing until "the use of ale and beer for mornings and
afternoons was almost wholly laid aside; and the
Revenue of Excise has sunk in proportion as this
villainous practice has grown."* As a means of
compelling people to return to stronger drink he ad-
vises one of two methods : either the forbidding
of tea-drinking by law or else that the tax on it be
increased to prohibitive figures.

In 1708 there were known to have been 50,800
gallons of whiskey produced in Scotland, but fifty
years later the number had increased to 433,800 on
which duty was paid.f When it is remembered that
Lord Forbes, the writer of the above quoted letter
was the owner of the Ferintosh stills, the largest in
Scotland, and as these stills paid no excise, we can
form some idea of how much the real production ex-

* Culloden Papers, 1815, p. 191 et seq.

t Graham's "Social Eife in Scotland in the Eighteenth Century," II,
p. 263.

24 AIvE^XANDER WII^ON : POET-NATURAUST

ceeded the above figures. Illicit stills, too, existed in
every glen, and "the illicit distillery of whiskey was
never considered a crime, so long as smugglers kept
clear of the officers of the law. It was rather re-
garded as one of the legitimate industries of the
country."* This increase in the production of
whiskey was also created directly by the law-
makers.

In 1725 an impost of 6d. began to be enforced on
every bushel of malt, and though it was later re-
duced one half, the popularity of the old drink,
"two-penny" ale, steadily decreased and that of
whiskey became greater. How the conditions be-
came yet worse as the century grew older will be
presently shown. We turn now to other conditions
which indicate the state of Scotland at the middle of
the century.

Profanity kept progress with the spread of
drunkenness. It became common even among
ladies. When some one spoke of the "pretender,"
the old Lady Strange could not restrain herself;
"Pretender, forsooth!" she cried, her eyes blazing
scorn at the defamer of her idol, "Pretender, for-
sooth! and be dawm'd to ye!"t Numbers of such
stories might be quoted. There is another of an
old lady of distinguished family who when the cus-
toms changed in her latter years was unable to ac-
commodate herself to them. The way she compro-
mised is illustrated by her speech to her coachman
when he gave as his excuse for stopping the horses,
that he had seen a falling star. "And what hae ye

* "The History of Sterlingshire," by Wm. Nimmo.

t Dennistown's "L,ife of Sir Robert Strange," II, p. 213.

SCOTLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 25

to do wi' the stars, I wad like to ken ?" she scolded.
"Drive on this moment, and be dawmed to ye," add-
ing in a lower tone, according to her wont, "as Sir
John wad ha' said if he had been alive, honest
man."*

Among the poorer people there were worse things
yet to be seen and heard. The unquestioning trust
in the doctrine that everything would be as it must
be in spite of anything that might be done led the
people to neglect sanitary conditions entirely. Sev-
eral families were frequently crowded into the same
house and the most odious diseases ran riot un-
checked. "One hundred and fifty families," Birt
declared, "may live on ground paying £80 a year."t
The resulting horror of the conditions of these poor
people is illustrated by the record of twenty-one
persons having been prosecuted for uncleanliness by
the Sheriff of Paisley in the year 1715.$ In the
coal pits and mines even more pitiable circumstances
were to be found, and an actual system of white
slavery of the most horrible sort existed there until
1799. An act of 1775 emancipated all who after
that date might "begin to work as colliers and salt-
ers,"§ but the rest were not freed until the close of
the century.

In the very punishments administered the age
made evident its brutality and want of culture. It
was common to strike off a man's hands before
hanging him,|| and the borough records of Lanark

* Stirling Maxwell's Miscellaneous Essays," p. i6o.

t Birt's Letters, II, p. 343.

J Hector's "Judicial Records of Renfrewshire," p. 80.

§ Cockburn's Memorials, p. 76.

II Graham's "Social Life," II, p. 225.

26 AIvIjXANDER WIIvSON: POET-NATURAUST

preserve the notices of shoe-thieves who were ban-
ished the town on pain of "being whipped, burned,
and again banished" if they returned.* One of the
penahies exacted of an immoral woman was to
stand by the market cross with shaven head while
the hangman stood by her.

As late as 1775 petty robberies were punished at
Glasgow by escorting the culprit with "tuck of
drums and head bare" to the limits of the city and
banishing him on pain of imprisonment and whip-
ping if he ever returned to the city.f On the bor-
ough records of Stirling is the following very sug-
gestive entry : "March, 1722. For tow for binding
Catherine M'Cullock to the tron 2s. Scots. For a
penknife for cutting off her ear 3s. Scots."

Not until 1793$ was the custom of flogging pub-
licly in the streets abolished, and there is good
reason to believe that in many of the smaller towns
it continued to a much later date.

When we have examined thus carefully into these
conditions of society in a country that was after-
ward to become so famed for its enlightenment and
learning, it is worth our while to consider the edu-
cational institutions of this period. Though even
then in Scotland education was, perhaps, more
widely disseminated than in most other countries
at the same era, yet it was for the greater part of a
very rudimentary nature.

Though Scotch universities, indeed, offered re-
markable advantages to the poor but ambitious boy,

* Burgh Records of Ivanark.

t Graham's "Social Life," II, p. 227.

X "Glasgow, Past and Present," I, 339.

SCOTM-ND IN THE EJIGHTEEJNTH CENTtJRY 27

yet the average youth at an early age quitted his
grammar-school by force of necessity for the plow
or the loom. Nevertheless, it was due to these
grammar-schools that the widespread ignorance
which was common among the poorer classes of al-
most every other nation was not to be noted in Scot-
land. As has been strongly expressed by an emi-
nent Scotchman* of our own day there is no peas-
antry in Scotland, and the all-pervading influence
of the grammar-schools is in great part the reason
for this fact.

The schools of the eighteenth century, it must
be remarked, were very different from what they
are to-day. Remarkable indeed for existing in
such numbers at all, they were still only good as
compared with the schools of other countries
at the same period, and not as compared with
modern institutions, and moreover they undoubt-
edly differed greatly among themselves. Then,
too, when we remember the intermittent manner
in which many of the pupils attended, we can
realize how limited after all were the educational
advantages even in Scotland, of the sons of the
class which in other countries would have formed
the peasantry. All this must be held in memory
lest we underestimate the difficulties which had
to be overcome by the less well-to-do Scotchmen
of this era, so many of whom did gain an excellent
education in spite of every hindrance.

The condition of Scotland in material matters was
worse than its moral state, and far in arrears of its
educational attainments. Since there were no en-

*Dr. Hugh Black.

28 AI^E^XANDER WII^SON : POET-NATURALIST

closures, ''herds" had to watch the flocks in order
that one man's property should not be injured by
another's or else hopelessly confused with it. The
unsightly and uncomfortable houses were rarely
shaded by trees or beautified by gardens, and in the
whole of Renfrewshire there had been no forest
since ancient days. Even the streets of Paisley, and
the country roads around it, were but scantily
shaded by a few lone trees.

The agricultural methods were primitive, the
crops few and unprofitable. Up to nearly the
middle of the century the small supply of turnips
that were raised were regarded as a great delicacy
and served at meals as a dessert. Even after radical
changes began to be well under way, and the revo-
lution of things, which later transformed all Scot-
land, was being led by a few cultured and enterpris-
ing gentlemen, the ignorant and prejudiced country
people bitterly resented every innovation, and under
the shadow of night would demolish the new en-
closures, and pull up the young trees and hedges
that had been planted, for fear, as they ingenuously
declared, they might harbor birds that would de-
stroy their crops.

With affairs in such a condition as this it required
glasses of a very rosy hue indeed to make even a
Scotchman, if he were familiar with the more cul-
tured society of England, see things in a very hope-
ful light. No wonder then that almost all English-
men thought with Dr. Johnson that the high-road to
London was Scotland's best prospect. Even then,
however, there were silent forces moving beneath
the surface of things that were making for a new

SCOIXAND IN the: I^IGHTEIJNTH CEJNTURY 29

Scotland ; already they were working- the doom of
the provincial prejudice and superstition which had
sucked, like vampires, the blood of progress from
the nation.

The real beginning of Scotland's transformation
may be dated from the Act of Union with England
in 1707, for that in a very true sense meant the
opening up of the "noblest prospect," the high-road
to England. Hitherto the restrictions which Eng-
land had put upon Scotland's trade had been greatly
hampering, but now commerce with foreign nations
might be carried on with comparative freedom,
while still freer were the possibilities for traffic with
England itself. Nevertheless, the beneficial effects
of the Union were slow in developing and up to the
middle of the century were not noticeable. The im-
mediate result of the Act, indeed, seemed only a
fostering of bitter opposition to eveiything English
in a great many quarters, and to oppose British in-
novations was for a while a noble form of patriot-
ism. On the other hand not a few Scotchmen were
ready with open minds to see the ultimate advan-
tages which Scotland would reap from the Act of
Union. The natural outcome of the opposition be-
tween these parties was seen in the bitter animosi-
ties that for a while were rife, and, at times, in
armed resistance to British rule. Gradually, how-
ever, the hostile factions became less bitter, and the
strife was practically ended in 1745 with the last
rebellion against English law.

The Turnpike Road Act, passed in 175 1, gave an
impetus to the advancement of affairs in Scotland,
and a true industrial revolution may be said to date

30 AIvEXANDE^R WII<SON : POE^T-NATURAUST

from the closing year of the Seven Years' War in
Europe, 1763, for with peace came the opportunity
for the ripening of the real fruits of the Act of
Union. The introduction of plows from the South,
and the publication of Kames' Gentleman Farmer,
lyyy,'^ began a new era in agriculture. A writerf in
1782 says, "The land which used then to let in tack,
at five, six or seven shillings per acre, will set or let
in tack, at twenty shillings per acre at present.
About that period, viz, 1755, there was scarce a
farm, I knew, that had any enclosures about them,
except about their gardens, or what gentlemen kept
within their own possessions. * * * gut from
the year 1763 to the year 1773, the noblemen and
gentlemen raised a spirit of improvement upon their
estates, and at the expiration of their tenants' tacks
they raised their rents, some double, others near
triple of the preceding rents, and bound their ten-
ants to enclose the whole of their farms with
hedges and ditches, or stone dykes, as was most con-
venient for them; and to plow their grounds so
many years, generally two, and then let lie in pas-
turage four years; by which means the ground is
always kept in strength." "Since the year 1700,"
the same writer says, "Scotland has made more im-
provement in agriculture, mechanics, literature,
than in any three centuries before."

The wonderful growth in shipbuilding, in the
fisheries, in manufactories, and in commerce may
all be traced most convincingly, certainly in part at

* Mention should also be made of Donaldson's "Husbandry Anatom-
ized," 1697.

t "The History of the Shire of Renfrew" by George Crawford and
William Semple, p. g. Paisley: Alex Weir, 1782.

SCOTLAND IN THE EIGHTE^E^NTH CENTURY 3I

least, to the Act of Union.* The Act threw the two
nations into closer contact, and the great industrial
revolution which was going on in England was thus
enabled to act in no small degree upon Scottish
affairs. The movement once started, conditions
changed with the most remarkable rapidity. Even
the landscape took on a new appearance, due to the
liberal planting of trees and building of hedges, and
in place of the vast barren stretches, unbroken save
by masses of purple heather and yellow whin, there
were now great fields of verdant crops.

Paisley has been the birth-place of not a few men
of note. Good old Christopher North and his less
distinguished brother, James Wilson, — a rare, sweet
nature, by the way, and no bad writer, — were both
born there, and the poet Robert Tannahill was but
a few years their junior, while quite a school of very
minor writers, now forgotten, flourished there
about this same period. At the close of the previous
century, not only did the town lack nearly all the
virtues that were later to give it the name of "the
Paradise of Scotland," but it was also deep in the
darkest superstitions of the day. Even as late as
the reign of their most enlightened Christian majes-
ties, William and Mary, in 1697, when the ministers
of Paisley Presbytery were directed to settle certain
religious matters, they were too busy at trying the
Renfrewshire witches to do so, "preferring to con-
tend with the devil in Paisley rather than with the
schismatics of Forfar."t Even in 1770 misdemean-
ors were still punished with revolting cruelty. Hec-

* See Mackinnon's "The Union of England and Scotland."
t Lee's "Paisley Abbey," p. 193.

32 AL,tXAND-&R WII^ON: POET-NATURALIST

tor's Judicial Records* tell us o£ a case, at which
Alexander Wilson might, perhaps, have stared from
some window with the wondering baby-eyes of a
child of four, when a woman, who was being carried
to jail for stealing lawn from a bleaching field, was
stripped to the waist and flogged with a lash by a
locks-man through the streets of Paisley.

The secret of Paisley's transformation from a
rude little town to an important city is found in the
growth of its. manufacturing industries, and a great
deal of this progress was due to the energetic spirit
of the women. t Just as it was the Duchess of Gor-
don who helped to revolutionize the agriculture of
Scotland by introducing new implements of tillage,
so now it was Mrs. Christian Shaw Miller who be-
gan the improvement of the manufacturing indus-
tries of Paisley. With the other ladies of the house
of Bagarran she introduced in 1725, under the fam-
ily coat of arms, the Dutch process of making
thread. Later Mrs. Henry Fletcher of Salton went
into Holland, disguised as a man, with two mechan-
ics, learned the linen process, and introduced this
also into Scotland. From so small a beginning the
Scotch industries grew apace and soon Paisley was
as full of the noise of plying looms as any town of
Holland.

Meanwhile the intellectual advancement of Pais-
ley, and indeed of all Scotland, was keeping pace
with the material development. As the century wore
on, the condition of education improved with tre-

* Hector's "Judicial Records of Renfrewshire," p. 254.

t See "Social Life in Scotland in the Eighteenth Century," by Henry
Gray Graham, IL PP- 250-251. "The Union of England and Scotland,"
by James Mackinnon; and "Social England," Vol. IV, by H. D. Traill.

SCOTLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 33

mendous strides, until from being merely somewhat
in advance of other countries by reason of the num-
ber of schools, the educational advantages of Scot-
land became the just subject of the boasting of
every patriotic Scotchman. When Dorothy Words-
worth traveled through Scotland with her brother
in 1803, she remarked with wonder that even among
the highland wilds the children were fairly well
taught. The excellent results of this teaching is
bountifully witnessed by the lives of the scholars
who were trained under it and afterward came to
America. Scotland's debt to her schools, poor as
some of them no doubt were, can scarcely be over-
estimated, and to them without question was due in
large part the greatness of the strides which the
country was making in the latter part of the eigh-
teenth century.

The prosperity of Scotland as a nation at this
later period is astonishingly illustrated by compara-
tive figures. The imports in 1775 were only £465,-
411 as compared with £1,981,630 in 1791. The re-
spective figures for the exports of the same years
are £535,576 and £1,269,520. Both exports and
imports continued to grow at an amazing rate every
year with the exception of 1795, the year after Wil-
son left Scotland, when the former fell to more than
£700,000 less than they had been for four years pre-
vious and the latter showed a decrease of nearly
£300,000.* This was perhaps due to the hard
times which were partly instrumental in driving
Wilson to America. Wages increased and "the ma-

* Chambers's Gazetteer of Scotland, 1844.

3

34 ALEXANDER WILSON : POET-NATURALIST

son, the weaver, the carpenter, who could in 1750
only earn his 6d. a day, in 1790 made his is. or is.
2d."* Expenses, however, had increased even more
rapidly, so that even then the poor Scotchman was
confronted still by hard and exacting conditions.

In literature Scotland was now producing men
that the world had to reckon with. Not a few had
accepted the high-road to England as their "noblest
prospect" and merely gave to their country the
brightness of their names. Of such men were
Thomson and Smollett. James Thomson set out
for England in 1725 with his poem on "Winter" in
his pocket, and eleven years later Smollett came to
London by packhorse with a bag containing a set
of surgeon's lancets and "The Regicide." Many
other men of sterling worth, like President Wither-
spoon of the College of New Jersey, and later Alex-
ander Wilson, left their native land for America ;
but nevertheless quite a number of literary men re-
mained in Scotland. The school of philosophy,
which found strong representatives in David Hume,
James Beattie, Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart and
such men, was especially remarkable as indicating
the intellectual awakening of the country, and
artists like the second Allen Ramsay were winning
renown at home and abroad.

In the earlier part of the century literature had
found its most representative types in the authors
of the old chap-books, men of great local reputation.
Patrick Walker, a sedate Covenanter peddler, was
the disseminator of what little news or literature
there was to find its way over the roads familiar to

* Graham's "Social Life," II, p. 261.

SCOTLAND IN THt IlIGHT^IINTH CENTURY 35

his little white pony. Dugald Graham, a dwarfish
hunch-back, strolled the country in a fantastic long
scarlet cloak, blue breeches and cocked hat. Vulgar
and coarse, he too was known everywhere, and his
poems, such as "Lothian Tom" and "Jockey and
Maggie's Courtship," won for him the title of the
"Boccaccio of the byre."

Under the changed conditions of society quite an-
other sort of literary man was to be produced, but
he was to find a bitter conflict awaiting him with
some of the customs of life and traits of character
which his ancestors had passed on to him. The
blight which of all other things was to most nearly
blast the opening bud of Scottish genius was in-
temperance. While other social evils were being
corrected this one grew yet stronger.

Scottish life had been held in check for many
years by one of the strictest of all religions. Church-
going had been compulsory, sermons and prayers
long and tiresome, and even men's every-day af-
fairs were the objects of ecclesiastical surveillance.-
Petrie* objected to coffee-houses because grace was
not said over each cup, and the minister of Dunross-
ness ascribes the death of a man to divine wrath be-
cause he laughed when he was rebuked for taking
his "dram" without a blessing.f Even at an ale-
house a long blessing must be said over each drink.
It was but natural that, in the vigorous era that now
came in, a violent reaction should take place. The
struggle for independence in America, where so
many Scotchmen had kindred, and the political

* "Rules of Good Deportment," by Adam Petrie, 1720.
t Mill's Diary, p. 84.

36 AI^EXANDER WII^SON: POET-NATURAUST

movements of the French, began to affect the minds
of the educated young Scotchmen. A seething un-
rest stirred among them. It began earHer, but it
was in the nineties before it assumed such activity
that the elder conservatives became alarmed. In
1792 the borough records of Peebles record, "Wild
ideas about liberty and equality, projected by the
French Revolution, having reached Peebles, and af-
fected some young men, the council declare their
horror of the seditious writings and open efforts of
the turbulent and designing for the subversion of
our present, and in favor of republican govern-
ment."* Even the General Assembly took fright
and passed ordinances against certain Sunday-
schools where "ignorant persons, notoriously disaf-
fected to the civil constitution of the country," have
an opportunity to corrupt the youth. t Social clubs,
which had been harmless enough at first, now be-
came centers of a propaganda for free think'ng and
free drinking. The life of many of the brightest
young men in Scotland became a mad whirl of
drunkenness and debauch. From 1707 to 1808 the
population had increased only about 500,000, but
the increase in the excise revenue was over £1,760,-
000 !t In Edinburgh alone in 1790, with a popula-
tion of 80,000, there were 2,011 licensed and un-
licensed bars, most of which catered to the trade of
the lower classes. § And in the same city in
1778 there were eight licensed and four hun-

* Wm. Chalmers's "History of Peebleshire," 1864.
t Graham's "Social Life," II, p. 271.

+ Chalmers's "Domestic Economy of Great Britain and Ireland," 1812,
p. 387.

§ Arnot's "History of Edinburgh," p. 335.

SCOTLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 37

dred illicit stills busy making whiskey to supply
the ever-increasing demands. Though "there
were drunken brawls in plenty, with fatal re-
sults; immorality, which was rife, especially
among the peasantry," yet there were compar-
atively few "of the greater and more danger-
ous offences," says Graham.* One reason for this
was that much of the drinking was done in the cof-
fee-houses and clubs, where men of all sorts congre-
gated together and in some ways exerted a re-
straining influence upon one another. With hi-
larity and tumult they pledged each other, drank to
the ladies, and emptied their glasses to such senti-
ments as "May the wind of adversity ne'er blaw
open our door," "To freedom all the world over,"
or in good old Scotch, "May waur ne'er be smang
us." Thus the clubs took on a different nature from
those of the day when the poet, Allen Ramsay,
joined and enjoyed his "Easy Club" and kept his
health and reputation. The later "Hell-fire Club"
had many of the characteristics which its name im-
plied. The "Bachelors' Club" to which young
Burns belonged, and the meetings which Wilson
celebrated in poems like "The Group" and "Hog-
menae" were of the less harmful class, but even
Burns's hardy constitution went down before the late
hours and hard drinking of the "Crochallan Club."
Poor Robert Fergusson, ruined by dissipation,
ended his days before he was twenty-five, on the
straw of a mad-house. It was a life full of pitfalls
that these poets led. Republican, socialistic and
atheistic ideas were hopelessly confused around the

* "Social Life," II, p. 234.

38 Ar^EXANDE:^ WILSON : POET-NATURAUST

table in the tavern of the suave old host, John
Dowie, from which the revellers sometimes with-
drew to find relaxation in the music of Handel or
Corelli at St. Cecelia's Music Hall in Edinburgh.
Their tempestuous lives often came to tragic ends.
Robert Tannahill, the gifted young poet of Paisley,
escaped a fate like that of Fergusson by taking his
own life, and perhaps even Wilson was saved by his
timely emigration.

The day was one of fierce agitation along all
lines, but it justified itself by producing such men as
Adam Smith and Robert Burns ; and England — the
England which had shared in Dr. Johnson's opin-
ion of Scotch affairs — learned at last that many
good things could come out of Scotland.

In such a period of social, industrial, political, re-
ligious and philosophical revolution as this, Alex-
ander Wilson was born and lived his early life. In
him we have a representative of the time and na-
tion in which his being and character took form.
Could we indeed "pluck out the stops" and learn
and understand this man we should know much of
the potentiality of the Scotland of the eighteenth
century. Nor is it possible that we can understand
the sources of the strength of his later nature until
we have learned something of the difficulties which
he overcame, the temptations which he resisted, in
those early years in Scotland.

CHAPTER II
Wilson's early years in Scotland

Alexander Wilson was born on the 6th of July,
1766. His birth-town, Paisley, in the shire of Ren-
frew, Scotland, is about seven miles to the west of
Glasgow. With the noise of its many looms and
the rush of its bustling trade there is little about
Paisley that is poetic; even the White Cart, of
which Burns sang as "rinning, rowin' to the sea,"
is no longer white; soiled and defiled by the grimy
hand of commerce, it flows in a dark and turbid
stream. A century and a half ago it was perhaps
very little more poetic than it is to-day. Already
the looms were plying; already the spirit of com-
mercialism had taken Paisley in its grasp. Nor was
the lack of what is physically romantic made up for
by beautiful old traditions or quaint stories of the
past, with which so many parts of Scotland teem.
The royal name of Stuart, it is true, was anciently
linked with the annals of Paisley, and an air of ro-
mance and mystery still clung about the picturesque
walls of the antique abbey, but, to a poet's eye.
Paisley of the eighteenth century must have been,
comparatively speaking, as matter of fact and as
briskly businesslike as it is to-day.

That part of Paisley in which Wilson was born,
known as the Seedhills, was, save for the white
gulls that sported above the Cart, equally unro-
mantic; as late as 1782 it is recorded as consisting
of only forty-five houses, in which there were eighty

40 ALEXANDE^R WII.SON : POEn^-NATURAUST

families and sixty-six looms ; not an unusual condi-
tion of affairs when compared with other parts of
the town.

The Wilsons were originally a Lochwinnoch
family and were devoted Covenanters, but in the
time of Alexander's great-grandfather they were
driven by the persecutions of the day from Renfrew-
shire and found a refuge in Campbeltown in the
southern part of Argyleshire.

Alexander Wilson, Sr., the father of the orni-
thologist, seems to have returned early in his life
to his family's native shire, where he settled in
Paisley and took up the occupation of weaving. He
was born in 1728, and was a man of hardy, robust
type, stern and taciturn perhaps, but a true Scot.
In addition to his legitimate trade of weaving, the
elder Wilson undoubtedly carried on a distillery of
his own, which did not come within the sanction of
the law. This distillery, we are told, was situated
in his garden, and in order to work it successfully,
more or less smuggling had to be carried on.

The biographers of the distinguished son have
been wont to slur over, or attempt to throw doubts
upon, this fact in the life of the father, or else to
hold up their hands in pious surprise, for otherwise
he led a worthy and most godly life. But a little
study of this interesting period in Scotland will
quite do away with the necessity of any confusion
on this point or with any appearance of hypocrisy
on Wilson's part. The old man himself would have
been the last to blush from any sense of wrong-
doing. Smuggling and the illicit distilling of
whiskey were at this time considered very honorable

Wilson's early years in Scotland 41

occupations in Scotland. There had grown up
hearty hatred for the laws, which followed the Act
of Union, on these matters, and with the proverbial
Scottish independence they showed their contempt
for them by systematically breaking them. It was
almost a patriotic duty. Says a close student of
Scotch conditions in the eighteenth century, "Gen-
tlemen holding high position in the county and of-
fices of justices of the peace joined the smugglers
in their ventures of running in the cargoes, while
excisemen were hopelessly baffled."* Even the
clergy covertly winked at this traffic and not infre-
quently openly approved of it. "Illicit distillers were
as much respected as smugglers and equally uncon-
scious of any heinousness."t So Wilson lost none
of his fellow-townsmen's respect but he was held as
one of the worthiest and wealthiest of his class,
when he became sufficiently thrifty to possess sev-
eral looms and employ journeymen. Among his
associates Wilson, Sr., was regarded as "a man of
sober and industrious habits, of strict honesty and
superior intelligence," and from America his son,
after he had become a mature man, wrote as counsel
for his brother David that he should "take his fa-
ther's advice in every difficulty. If he does I can
tell him he will never repent it."

Alexander Wilson, Sr., married first Mary Mc-
Nab, whose family moved during her own girlhood
from the "Row" in Dumbarton to Paisley. All the
little that we know of her is to her credit, and she
would seem to belong to that long list of noble

* "Social Life in Scotland in the Eighteenth Century," II, pp. 261-2.
t Ibid.

42 AIvEXANDER WILSON : POET-NATURALIST

mothers who planted the first seeds of greatness in
the characters of their sons. She was a good-look-
ing, intelligent woman, and was truly Scotch in the
depth and fervor of her religion. For her son she
had but one dream, — that dream which is shattered
for many a fond mother, — that he should become
as religious as herself, and — to quote his owii
words —

"She talked with tears of that enrapturing sight,

When clad in sable gown, with solemn air,

The walls of God's own house should echo back his prayer."*

When Alexander was but a lad of ten the frail
frame of his mother gave way and he was left but
a dim memory of her to carry with him through
his after years. Though young Alexander had been
the fifth of six children, yet they had all died in
their infancy except two sisters and himself. At
the mother's death the three children were all young
and it was not long before the father married again,
this time a widow, Catherine Urie, nee Brown, who,
like himself, had a family of "young hopefuls."
That the second wife was a woman of pleasant
character we may infer from the kind manner in
which her step-son ever spoke of her in his letters.
Under the stress of his increasing family the pe-
cuniary condition of the elder Wilson appears to
have become less prosperous. Soon after his sec-
ond marriage he is said to have moved to the Tower
of Auchenbothie, but how soon we are unable to
say. In 1782, when William Semple published his
continuation of George Crawford's "History of

* Wilson's "Solitary Tutor."

Wilson's early years in Scotland 43

Renfrewshire," there are two Alexander Wilsons
entered as subscribers: "Alex. Wilson, weaver,
Long-street, Paisley," and "Alex. Wilson, weaver,
New-Town, Ralston, Nielston." Whether these
were father and son, or which was which, is difficult
to say ; or more likely still one of them was another
Alex. Wilson of Glanderston in Nielston, whose
sister, according to Scrapie's History, married a
local worthy and landed proprietor named Robert
Sheddon, somewhere about the year 1755. How-
ever this may be, the elder Wilson, after an unsuc-
cessful attempt at farming, returned to Paisley in
1790 and lived in a house in the Seedhills known
as the "Douket." Here he remained until his death
three years after that of his son, on the 5th of June,
1816.

There is no reason to suppose that the childhood
of Wilson was anything but a happy one. His home
faced on the river Cart which was the favorite lo-
cality for the youngsters of the town to bathe, and
the somewhat barren fields were not too bare to
furnish a pleasure ground for an imaginative child,
for even then he tells us,

"When gath'ring clouds the vaults of heaven o'erspread,
And opening streams of livid lightning flew;
From some o'erhanging cliff, the uproar dread,
Transfix'd in rapt'rous wonder, he would view
When the red torrent, big and bigger grew."

Of his school days we know little. From all the
information that we can gather there was but one
regular school in Paisley at this date, the "Latin-
Grammar-school" which Wilson attended. As late
as 1782 Semple mentions but two other schools.

44 AI^EXANDER WII.SON : POET-NATURALIST

founded respectively in 1780 and 1781, but the pa-
triotic Semple adds that in his day "there is scarce
a boy but what is taught reading, writing, and arith-
metic and a part of church music." This, with a
Httle Latin, we may well believe was all that Wil-
son got, or even more, for we find him having great
trouble mastering the rudiments of arithmetic after
he was a man.

Those old Scotch schools would make an inter-
esting study. They opened at six in the morning
and closed at six in the afternoon, and the books
used were, like "Ruddiman's Rudiments" in Latin,
continued in use decade after decade. The masters
were miserably paid and eked out their living in any
way that they could. For specially good services it
was sometimes the case that the town-council con-
ferred the honor upon one of them of presenting
him with a hat. An interesting illustration of the
manner in which they augmented their small sal-
aries is seen in the account that we have of the cus-
toms which existed at Dumfries and other places
even up to the close of the century, and which were
most fruitful sources of income to the teachers —
cock-fighting and cock-throwing. "Every boy who
could afford it brought a fighting cock to school,
and on payment of twelve pennies Scots to the mas-
ter, the cocks were pitted against each other in the
school-room, in the presence of the gentry of the
neighborhood. Then the cocks slain in mortal com-
bat became the teacher's property; while those
cocks which would not fight, called 'fugies,' were
fixed to a stake in the yard and killed one after an-

Wilson's early years in Scotland 45

other at cock-throwing, at one bodle for each
shot."*

It was under such conditions as these that Scot-
land's youth was taught, and about the most that
Wilson acquired was the ability to satisfy his nat-
ural love for reading, and to write the clear, legible
hand that may still be seen on the indenture of his
apprenticeship in the Paisley Museum. In Sir Wil-
liam Jardine's "Memoirs of Wilson" we are told
that he was also put under a "Mr. Barlass, then a
student of divinity," to study theology, but if this
was the case it probably lasted for but a short time,
for in his thirteenth year he was apprenticed to Wil-
liam Duncan, the husband of his sister Mary, to
learn the trade of a weaver. There is good reason
to credit the report that at an earlier date than this
he had served for a short while as a "herd" on a
farm, not far distant from Paisley, known as Ba-
kerfield. By the terms of his indenture he was to
be taught the art of weaving and should receive his
"Bed, Board, Washing and Clothing, suitable to his
station." The time of this paper is July 31, 1779,
and under date of August, 1782, Wilson himself
has written on the paper the earliest of his attempts
at verse which we have,

"Be't kent to a' the world in rliime,
That wi' right mickle wark and toil,
For three long j-ears I've ser't my time,
Whiles feasted wi' the hazel oil."

The "three long years" were ended, but bread must
be earned, and in spite of the irksomeness of it to
the restless and somewhat fragile boy, he went on

• "Social Life in Scotland in the Eighteenth Century," II, p. 164.

46 ALEXANDER WIESON : POET-NATURALIST

with his weaving, now at Paisley, now Lochwin-
noch, living- sometimes with his father and some-
times with his sister's husband in Queensferry.
However much he hated the occupation of a weaver
— a hate which he gave expression to from time to
time throughout his whole life in his poems and let-
ters— yet he found solace in long country walks, at
the tavern, and in reading his favorite books. In
the depths of the Castle-Semple forest he found a
retreat where he could enjoy the poems of Young,
Goldsmith, Pope and Shakespeare, or Ramsay, Fer-
gusson, and Burns, who was then just emerging
into fame.

At last he wearied of his dull life and started with
his former master, William Duncan, from Queens-
ferry to travel through the eastern portions of Scot-
land as a peddler. In April, 1788, he writes to his
old friend David Brodie of his travels ; he has met
and spent a glorious night with three brother poets,
James Kennedy, Ebenezer Picken, and "the immor-
tal author" of that well-known ballad, "The Battle
of Bannockburn." "From the Ocean," etc."* The
enthusiasm which Wilson felt was intense. "Blessed
meeting," he writes, "never did I spend such a night
in all my life. Oh, I was all fire! oh, I was all
spirit. * * * I have now a more deep regard
for the muse than ever." With a nature like his,
little was needed to raise him to the heights of ex-
altation or cast him to the "slough of despond."

Through the years of 1789-90 Wilson kept up
his wanderings, a sort of poetical-peddling tour,

•Was this Burns? Burns gives a much later date to the compo-
sition of his "Bannockburn."

Wilson's early years in Scotland 47

carrying on his back a packfull of ladies' goods
and in his hand a versified ''proposal" for the pub-
lication of his poems. He was equally ready to turn
aside for a prospective purchaser or to see an old
ruin of historic interest, or some majestic sight of
nature. His letters to his friend David Brodie, who
had worked beside him at the loom, breathe a spirit
of deep melancholy, and he writes mysteriously of
unavoidable misfortunes that gather around his
head, which make him doubt "what a day may bring
forth."

Everywhere he goes, his eyes are wide open and
he sees something to interest him. At Musselburgh
he is amused by the gentlemen who devote their time
to "the game of golph." and in a little "aside" he
whispers to us his opinion that it is "a more healthy
than entertaining amusement." His interest is ex-
cited by the Solon geese of the Bass, — a great rock
in Comley Bay, — while at Dunbar he recalls "the ef-
fects of Paul Jones's appearance in the Frith last
zvar," who came "so near the place with some of his
ships as to demolish some of the chimney tops and
put the inhabitants in terrible consternation." He
examined the half-moon battery of stone "whereon
have been mounted seventeen twelve-pounders as a
result of the citizens' fright," and he explores the
ruins of the old Dunbar castle with its gloomy caves
and foundations of rock jutting into the sea.
King's-Horn recalls to him the melancholy death of
Alexander HI, and the castle of Craig Miller brings
him memories of Mary Queen of Scots. His travels
throw him among fishermen, butchers, and stock-
raisers chiefly, and his one experience with a lady of

48 ALEXANDER WII^SON : POET-NATURALIST,

quality is a sad one. Encouraged by the reputa-
tion of the good Duchess of Buccleugh he mixes in
the gaiety of the Dalkeith Fair with the hope of get-
ting her patronage, only to be rewarded by a
*'soul-piercing" answer, ''I don't want any of these
things."

His trip, spent partly in soliciting subscriptions
to his poems, was unsatisfactory enough, but not
half so disappointing as the one he took to deliver
the books, for too many refused at last to take
the book they had signed their names for; even
an old fellow, who agreed to take one if Wilson
would sacrifice half the price with him "at the
shrine of Bacchus," pleaded that "poverty had
frozen up his pockets."

The first edition of his poems came out in the
autumn of 1790 and bore on its title page, "Poems
by Alexander Wilson, Paisley, Printed by John Neil-
son for the Author," but he wrote in November that
after using every scheme he could invent, no one
seemed disposed to encourage him and he was un-
able even to pay his friend Neilson for the few
copies that he had sold.

In the following year he says in a letter, "All
the stories you have read of garretts, tatters, un-
merciful duns, lank hunger and poetical hunger
are all sadly realized in me," and once more he
turns for salvation to the hated but profitable
loom, finding still some pleasure in his verses, and
in an occasional debate at the Pantheon in Edin-
burgh, where his speeches in verse were "crowned
with the most unbounded applause."

Among his friends of these years were his com-

Wilson's early years in Scotland 49

panion of the loom, David Brodie, eccentric but
clever and popular; Ebenezer Picken, a Univer-
sity of Glasgow man who forsook his possible
career in the church for poetry, became later
a teacher and edited a "Scottish Dictionary,"
but died in poverty in 181 5 or '16; James
Kennedy, a poet of small local reputation;
William McGavin, author of the "Protest-
ant," and good old Thomas Crichton, who of all
Wilson's Scottish friends was the truest and most
leal. Crichton was born in 1761 and was, there-
fore, five years Wilson's senior; by profession he
was a teacher ; he became master of Town's Hospi-
tal in 1 79 1 and was elder in Middle Church. He
was also a friend of the distinguished President of
Princeton University, John Witherspoon, and he did
honor to the memory of both of his friends by his
reminiscences. He lived to a good old age, not
dying until November 18, 1844. It was during
these years, too, that Wilson most probably formed
the acquaintance of Burns. Dr. Hetherington
quotes Mr. P. A. Ramsey of Paisley as authority for
the statement that Wilson visited Burns in Ayrshire,
and described his visit "in the most rapturous
terms." From Wilson's two poems on Burns we
know that they knew each other and that Wilson
held Burns in the highest personal esteem.

Wilson's second edition of his poems was published
in 1 79 1 and was merely the remainder of the old
unsold edition with a new title page and some omis-
sions and additions. The title page read, "Poems,
Humourous, Satirical, and Serious by Alexander
4

50 ALEXANDER WILSON : POET-NATURAUST

Wilson, Edinburgh, printed for the author, and sold
by P. Hill, 1791."

It was not until the publication of "Watty and
Meg," however, in 1792, that any success came to
him; but the sale of this poem, which was pub-
lished in a separate pamphlet, was great. Encour-
aged by the success of this venture and of another
poem, "The Laurel Disputed," which he delivered
first, in behalf of Fergusson's poetry, at the Pan-
theon, at Edinburgh, Wilson threw himself
vigorously on the side of the weavers in a
controversy with their employers, and with
more courage than discretion wrote a series
of crude, bitter, satirical verses of which
"The Shark" is a good representative. The
ire of the local potentates, who were thus attacked,
was fired to a white heat and Wilson was forced to
burn his verses "At the Cross." His doubtful
friend, William McGavin, tells a story of Wilson's
having offered to suppress them for five guineas, and
there has been published a letter purporting to be
the one Wilson wrote. But since there is not suffi-
cient testimony of the authenticity of this, we are
disposed to discredit it, as it is not at all in keep-
ing with what we know of Wilson's character.

The William Sharp who was the object of the
satirical poem entitled "The Shark" was a man of
considerable local prominence as a large owner of
property and the employer of many weavers.
Though the poem scarcely seems to us to lay the
author open to conviction for libel, yet the man who
was prosecuting him was able to secure judgment
against him and pushed his advantage pitilessly. It

Wilson's early years in Scotland 51

is interesting to note, as I am able to do through the
kind information of Mr. John Kent of Paisley, that
the well-known man of letters, William Sharp, who
died only in 1905, and whose authorship of the
poems published over the name of "Fiona McLeod"
has just become known, was the grandson of Wil-
liam Sharp, the local potentate of Wilson's day.

Wilson was fined £12 13s. 6d., an amount more
than he was able to pay, and was told by way of
comfort that his prosecutor, Mr. Sharp, "was re-
solved to punish him even though at some cost to
himself."* When at last he was free again, dis-
gusted with his harsh treatment, and with his head
full of democratic ideas, he very naturally turned
his thoughts toward America, whither so many
Scotchmen were emigrating. He loved Scotland
with a devotion that never grew dim, no, not even in
his later years when his love for his adopted coun-
try had reached its warmest stage ; but he saw that
it was best for him to seek his fortunes in a new
world. What made it harder to leave Scotland, and
yet at the same time wiser, was that he loved
a lady, — she whom he addressed in his poems as
"Matilda," — who "was," to quote his friend, good
old Thomas Crichton, "snatched by fortune from his
arms." Sir William Jardine says, "We have reason
to know that the charms of Matilda McLean, the
sister of his friend, Mrs. Witherspoon, had material-
ly interfered with his mind's ease." In a new world,
however, he could dream the dreams of poetry and
realize the dreams of freedom ; in a new world what
might he not do ?

* Wilson was confined in jail for a short time.

52 AI^EXANDER WII^ON I POET-NATURALIST

By the banks of the White Cart, where the gulls
were tossing lightly in the wind above them, he bade
his few loyal friends farewell, and set out with his
nephew, William Duncan, the son of his former em-
ployer, to take the ship Szvift which sailed on the
23rd of May, 1794, for America. It was a beauti-
ful summer afternoon when he looked for the last
time with sad and tearful eyes on the receding shores
of the old world, but before him danced bright and
pleasant visions of "prosperous days on the banks
of the Delaware" amid a new people and on alien
soil.

CHAPTER III

NEW LIFE IN A NEW IvAND

"It was a bright warm day in July, 1698," says
a Scotch writer, "that the shores and pier of Leith
were thronged with dense crowds of people, whose
cheers rose loud and jubilant as a tiny fleet of three
vessels, with a crew of 1,200 picked men, hoisted
sail to cross the Atlantic. This was the first of the
expeditions that went forth to Darien as to an El
Dorado."

This, the ill-fated dream of William Paterson to
improve the conditions of the Scottish people by
colonizing the Isthmus of Darien, was the beginning
of a great stream of emigrants who were through
so many years to seek in the new world their El
Dorado. It was nearly a hundred years after that
first departure from the pier at Leith, that the ship
Szvift hoisted its sail at Belfast Loch, with three
hundred and fifty passengers huddled in together
"with scarce a foot for each." Among these emi-
grants was Alexander Wilson. He had lived, we
are told, four months at the expense of only a shill-
ing a week in order to make this possible. By foot
he went with his nephew, William Duncan, to Port
Patrick, whence he sailed to Belfast, Ireland, w^here
he embarked. Disappointed in his dreams of love
and poetry, suspected politically, out of heart with
everything about him, the way of betterment w^hich
William Paterson had pointed out nearly a hundred
summers before seemed to him not a bad one, and

54 ALEXANDER wii^son: poet-naturawst

cutting himself loose from all that bound him to his
past, he too went to seek his El Dorado. The bright
23rd day of May, 1794, was the beginning of a dis-
mal, w^earisome voyage which did not end until the
middle of July. Only an old woman and two chil-
dreli died on the vessel before the middle of June
and the crew considered themselves lucky indeed ;
then a sailor dropped overboard and was lost, and
two more men were drowned in making the landing.
It was indeed a sad trip ; only once was its gloomi-
ness broken, when Dr. Reynolds, who had been tried
and condemned by the Irish House of Lords, was
found on board. He treated all round to rum-grog,
which was drunk "to the confusion of despots, and
the prosperity of liberty all the world over," a senti-
ment which was perhaps never more really felt than
just at this period, and one in which Wilson was
ever ready to pledge deeply.

The Swift cast anchor first off Reedy Island at
seven at night on July 15, and at midday of
the 14th, Wilson and Duncan set out on
foot to walk the five miles from Newcastle,
where they disembarked, to Wilmington, Del-
aware, in hopes of finding there some weav-
ing to do. Wilson's life in the new world was
not to begin very auspiciously, however, for at Wil-
mington he found, to his surprise, only two silk
looms and for himself no employment. His disap-
pointment was not too great for him to note with
sharp eyes everything of interest about him. "The
writer of this Biography," says George Ord, his
friend and collaborator, and the first of his biograph-
ers, "has a distinct recollection of a conversation

NEW UFE IN A NEW LAND 55

with Mr. Wilson on this part of his history,
wherein he described his sensations on viewing
the first bird that presented itself as he entered
the forest of Delaware. It was a red-headed
woodpecker, which he shot, and considered the
most beautiful bird he had ever beheld." Already
he was beginning to make the mental notes which
were to assist him, not only in the choice of his
final great lifework, but also in carrying it
through to completion.

On his way over the twenty-nine miles of country
from Wilmington to Philadelphia, the rich plumage
of the birds, especially the red-birds which flashed
their scarlet wings across the road as they passed,
interested him and made lighter the journey. Again
disappointed in finding work at the loom, and their
last farthing gone, the two men "took the first offer
of employment" that presented itself; what its na-
ture was Wilson does not cay, but there is a sugges-
tion of feeling in his reference to the laborers who
had to endure work with "the spade or wheelbarrow
under the almost intolerable heat of a scorching
sun," that makes us wonder if there is not here a
hint of some experience of his own. George Ord
says that he was first employed by a fellow country-
man, John Aiken, a copperplate printer of Philadel-
phia. He soon gave this up to work at Pennypack
Creek about ten miles from Philadelphia, with Col-
onel Joshua Sullivan, who apparently proved himself
a true friend. For a little while he tried weaving- in
Virginia, but soon returned again to Pennypack,
though he did not remain there very long. During
this period he was forced to take up the pack again,

56 AI.E:XANDER WII.SON : P0KT-NATURAI4ST

tramping through New Jersey, and for a short time
he taught school near Frankfort, Pennsylvania. It
was a life of trial and change that he was leading
now, so that all of this occurred in the space of less
than two years, for by the end of 1795 he was living
in Milestown, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania,
where he remained, apparently residing through the
entire time with one family, until the ist of May,
1801.

Here he was the teacher of a school of about forty
scholars, in the midst of a superstitious but "sober,"
industrious, and penurious people, who were nearly
all Germans. Meanwhile, he studied much himself,
mastered the German language, learned and prac-
tised surveying, wrote verses occasionally and took
his exercise in long cross-country walks or rides.
His health during this time was undoubtedly bad,
for once or twice he was forced to give up his teach-
ing, but he never complained throughout it all;
though to his Scottish friends who questioned him
whether they would be wise in coming to America,
he wrote that they must consider "the uncertainty
of the country agreeing with their constitutions (for
it has been, I fear, fatal to mine.)"

William Duncan had not remained with him dur-
ing these years, but, giving up the loom, he had gone
to Ovid, Cayuga County, New York, where he was
managing a farm, which he and his uncle possessed
together. There a short time later, his mother, —
Wilson's sister Mary, — who had come over from
the old country, joined him, with her other children.

Wilson's life at Milestown ended suddenly. Just
why he left the place we cannot say, but the circum-

NEW UFE IN A NEW LAND 57

Stances attending his departure were unhappy
and mysterious. The trouble grew out of an affair
of the heart, but more than this is not clear. On
the I St of May, 1801, in a short, rather disconnected
letter, he wrote to his friend, Charles Orr, a Scotch
schoolmaster of Philadelphia: "I have matters to
lay before you that have almost distracted me. *
* * I have no friend but yourself, and one whose
friendship has involved us both in ruin, or threatens
to do so." Six weeks later he moved to Bloomfield,
New Jersey, utterly disgusted with everything in
America, and from here he pleaded with Orr to re-
turn with him to ''Caledonia." He was anxious
to know just what was said of him at Milestown
without any one's learning where he was, and he
begged Orr with pathetic earnestness to find out

"how Mrs. is." Again he wrote, "As to the

reports at Milestown, were I alone the subject of
them they would not disturb me, but she who loves
me dearer than her own soul, whose image is for-
ever with me, whose heart is broken for her friend-
ship to me, she must bear all with not one friend
to whom she dare unbosom her sorrows. Of all
the events of my life nothing gives me such inex-
pressible misery as this." Over and over he be-
sought his friend to find out the condition of this
unknown lady, but he always cautioned him to let
no one know his address. It seems to have been an
attachment which grew between Wilson and a lady
already married; but Wilson appears to have left
the place with honor and discretion as soon as he
realized its existence.

Nearly all of the biographers have dwelt on the

58 AI,EXANDER WILSON : POET-NATURAUST

fact that Wilson was never seriously in love, but
we see how untrue this is when we remember his
unsuccessful affair in Scotland and read the really
pathetic letters referring to this second woman,
whose image he declared "no time nor distance can
ever banish" from his mind. We are to find, how-
ever, that he was less constant than he thought and
was to leave a fair sweetheart to mourn him after his
death. We hear nothing more of the episode which
caused his departure from Milestown. During the
time that he lived at Milestown, Wilson accom-
plished on foot the journey of nearly eight hundred
miles to Ovid, New York, to assist William Duncan
in the arrangement of his affairs there. So unfail-
ing was he in his devotion to his loved ones that
no exertion was ever too much for him to under-
take in their behalf.

In Bloomfield Wilson resumed his interrupted
pedagogic duties at the rate of "12 s. per quarter
York currency" with thirty-five pupils, but from the
first he had no love for the place. The people were
more ignorant and even more superstitious than
those of Milestown. Even the belief in witches was
so prevalent that when a Dutch doctor declared that
the trouble with one of his patients was due to the
bewitchment of an old woman of the neighborhood,
the justice actually issued a warrant by the authority
of which she was dragged to the sick man's room
in order that he might tear her flesh with his nails
and so overcome the spell. Among such people as
this, there could be little that was agreeable to a man
of Wilson's temperament, so that his appointment to
the school near Gray's Ferry, Pennsylvania, came to

NEW lyll^E IN A NEW LAND 59

him somewhat in the nature of a rehef, though
teaching was not pleasant to him anywhere. He
loved to be out in the open, drinking in the fresh air,
following the birds through the forest — in short, as
it seemed then, playing truant to the world and its
work-a-day problems ; and anything which shut him
up indoors, whether it were weaving or teaching,
was a thing to be hated. On the 25th of February,
1802, he resumed his teaching, having given up his
school at Bloomfield some time before this. The
Gray's Ferry school paid him one hundred dollars
per quarter, and not more than fifty scholars were
to be admitted. The discipline here before he came
had been disgracefully lax, but with his usual rigid
severity — for Wilson believed in the old "spare the
rod and spoil the child" adage — he soon brought
things into order. Gray's Ferry was to give him
the most pleasant years of his life. As early as July
of this summer he declared that his harp was "new
strung," and his old sanguine aspirations after fame
returned. "My heart swells," he said; "my soul
rises to an elevation I cannot express, and I think
I may yet produce some of these glowing wilds of
rural scenery — some new Paties, Rogers, Glauds
and Simons,* that will rank with these favorites of
my country when their author has mixed with the
kindred clay." The dream was still haunting him
that he might follow in the steps of Allan Ramsay
and sing his way to fame as Burns had done. The
later vision that was to reveal the path of fame to

* He refers to Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd," of which he was very
fond.

6o AI.EXANDER WIIvSON : POE;T-NA'rURAUST

him in very truth, had not yet dawned upon him, but
it was near at hand.

The resuh of the "new stringing" of Wilson's
harp was soon apparent when "The Invitation," a
verse letter addressed to Charles Orr, appeared in
the Literary Magazine and American Register of
July, 1804. The magazine, published in Philadel-
phia, was edited by the talented novelist, Charles
Brockden Brown, and the editor hailed the poet in
his notes "To Correspondents" in these words : "The
author of the poetical epistle published in the pres-
ent number is thanked for his communication. Any
coin from the same mint will always be deemed gen-
uine and current with us." A mild encouragement,
which, however, led later to the publication of vari-
ous other poems, among the best of which were
"The Rural Walk" and "The Solitary Tutor." Wil-
son, in the time that he had been silent, had gained
considerable mastery of his measures, and the poems
of this period are the finest that he ever wrote, ex-
cepting always the earlier "Watty and Meg" and
the later "Blue-bird" and "Fish-hawk," or "Os-
prey."

Meanwhile, things had not gone so well among
Wilson's relatives, either in America or in Scotland,
in spite of the unselfish assistance which he was ever
rendering them whenever he was able to do so. His
father's affairs and those of his brothers-in-law were
far from bright, while he was ever writing full-
hearted, encouraging letters to keep up the spirits
of his struggling nephews in Ovid. The elder Wil-
liam Duncan had come to America, where he soon
began drinking excessively, and only increased, in-

NEW UFE IN A NEW LAND 6l

stead of lightening, the burdens of his sons and
brother-in-law. These troubles, united with his
own personal difficulties, often brought Wilson's
naturally gloomy disposition into what he himself
called the "slough of despondency ;" but his friend-
ship for the good old naturalist, William Bartram,
served as an excellent antidote to his melancholia.
Bartram was a man of distinction as a botanist and
was somewhat widely known as a writer on orni-
thology; he had many acquaintances among the
naturalists of the day, and above all else he was a
level-headed, big-hearted gentleman. He was not
slow to notice the unfortunate effect that Wilson's
spells of melancholy had on his happiness, and he
united with another of Wilson's friends, Alexander
Lawson, so to fill up his time with interesting pur-
suits that there could be no hours left for brooding
over his misfortunes. It was about this time, too,
that a narrow escape from the accidental discharge
of his gun, while he was in the woods alone, startled
Wilson to a realization of how, should he die in any
uncertain manner, he would be thought to be a sui-
cide. Of this possibility he had great horror, and
was as ready as his friends would have him be to
enter into their plans. Accordingly, at their sug-
gestion he began the study of birds and of drawing,
as a pleasant way to spend his unoccupied moments.
His self-given lessons, under the guidance of Wil-
liam Bartram's niece, Miss Ann Bartram, afterward
Mrs. Carr, progressed most satisfactorily in spite
of having to be carried on chiefly by candlelight, and
he was no less successful in his study of the birds
themselves, though he knew little of their nomen-

62 ale;xande:r wii^son : poet-naturalist

clature. In March, 1804, less than five years before
the appearance of the first volume of the "American
Ornithology," Wilson sent to Bartram a collection
of bird-drawings, which he had made, with the re-
quest that he should write their names under them,
as, with the exception of three or four, he did not
know them. Yet even then the idea of his monu-
mental work was beginning to take some shape in
his mind, for as early as June, 1803, he wrote to
Thomas Crichton, "I have had many pursuits since
I left Scotland — Mathematics, the German Lan-
guage, Music, Drawing, etc., and now I am about
to make a collection of all our finest birds." The
idea once in his head was not to leave him. Five
days in the week he had no time to spare from his
bread-earning school duties, but the other two, with
little regard for his ever-weakening health, he sacri-
ficed to the "itch for drawing" which he says he
had caught from Alexander Lawson. It was Law-
son to whom he wrote in March, 1804, that he meant
to carry out his plan "of making a collection of all
the birds in this part of North America." He
granted that the plan was Quixotic, a sort of "brain
windmill," but it was to him one of his "earthly
comforts."

There were before him, however, long years of
trial and struggle, of study of American birds pri-
marily, and secondarily of American people, before
he was at last to realize his ambitions and become
famous as the American Ornithologist.

CHAPTER IV

THE MAKING 01^ AN AMERICAN

Gray's Ferry, Kingsessing, Pennsylvania, was a
far different place in the first decade of the nine-
teenth century from what we should find it to-day.
Wilson has feelingly painted it in his "Solitary
Tutor" and in "The Invitation." The schoolhouse
in which he taught was a square stone building of
small pretension, down in a "bridge-built hollow"
about half a mile from Gray's Ferry and the Schuyl-
kill. Around it on the sloping green "the old gray
white-oaks" and the "tufted cedars" shed their
grateful shade and a line of tall young poplars stood
near in even columns, while behind it rose the forest
in whose depths lived Wilson's truest friends, the
birds. Across from the school-house green, was
the Sorrel -horse Tavern and adjoining it, the white-
washed blacksmith's shop. Along the road, espec-
ially just before market days, a throng of travel-
ers passed to and from the city, "an ever-varying
scene * :k * with horsemen, thundering
stage and stately team." Not far from the
school-building was the house where Wilson
lived, a "yellow-fronted cottage" sheltered by great
poplars and a weeping willow. In the yard, full
of roses and catalpa trees, the hopvines and honey-
suckle grew luxuriant, and every sort of fruit
ripened on the plentiful boughs, while the woods
so near at hand were full of many kinds of birds
and the streams plentiful with fish.

64 AI^EXANDER WIIvSON : POI^^-NATURALIST

Such was Gray's Ferry in the summer season, and
if in the winter it lost some of its poetical beauty,
when at nighttime the cellar of the schoolhouse
echoed with the squalling of cats, and the loft with
the rattling of flying squirrels, yet for Wilson it
was still a pleasant haven from the dirt and noise
of the city. Let no one think, however, that his
life was an easy one here. He worked sometimes
five, sometimes six days in the week all day long,
after the custom of that time, at his school duties,
without having even then the assurance of his pay.
Not that his work was not satisfactory to his pa-
trons, for it seems to have been eminently so ; but
the people were not wealthy, and the hard winters
sometimes made it impossible for many of the chil-
dren to attend school. In 1805 the Schuylkill and
the Delaware were both impassable and many of
the families whose children had been pupils of the
Gray's Ferry School were "almost in a state of star-
vation." At the end of the term fifteen dollars was
all that AVilson was able to raise, a sum insufficient
to pay even his board. He summoned the trustees
together and stated the case, proposing to give up
the school, but they would not consent to this ; a
meeting of the people was called and "forty-eight
scholars instantly subscribed for," a sufficient in-
dication of the satisfaction which was felt with Wil-
son's teaching.

The difficulties through which Wilson had passed
previous to this may be imagined when we
read a letter to William Duncan that he
wrote on his return from his tour to Ovid
and Niagara, which is described in "The For-

THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 65

esters." He found that the people with whom
he Hved had named a boy after him in his
absence and he presented his god-son with six dol-
lars, which, after paying for a cord of wood, left
him only three-quarters of a dollar in the world.
Yet in his little retreat in the "bridge-built hollow"
were conceived some of his best poems and, what is
infinitely more, here came to him the notion of writ-
ing his ornithology and from here he set out on his
first tours. By means of these travels he met many
men of distinction and saw with an observing eye
the life of many parts of America.

The first of his long journeys was the one to
Niagara in the fall of 1804, part of which he
traveled in company with William Duncan and part
alone. He returned from this expedition on the
7th of December, having walked forty-seven miles
the last day ; he had been gone two months, during
which time he covered between twelve and thirteen
hundred miles "through deep snows and almost un-
inhabited forests; over stupendous mountains, and
down dangerous rivers." This was his trial trip, a
test of his strength and steadfastness, and he proved
himself able to endure much.

There is a true ring of confidence at last in his
letter in which he unfolds his proposed journeys to
William Bartram : "For all the hazards and priva-
tions incident to such an undertaking, I feel confident
in my own spirit and resolution. With no family
to enchain my affections, no ties but those of friend-
ship, and the most ardent love of my adopted coun-
try; with a constitution which hardens amidst
5

66 ai,exande;r wilson: poet-naturaust

fatigues, and a disposition sociable and open, which
can find itself at home by an Indian fire in the depths
of the woods, as well as in the best apartment in the
civilized world, I have at present a real design of
becoming a traveler."

The time was, however, not yet ripe for him;
school-teaching gave him no more than a bare sup-
port, and in order to travel he must have money.
His hopes of being included in the Pike Expedition
to the source of the Arkansas, to which we shall
refer later, were disappointed, and for a while noth-
ing else appeared by means of which he might carry
out his plans.

In the mean time, William Duncan had moved to
Pennsylvania to the school in Milestown, which
Wilson formerly held, and was anxious that his
uncle should visit him and make some political
speeches. In reply Wilson wrote that he had al-
ready been heard often enough about Milestown and
his presence "might open old sores in some" of Dun-
can's "present friends" ; moreover, he said he was
determined to let politics alone, hereafter, as be-
getting many enemies and doing him little good,
and he advised Duncan to do the same. "If you
and I," he wrote, "attend punctually to the duties
of our profession, and make our business our pleas-
ure,— and the improvement of our pupils, with their
good government, our chief aim, — honor and re-
spectability and success will assuredly attend us,
even if we never open our lips on politics." Nor
did he ever depart from this position in regard to
political matters.

Wilson was blessed in forming a few singularly

the: making 01^ AN AMERICAN 67

good friends. William Bartram, whose Botanic
Gardens and wide acquaintance among scientific
men had meant so much to Wilson, had directed his
attention to ornithology, and taught him all he knew
himself; Alexander Lawson, the engineer and en-
graver, interested him in drawing and etching, and
later engraved his plates for him at a nominal cost
''for the sake of old Scotland," and now his good
genius brought him to the attention of Mr. S. F.
Bradford, a publisher and bookseller of the firm of
Bradford and Inskeep, of Third street, Philadelphia.
Bradford was about to bring out an edition of Ree's
New Cyclopedia in twenty-two quarto volumes,
and Wilson was employed at a salary of nine hun-
dred dollars per year as assistant editor.

On the 1st of April, 1806, after nearly ten trouble-
some years of teaching, he resigned the school at
Gray's Ferry and moved into Philadelphia, where
he applied himself with the closest attention to his
editorial duties and to preparing himself to under-
take the writing of his ornithology. Very soon
after his connection with Bradford and Inskeep
began, he unfolded to Mr. Bradford his scheme
for the publication of his proposed book and was
promised the publisher's support. From this mo-
ment to his last day he was ever busy on this proj-
ect so dear to his heart, now drawing with inde-
fatigable energy, now roaming with the pros-
pectus of the "Ornithology" through the country,
soliciting subscribers for a book that was to cost
one hundred and twenty dollars.

From his earlest youth, Wilson had let no
opportunity for self-improvement slip from him;

68 ALEXANDER WII.SON : POET-NATURAUST

and now he was busy taking notes on everything
he saw, studying the people and the country as he
passed.

In September, 1808, the first voknne of the
monumental "American Ornithology" appeared,
but to Wilson it was a mere earnest of what he
might do if he only had the means. The book
was a very costly one and even at the rate of one
hundred and twenty dollars per set he would have
to secure a large number of subscribers to make
his expenses clear. A long and bitter training
had put somewhat of masterfulness into his na-
ture, and if he had no way to carry his plan
through he must make one. So he began the
long toilsome journeys, of the fatigue of which
even his letters give us, perhaps, but a dim pic-
ture. But the opportunity of learning his adopted
country, to which he was now devoted, soul and
body, and of meeting face to face his audience,
was fraught with possibilities which Wilson was
not blind to, and the observations on contempo-
rary life which he has left in his somewhat hasty
personal letters are exceedingly valuable, but
must always be judged in view of the man who
wrote them, and the circumstances under which
they were made. Familiar as he had ever been
with sorrow and poverty, Wilson's naturally mel-
ancholy disposition deepened, and though he was
of too earnest and steadfast a disposition not to
be very hopeful in his general philosophy of life,
yet he was wont to form too gloomy an opinion
of the special conditions with which he came into
contact. It is also to be remembered that his

THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 69

point of view was that of a stranger who was often
looked upon with the disapproval which is not infre-
quently met by the book agent, for such, doubt-
less, many then regarded Wilson. In spite of
this, however, when we have allowed for the con-
stitutional moods of the man, his powers of ob-
servation were remarkably keen, and the sincerity
and truthfulness of his purpose were always un-
impeachable. Everywhere he went he found
much both to praise and to censure. On his pil-
grimages he visited almost every college then of
importance in the country, and nearly every one
subscribed to his book for its library, receiving
its author with courtesy. At Princeton President
Smith received him kindly and was surprised and
pleased with the work. The professors of Col-
umbia were even more hearty in their commenda-
tion, especially the professor of languages, who,
"being a Scotchman and also a Wilson," would
have done him any favor in his power. The lit-
erati of New Haven received him with "politeness
and respect" and he described with interest the
"streets shaded with elm trees and poplars," the
large common covered with grass, and the four
or five wooden spires which had once been so in-
fested with woodpeckers that "it became neces-
sary to set people, with guns, to watch and shoot
these invaders of the sanctuary."

Later he was honorably entertained by Presi-
dent Wheelock at Dartmouth, where the profes-
sors vied with each other in obliging him, and at
William and Mary on his later Southern trip he
was received with distinction by Bishop Madison.

70 AI^^XANDER WILSON: POET-NATURAUST

In New England he met some veterans of the
battle of Bunker Hill with whom he visited the
old battlefield, and one may see in his letter about
this visit how truly American he had become. "I
felt," he declared, "as though I could have en-
countered a whole battalion myself in the same
glorious cause."

On the Southern trip which followed the tour
through New England, Wilson expressed his
opinion in his letters as freely as he had done in
the other case. In Maryland he was disgusted
with the negroes huddled up with "their filthy
bundles of rags around them," but Washington
he thinks "a noble place for a great metropolis."
Even then, "the taverns and boarding-houses"
were crowded with an odd assemblage of charac-
ters : "Fat placemen, expectants, contractors, pe-
titioners, office-hunters, lumber-dealers, salt-man-
ufacturers, and numerous other adventurers."

Neither Virginia nor Carolina satisfied him al-
together. The streets of Norfolk shocked him by
their "disgraceful state" ; Southampton County
by its almost impassable roads. In North Caro-
lina he is astonished by the customary morning
drinking of toddies; "you scarcely meet a man,"
he wrote, "whose lips are not parched or chapped
or blistered with drinking this poison." Of the
taverns he remarked that they were "the most
desolate and beggarly imaginable; bare, bleak
and dirty walls ; one or two old broken chairs
and a bench form all the furniture."

As a matter of fact there were not many tav-
erns in the South in those days; the open-house

THE MAKING OI^ AN AMERICAN 7I

hospitality of the people made little need for
houses of public entertainment.

It was the better side of the Southern life that
Wilson was unable to see ; for whatever else they
were the Southerners were a people of aristo-
cratic traditions, and a man who came among
them an unintroduced stranger taking subscrip-
tions for a book which most of them knew and
asked little about, naturally enough did not see
the best that was here, any more than he had
done in New England. "As to the character of
the North Carolinians," he added, "were I to
judge of it by the specimens I met with in tav-
erns, I should pronounce them to be the most ig-
norant, debased, indolent and dissipated portion
of the Union. But I became acquainted with a
few such noble exceptions, that, for their sakes,
I am willing to believe that they are all better
than they seemed to be." Here is merely an ex-
ample of the truth that every chance traveler
must remember — it is the scum of society, as well
as of other things, that is always seen the easiest,
because it floats on the surface. Wilson was a
man whom his best friends found of the ''genus
ivritahile," and any discourtesy or inattention
shown to him he deeply resented and was slow
to forget. Under the influence of the tempera-
mental effects of some real or supposed slight he
undoubtedly saw the darker side of things. It is
not strange then that after several unanswered
requests for lists of probable subscribers to his
"Ornithology" he should declare the Southern
people to be cursed with an "abject and disgrace-

72 Ai^DXAND^R wii^on: POET-NATURAUST

fill listlessness." In these generalizations, hur-
riedly expressed in his letters when he was tired
out and out of patience with the people that he
had canvassed all day, he was often at fault, but
in his special remarks and his descriptions of the
things that he actually saw he was almost always
accurate.

From Savannah Wilson had expected to re-
turn home by water, but as a matter of fact we
learn from a letter written to his father that he
did not do so, for he wrote that he had "visited
every town within one hundred and fifty miles of
the Atlantic Coast, from the River St. Lawrence
to St. Augustine in Florida," yet he is still doubt-
ful whether he can cover the cost of the publica-
tion, or must suffer the sacrifice "of the little
all" that he has. With this letter he sent to his
father that epoch-making first volume of his "Or-
nithology," the book which stands almost as the
very first — for the little work which had been
done by Thomas Jefferson and William Bartram
was inconsiderable — example of ornithological lit-
erature in America, and which announced the
birth of a new study in the United States.

A decade and a half had passed away now since
Wilson came to America, and through these years
there had been going on a slow but very real mod-
ification in the man. The Wilson who had burned
his own verses by compulsion at the Cross of
Paisley was a Scotchman through and through;
even his liberality of view and love of freedom
were a part of the Scotch character, and his by in-
heritance. Years later when after his Milestown

THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 73

experience he proposed to Orr to leave this "un-
worthy country," he was showing that not yet
had he become thoroughly American in feeling,
but even then the change was taking place. By
friendships and courtesies, through perils by land
and water, in common dangers and common in-
terests, slowly, surely, unfailingly, his character
was being fused in the crucible of life until it be-
came as distinctly American as that of the best
native-born man with whom he worked and lived.
The love of his own native land was never to
fail utterly nor grow dim, but it became second to
that which he felt to this land where at last his
dreams began to fade into reality. It was for the
love of this new country of his that he began his
journey and endured his hardships, and now at
length he began to see, as so many others have
seen, that by following where love had first led
him he might come to receive what had before
been denied him, the fulfilment of his dreams of
fame. As truly representative of the Scotland of
his day as he had been, he became no less repre-
sentative now of the America in which he lived.
A republican of the most enthusiastic order, fa-
miliar with American men and forests, and cities,
from Maine to Florida, a political speaker at
times, and a writer of political verse, the man had
become an American indeed when he could say in
a letter to his father that he would "willingly give
a hundred dollars" — a big sum with him just then
— "if he could spend a few days in Paisley," but
that he "would again wing his way across the
western waste of water, to the peaceful and happv
regions of America,"

CHAPTER V

WII.SON AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICANS

Alexander Wilson was a man almost wholly
self-educated, used rather to the rough customs
of a weaver's cottage than the polished manners
of a drawing-room : life and the world had used
him roughly, and a haughtiness and cold reserve,
which was lost in animation when one knew him,
raised a barrier between him and the stranger,
yet among his acquaintances were some of the
foremost men of the day. From these men Wil-
son received much both of education and inspira-
tion, and the pleasure and interest which he took
in meeting them meant no little to one who had
known so few of the sweeter things of life.

Perhaps the most important influence in Wil-
son's life was the friendship of the good old bot-
anist, William Bartram, of whom we have already
spoken. John Bartram, the father of Wilson's
friend, who was a man of no little distinction him-
self, laid out the beautiful Botanical Gardens
where the son afterward lived, and like his son he
was known for his writings on various subjects,
usually connected with natural history.

Closely following in his father's footsteps, the
son was perhaps even more distinguished, and
was able to bring Wilson into acquaintance with
many men of note. He was considerably older
than Wilson, but so kindred were their natures
that this difference in age never interfered with

WILSON AND CONTEIMPORARY AMERICANS 75

the close friendship that only blossomed with the
years. Bartram wrote in a clear, vivid style, and
the year or two which Wilson spent at his house
in his latter years scarcely drew him into closer
contact with the refining influence of the man's
character and methods than he had already been
brought by his earlier study of his prose.

C."W. Peale, the founder of the Peale Museum
in Philadelphia, which was then situated in old
"Independence Hall," was also able to assist in
broadening his acquaintance among helpful peo-
ple, and to bring him more markedly into the no-
tice of the scientific world.

If these men living in the same town with him
had a more intimate influence on Wilson's life,
they are still scarcely more interesting to us than
are the noteworthy men that he met in his travels.
We have spoken of the presidents and professors
of the various colleges, who entertained him with
a courtesy which did them credit. There were
other men, too, better known than these, who
lent to him an encouragement that was no small
factor in helping him endure heroically the strug-
gles that were necessary before success might be
gained. In New York, Dr. Samuel Mitchell, and
Scudder of the American Museum, were his
friends, and Governor De W^itt Clinton both ap-
preciated him in life and took pleasure in doing
him honor after death. It is pleasing to note
this, for it is another Governor of New York,
Daniel D. Tompkins, who hurt so deeply Wil-
son's feelings by his cold treatment. "He turned
over a few pages, looked at a picture or two,

76 ALEXANDER WILSON : POET-NATURALIST

asked me my price," wrote Wilson, "and while in
the act of closing the book, added, 'I would not
give a hmidred dollars for all the birds you in-
tend to describe, even had I them alive.' "

With F. A. Michaux, the Frenchman, whose
work on "American Forest Trees" is still remem-
bered, he corresponded and kept up a friendship,
and was always ready to assist him whenever he
could.

Another acquaintance which is especially inter-
esting is that with Tom Paine. Wilson had been
in his earlier days an ardent advocate of repub-
licanism and Paine was to him then quite a hero.
As early as 1792 in his by no means remarkable
"Address to the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr" this
verse occurs:

"The 'Rights of Man' is now weel kenned,
And read by mony a hunder ;
For Tammy Paine the buik has penned,
And lent the Courts a lounder;
It's hke a keeking-glass to see
The craft of Kirk and statesmen;
And wi' a bauld and easy glee
Guid faith the birky beats them
Aff hand this day."

The passing of years cooled his blood and modi-
fied, though it did not change, his opinions. It
is, in the light of these facts, both interesting and
gratifying to find that Wilson in 1808 called on
Paine, which visit he himself describes : "While
in New York I had the curiosity to call on the cel-
ebrated author of the 'Rights of Man.' He lives
in Greenwich, a short way from the city. In the
only decent-looking apartment of a small, indiffer-

WII.SON AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICANS 'J'J

ent-lookino^ frame house, I found this extraordi-
nary man, sitting wrapped in a nightgown, the
table before him covered with newspapers, with
pen and ink beside him. Paine's face would have
excellently suited the character of Bardolph; but
the penetration and intelligence of his eye bespeaks
the man of genius, and of the world. He com-
plained to me of his inability to walk, an exercise
he was formerly fond of; he examined my book,
leaf by leaf, with great attention — desired me to
put his name down as a subscriber," and then re-
quested to be remembered to some friends that he
and Wilson had in common. The ornithologist
remembered the meeting with evident pleasure.

From Wilson's letters we also learn that he
knew General Wade Hampton and was a friend
of the ill-fated but distinguished Governor of
Louisiana, Meriwether Lewis of the famous
Lewis-Clark Expedition.*

It was in the winter of 1808 in Washington that
Wilson first met General James Wilkinson, and a
few months later he called on him again in
Charleston, South Carolina, and received from
him twelve dollars on his subscription to the "Or-
nithology," which he says was "the first fruits"
of his project. Whatever may have been the
faults and failings of Wilkinson, — and they were
perhaps many, — he deserves some charity from
us for this deed of kindness which he did to our
first American ornithologist when he so much
needed encouragement.

* See "History of the Expedition under Command of Lewis and
Clark," by Elliott Coues; Frances P. Harper, New York, 1893.

yS ALEXANDER WILSON: POET-NATURALIST

The letter written by Wilkinson to Thomas Jef-
ferson, which will be presently given, presents
very clearly the opinion which General Wilkin-
son held of the ornithologist.

The relation of Wilson with Thomas Jefferson
has been dwelt upon with emphasis by almost
every one who has essayed anything at all on the
former, and the fact that Wilson seems to have
received no reply to his request to be sent with
Pike on his expedition has been made the text
of violent philippics against Jefferson from Wil-
son's earliest biographer, George Ord, down
through the list, with one or two exceptions. The
letters, which are published here for the first time
in full, throw valuable light on the relations which
existed between these two remarkable men. Wil-
son was no hero-worshiper; on the contrary he
was an extremist in his belief in the equality of
man. He admired Tom Paine, but likened his
nose to that of Bardolph, and though himself hold
ing Washington as "our country's glory, pride and
boast," he was amused at the enthusiasm with
which men adored him. But Jefferson was his
hero of heroes : "the enlightened philosopher, —
the distinguished naturalist, — the first statesman
on earth, the friend, the ornament of science * '^
that father of our country, the faithful guardian
of our liberties" ; how could he but love him with
a love which came almost to worship, since after
all these things did Wilson most earnestly seek?
To him he was "the best of men" and at his re-
election as President he cried out, "This day the
heart of every republican, of every good man,

WIIvSON AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICANS 79

within the immense hmits of our happy country,
will leap with joy."

At this time Wilson had but recently returned
from his trip to Niagara, and, knowing Jefferson's
enthusiastic interest in science, he sent him a
drawing of two birds with which he had met for
the first time, "as the child of an amiable parent,"
he wrote to Bartram, "presents to its affection-
ate father some little token of its esteem." The
letter which accompanied the drawing is as fol-
lows:

"Sir

"I beg your acceptance of a small trifle in Nat-
ural History which though imperfectly executed
is offered with all the sincerity of affection to the
best Friend and brightest ornament of this happy
country. If it afford you a moment's amusement
I shall think myself amply rewarded.

"On my return from a visit to the Falls of Ni-
agara in October last I killed two birds on the
shores of the Mohawk river and conceiving them to
be little known, particularly the Jay, I have taken
the liberty of transmitting under favor of Mr.
Bartram as faithful a sketch of them as I was ca-
pable of taking. The Jay approaches nearly to the
Corviis Canadensis of Linnaeus and Le Geay brun
of Buffon dift'ering however in the color and ar-
ticle of crest so much as to seem to be a distinct
species. From several other birds found while
on the same Tour I am inclined to believe that
many subjects still remain to be added to our No-
menclature in the Ornithology of the middle and
northern states.

8o AL^XANDE^R WILSON: POET-NATURAUST

"Permit me now to ask your Excellency's for-
giveness for this intrusion. Rejoicing with 3
grateful country on the prospects of reaping the
fruits of your pre-eminent services for many years
I implore Heaven to bless and preserve a life so
honourable to Science and so valuable to the Re-
publican institutions of a great and rapidly in-
creasing Empire and beg leave to Subscribe my-
self

"With deepest veneration,
"Your Excellency's sincere Friend

and humble Servant
"Aldx Wilson."
"Kingsess March i8th, 1805."

The President responded with a letter full of
interest and courtesy which we print in full :

"Monticello Apr. 7, 05.
"Sir

"I received here yesterday your favor of March
18, with the elegant drawings of the new birds
you found on your tour to Niagara, for which I
pray you to accept my thanks. The Jay is quite
unknown to me, from my observations while in
Europe, on the birds & quadrupeds of that quar-
ter, I am of opinion there is not in our continent a
single bird or quadruped which is not sufficiently
unlike all the members of it's family there to be
considered as specifically different, on this gen-
eral observation I conclude with confidence that
your Jay is not a European bird.

"The first bird on the same sheet I judge to

WILSON AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICANS 8l

be a Muscicapa from it's bill, as well as from the
following circumstance. Two or three days be-
fore my arrival here a neighbor killed a bird, un-
known to him, & never before seen here as far as
he could learn, it was brought to me soon after I
arrived; but in the dusk of the evening, and so
putrid that it could not be approached but with
disgust. But I obtained a sufficiently exact idea
of it's form and colours to be satisfied it is the
same with yours, the only difference I find in
yours is that the white on the back is not so pure,
and that the one I saw had a little of a crest.
Your figure, compared with the white bellied
Gobemouche 8 Buff 342, PI. enlum 566 shews a
near relation. Buffon's is dark on the back.

"As you are curious in birds there is one well
worthy your attention, to be found or rather
heard in every part of America, & yet scarcely
ever to be seen. It is in all the forests from spring
to fall, and never but on the tops of the tallest
trees from which it perpetually serenades us with
some of the sweetest notes, & as clear as those of
the nightingale. I have followed it miles without
ever but once getting a good view of it. it is the
size and make of the Mocking bird, hghtly thrush-
colored on the back, & a grayish white on the
breast & belly, mr. Randolph, my son-in-law, was
in possession of one which had been shot by a
neighbor, he pronounced this also a Muscicapa,
and I think it much resembling the Moucherolle
de la Martinique 8 Buffon 374 pi. enlum 658. as
it abounds in all the neighborhood of Philadelphia,
6

82 ALEXANDER WIESON : POET-NATURAUST

you may perhaps by patience and perseverance
(of which much will be requisite) get a sight, if
not possession of it.

"I have for 20 years interested the young
sportsmen of my neighborhood to shoot me one ;
but as yet without success.

"Accept my salutations and assurances of re-
spect.

"Th : Jei^i^erson"

The suggested commission at the close of this
letter was received by Wilson with enthusiasm.
He wrote at once to Bartram and Duncan, that
their efiforts might be added to his own in search-
ing out this strange bird, and after a long and ar-
duous pursuit it was found that the naturalists
had been misguided by Jefferson's suggestion
that "it was never found but on the tops of the
tallest trees" and the bird was identified as the
Wood Robin, which, on the contrary, is so often
on the ground as to give it, as Ord remarks, one
of its names, the Ground Robin. This gave Wil-
son the occasion for a second letter to Jefferson
which, from its nature, did not require an answer.
As this letter has not hitherto been published it is
printed here.

"Kingsess Sep 30th 1805
"Sir

"I had the honor last spring of presenting your
Excellency with drawings of two birds which I
supposed to be nondescript until the receipt of
your very condescending Letter to me of Ap. 7th
referring to 8 Buffon 342 PI. en lum 566 which I

WIIvSON AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICANS 83

find to contain a Bird of the same Species with
one of those sent but unnoticed by me before.
Allow me Sir as an atonement for this mistake to
beg your acceptance of another sheet of Drawings
being my poor efforts to represent faithfully 4
of our most capital Songsters among which is (I
believe) the Bird* so particularly and accurately
described in your Excellency's letter to me. This
being the only bird I can find among all our
Songsters corresponding in every respect with
the description there given. The clearness and
plaintive sweetness of its notes, its solitary dis-
position— continually serenading us from the tops
of the tallest trees — its colour, size and resem-
blance to the Moucherelle de la Martinique of
Buffon, as observed by your Excellency, desig-
nate this, (and my friend Mr. Bartram is of the
same opinion) to be the Bird so justly esteemed
by your Excellency.

"Finding, as I do, an innocent and delightful
retreat from the sometimes harassing business of
Life in our Rural Solitudes I have employed some
of my leisure hours in Drawing many of these
charming Songsters of the Grove with a view at
some future day of publishing in a more finished
manner all the Birds resident in or which Emi-
grate to the United States from the South &
North. May I hope that your Excellency will
not think meanly of my feeble attempts or of the
motives which have induced me to intrude at this
time on your precious hours devoted to the In-

* A reference is given here to the numbering of the figures on the
plate.

84 ALEXANDER WILSON: POET-NATURALIST

terests and happiness of an immense Country.
These motives are, the most affectionate regard
and veneration for your Excellency as the friend
of Science and the 'best hope' of virtuous Repub-
licans ; and the fond but humble hope of meriting
your esteem.

''Your Excellency's devoted friend and humble
Servt

"Alex Wilson."

The next episode is the one which has oc-
casioned so much bitter criticism from Wilson's
biographers. Wilson, seeing in the newspapers
that Jefferson designed having the shores of the
Mississippi explored, sought to persuade William
Bartram to apply with him for a place on the ex-
pedition. Failing in this, since Bartram thought
himself unable to endure the hardships of travel,
he enclosed a letter of recommendation from Bar-
tram, who knew Mr. Jefferson, in one of his own,
requesting to be sent on "any of these expedi-
tions." Three weeks later he wrote his nephew
that he had heard nothing from the President and
remarked that "no hurry of business could ex-
cuse it," if Mr. Jefferson received the letters.
This matter is, however, now explained by the let-
ters of Jefferson and Wilkinson. The following
note shows the esteem in which Jefferson held
Wilson as early as 1807:

"Th : Jefferson having a few days ago only re-
ceived a copy of the printed proposals for publish-
ing a work on American ornithology by mr. Wil-

WILSON AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICANS 85

son, begs leave to become a subscriber to it, sat-
isfied it will give us valuable new matter as well
as correct the errors of what we possessed before,
he salutes mr, Wilson with great respect.
''Washington Oct. 9, 07."

A year later when Wilson was in Washington
soliciting subscribers he called at the White
House to see the President, sending in the fol-
lowing note to announce himself :

"Alexander Wilson, author of 'American Orni-
thology,' would be happy to submit the first vol-
ume of this work to the inspection of Mr. Jeffer-
son, if he knew when it would be convenient for
the President.

A. WiivSON.
"Saturday Noon,
"Endorsed: Alexr Wilson, reed Dec. 17, 08."

Wilson himself thus describes his reception in
a letter to his friend, Mr. D. H. Miller: "The
President received me very kindly. I asked for
nobody to introduce me, but merely sent him a
line that I was there ; when he ordered me to be
immediately admitted. He has given me a letter
to a gentleman in Virginia, who is to introduce
me to a person there, who, Mr. Jefferson says,
has spent his whole life in studying the manners
of our birds ; and from whom I am to receive a
world of facts and observations. The President
intended to send for this person himself, and to
take down, from his mouth, what he knows on the
subject, thinking it a pity, as he says, that the

86 AI^KXANDER wii^son: poet-naturaust

knowledge he possesses should die with him. But
he has intrusted the business to me, and I have
promised him an account of our interview."

Before leaving Washington Wilson wrote the
following letter to the President, which, as far as
I have been able to find, is the last one which has
been preserved of those exchanged between
them.

"Washington City Deer 24th 1808
"Sir

"The person who is the Bearer of this, has in
his possession specimens of Copper Ore found in
Orange County, State of Virginia, which he is
solicitous to show to the President. Considering
this discovery (if the facts be as he states) highly
important at this interesting crisis I have advised
him to wait on you without delay.

"I have succeeded, tolerably, among the gen-
tlemen here, in procuring subscriptions to my
Publication; and leave this place to-day. I shall
remit you an account of my interview with Coffer,
and am, with consideration of high respect,
"Sir,

"Your obedt Humble Servt
"Ai.e;x W11.SON."

Why Jefferson did not answer Wilson's letter
in reference to the Pike expedition above referred
to is best explained by the supposition that he
either never received it or else referred it to Gen-
eral Wilkinson, who had entire control of all the
arrangements for the expedition of Lieutenant Z.

WII.SON AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICANS 87

M. Pike. Jefferson carefully preserved every
scrap of his correspondence, but he declared on
looking over his papers that he was unable to
find a "scrip of the pen" on the subject. More-
over, Wilson never felt the slightest bitterness
against Jefferson, as Ord himself states he never
gave expression to any hurt which the President's
silence caused him.

When Ord's life of Wilson appeared in the last
volume of the "American Ornithology" the sharp
criticism of Mr. Jefferson's neglect came to the
notice of Mr. Jefferson himself, who wrote the
following letter to General Wilkinson in regard
to the matter:

"Monticello June 25, '18.
"Dear General

"A life so much employed in public as yours
has been, must subject you often to be appealed
to for facts by those whom they concern — an oc-
casion occurs to myself of asking this kind of aid
from your memory and documents, the posthu-
mous volume of Wilson's Ornithology, altho'
published some time since, never happened to be
seen by me until a few days ago. in the account
of his life, prefixed to that volume his biographer
indulges himself in a bitter invective against me,
as having refused to employ Wilson on Pike's ex-
pedition to the Arkansas, on which particularly he
wished to have been employed, on turning to my
papers I have not a scrip of the pen on the sub-
ject of that expedition, which convinces me that
it was not one of those which emanated from

88 ai,e;xandi<:r wilson: poet-naturalist

myself; and if a decaying memory does not de-
ceive me I think it was ordered by yourself from
St. Louis, while Governor and military com-
mander there; that it was an expedition for
reconnoitering the Indian and Spanish positions
which might be within striking distance; that
so far from being an expedition admitting
a leisurely and scientific examination of the nat-
ural history of the country, it's movements were
to be on the alert, and too rapid to be accommo-
dated to the pursuits of scientific men ; that if pre-
viously communicated to the Executive, it was
not in time for them, from so great a distance, to
have joined scientific men to it; nor is it probable
it could be known at all to mr. Wilson and to have
excited his wishes and expectations to join it. if
you will have the goodness to consult your mem-
ory and papers on this subject, and to write me
the result you will greatly oblige me.

"My retirement placed me at once in such a
state of pleasing freedom and tranquility, that I
determined never more to take any concern in
public affairs ; but to consider myself merely as a
passenger in the public vessel, placed under the
pilotage of others, in whom too my confidence
was entire. I therefore discontinued all corre-
spondence on public subjects, and was satisfied
to hear only so much as true or false, as a news-
paper or two could give me. in these I some-
times saw matters of much concern, and particu-
larly that of your retirement, a witness myself
of the merit of your services while I was in a sit-
uation to know and to feel their benefit, I made

WII^SON AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICANS 89

no enquiry into the circumstances which termi-
nated them, whether moving from yourself or
others, with the assurances, however, that my es-
timate of their value remains unaltered, I pray
you to accept that of my great and continued es-
teem and respect.

"Th: Jei^FERSON."

General Wilkinson's letter which follows shows
conclusively that the Pike Expedition was under
his direction.

"August 4th 18 1 8
"Dear Sir

"Residing as I do on the right bank of the Mis-
sissippi seven Leagues below N. Orleans, it is no
matter of surprise that your letter, of the 25th. of
June, was not received before the ist Inst.

"I perceive with great pleasure, that the chaste
harmony which has distinguished your Pen above
all others of our Country continues unimpaired ;
and with equal satisfaction do I receive the testi-
mony of approbation & esteem which it conveys,
to an humble but faithful citizen, who has been
illy requited for his toils, sufferings and sacrifices
in the public Service.

"I acknowledge the receipt of your Letter
merely to show you that I shall fulfill your desire
respecting the explorations of Capt. Pike under
my orders, as soon as indispensable daily labor
may allow me time to scrutinize my voluminous
correspondence; in the mean time memory au-
thorizes me to declare, that, under a verbal per-

90 ALEXANDER WII^ON : POET-NATURALIST

mission from you, before my departure from the
seat of Government for St. Louis in the Spring of
1805, generally to explore the borders of the Ter-
ritory of Louisiana I did project the expeditions
of Capt. Z. M. Pike to the Head of the Missis-
sippi; and after his return from the excursion, to
restore to the Nation a number of Osage Indians,
who have been ransomed under my authority,
from the hostile Tribes by whom they had been
captured; to make peace between certain Bellig-
erous Nations, and if practicable to effect an in-
terview with and conciliate the powerful bands of
I. C. taws or Comanches to the United States.
He was also instructed by me to ascertain the ex-
tent, direction, and navigableness of the Arkan-
sas and Red Rivers, which discharge their Waters
in the Mississippi.

"I recollect to have seen Mr. Wilson the orni-
thologist, at Washington in the autumn of 1808,
and at Charlestown, S. C, the Winter following;
I admired his Enterprise, perseverance and ca-
pacity and had several conversations with Him
concerning the Work he had undertaken, which I
was desirous to promote with my humble means;
He made various enquiries respecting the feath-
ered creation of this region, and instructed me
how to preserve in dead Birds their living appear-
ance ; But I do not remember that Capt. Pike or
his expeditions were alluded to, and the details of
that unfortunate meritorious young Soldier's
Western Tour published by himself, will best ex-
plain its utter inaptitude to the deliberate investi-
gations of the naturalist.

WII<SON AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICANS 9I

"With my best wishes for your continued
Health and tranquihty, and in the Hope that you
may still be made the instrument to arrest the
sinister cause of our politics, and recall the Re-
public to its original purity, I beg you to be as-
sured of my high respect and attachment.

"Ja: Wilkinson."

These letters, which I believe have never before
been published, should be enough to establish that
instead of Jefferson's being "forgetful alike of the
duties of his station, and the common courtesies
of life" and refusing "encouragement to the cul-
tivation of science and literature" ; so far was he
from losing "the opportunity of having won him-
self imperishable honour, by patronizing a man
of true genius, of nature's own nobility — the high
nobility of mind," he on the contrary was among
Wilson's first subscribers, received him with cour-
tesy and attention, and even after his death wrote
to his son-in-law, Joseph Coolidge, in 1825, re-
questing him to endeavor to have a new octavo
edition of Wilson's Ornithology published in Bos-
ton; a further indication of his high opinion of
the man and his work. It has been many years
since the last biography of Alexander Wilson was
written, and it is now high time that instead of
condemning Jefferson for an apparent breach of
courtesy, the circumstances of which we do not
thoroughly know, we should render him all honor
for the real encouragement which he gave the
naturalist, an encouragement which, to Wilson,
was no small matter.

CHAPTER VI

THE COMPIvETlON OF THE ORNITHOEOGY

We return now to the story of Wilson's endeav-
ors to carry out his great plan, at the point where
we left off at the end of our fourth chapter. How
much the publication of the first volume of the
Ornithology meant to Wilson as encouragement
in his work and as a stimulus to increased exer-
tions it is impossible to estimate, but its moral
effect was doubtless great. He was no longer to
be regarded as a mere dreamer, for in part his
promise had been kept ; he had shown his ability
to carry his plan through.

His eagerness to send the next volume to the
press was almost feverish, and by the fall of 1809
it was ready for the engraver, though nearly a year
elapsed before it appeared. In the mean while,
Wilson was eagerly searching out the habits of
every bird with which he met, using every possible
means to unravel the knots that perplexed him.
He lost no opportunity of catechising every one
with whom he came into contact; President Jeffer-
son, General Wilkinson, John Abbott, the student
of insect life in Savannah, Georgia; Michaux,
whose work on "American Forest Trees" so much
interested him; Bishop Madison of Virginia; his
own nephew, William Duncan; Peale, of Philadel-
phia, and chief of all, his old friend William Bar-
tram, he interested in his studies and from them all
drew what help and information he could. The

COMPLETION OF THE ORNITHOLOGY 93

earnest enthusiasm of the man was contagious, and
from all over the country came letters, drawings,
and sketches from people whose interest in birds
had been awakened by him.

The drawings were not such that he could make
actual use of them in his book, nor were the obser-
vations or the skins of birds which were sent to him
often of much worth, but they all served as so much
evidence by which he could make comparisons with
what he himself had collected, and these things thus
made it possible for him to examine his data very
critically.

Soon he had exhausted his collected materials
and was determined on another journey. His
travels this time were to extend from Pittsburg to
Florida through the interior. On this trip he again
hoped to be accompanied by his old friend, William
Bartram, but once more Bartram's advancing years
made it scarcely possible for him to endure such
hardships, and Wilson set out alone. After consid-
ering the three modes of travel open to him, by
horse-back, by stage-coach or on foot, he finally
decided that walking was better adapted to both his
observations and his pocket-book — he figured that
he could thus keep his expenses down to an average
of a dollar a day. Accordingly, he began his jour-
ney, first stopping at Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
where the Governor subscribed to his book.
Columbia proved a fruitless field, and after crossing
the Susquehanna, through the floating ice, he
reached York. At Hanover "a certain judge took
upon himself to say, that such a book * * *
ought not to be encouraged, as it was not within the

94 ALEXANDER WIESON : POET-NATURAUST

reach of the commonaHty; and therefore incon-
sistent with our repubhcan institutions," After a
serious disputation with Wilson, however, in which
Wilson proved him "a greater culprit * * *
in erecting a large three-story brick house so much
beyond the reach of the commonality, as he called
them, and consequently contrary to our republican
institutions," this "Solomon of the Bench * *
began to show such symptoms of intellect as to
seem ashamed of what he said." From here, Wil-
son visited Chambersburg and the College at Car-
lisle and reached Pittsburg on the 15th of February,
1 8 10. The journey, save for its fatigue, was one
of great enjoyment to him, and his chief regret was
that he could not share it with his friends. At
Pittsburg he put his baggage into a little skiff, and
on February 23, after writing his farewell and
blessing to his Philadelphia friends, he shoved off
his boat, which he had named the "Ornithologist,"
into the ice-encumbered river, for Cincinnati. Not
until April 4 did he write from Lexington, Ken-
tucky, which was the second stage of his bird-
catching expedition. Of his journey on leaving
Pittsburg he wrote:

"Though generally dissuaded from venturing by
myself on so long a voyage down the Ohio in an
open skiff, I considered this mode, with all its incon-
veniences, as the most favourable to my researches
and the most suitable to my funds, and I determined
accordingly. Two days before my departure, the
Alleghany River was one wide torrent of broken
ice, and I calculated on experiencing considerable
difficulties on this score. My stock of provisions

COMPLETION 01? THK ORNlTHOIvOGY 95

consisted of some biscuit and cheese, and a bottle
of cordial presented me by a gentleman of Pitts-
burg; my gun, trunk and great-coat occupied one
end of the boat ; I had a small tin occasionally to
bale her, and to take my beverage from the Ohio
with; and bidding adieu to the smoky confines of
Pittsburg, I launched into the stream, and soon
winded away among the hills that everywhere en-
close this noble river. The weather was warm and
serene, and the river like a mirror except where the
floating masses of ice spotted its surface, and which
required some care to steer clear of; but these to
my surprise, in less than a day's sailing, totally dis-
appeared. Far from being concerned at my new
situation, I felt my heart expand with joy at the
novelties which surrounded me; I listened with
pleasure to the whistling of the Red-bird on the
banks as I passed, and contemplated the forest scen-
ery as it receded, with increasing delight. The
smoke of the numerous sugar-camps, rising lazily
among the mountains, gave great effect to the vary-
ing landscape; and the grotesque log-cabins, that
here and there opened from the woods, were dimin-
ished into mere dog-houses by the sublimity of the
impending mountains. If you suppose to yourself
two parallel ranges of forest-covered hills, whose
irregular summits are seldom more than three or
four miles apart, winding through an immense ex-
tent of country, and enclosing a river half a mile
wide, which alternately washes the steep declivity
on one side, and laves a rich flat forest-clad bottom
on the other, of a mile or so in breadth, you will
have a pretty correct idea of the appearance of the

96 AI,EXANDER WILSON : POET-NATURALIST

Ohio. The banks of these rich flats are from
twenty to sixty and eighty feet high, and even these
last were within a few feet of being overflowed in
December, 1808.

"I now stripped, with alacrity, to my new avoca-
tion. The current went about two and a half miles
an hour, and I added about three and a half miles
more to the boat's way with my oars. In the
course of the day I passed a number of arks, or, as
they are usually called, Kentucky boats, loaded,
with what it must be acknowledged are the most
valuable commodities of the country : viz. men,
women, and children, horses and ploughs, flour,
millstones, &c. Several of these floating caravans
were loaded with store goods for the supply of the
settlements through which they passed, having a
counter erected, shawls, muslins, &c., displayed,
and everything ready for transacting business. On
approaching a settlement they blow a horn or tin
trumpet, which announces to the inhabitants their
arrival. I boarded many of these arks, and felt
much interested at the sight of so many human
beings, migrating like birds of passage to the lux-
uriant regions of the south and west. The arks are
built in the form of a parallelogram, being from
twelve to fourteen feet wide, and from forty to
seventy feet long, covered above, rowed only occa-
sionally by two oars before, and steered by a long
and powerful one fixed above. * * *

"The barges are taken up along shore by setting
poles, at the rate of twenty miles or so a day; the
arks cost about one hundred and fifty cents per
foot, according to their length; and when they

COMPIvDTlON OF THi: ORNITHOI^OGY 97

reach their places of destination, seldom bring more
than one-sixth their original cost. These arks de-
scend from all parts of the Ohio and its tributary
streams, the Alleghany, Monongahela, Muskingum,
Scioto, Miami, Kentucky, Wabash, &c., in the
months of March, April and May particularly, with
goods, produce and emigrants, the two former for
markets along the river, or at New Orleans, the
latter for various parts of Kentucky, Ohio, and the
Indiana Territory. I now return to my own expedi-
tion. I rowed twenty odd miles this first spell, and
found I should be able to stand it perfectly well.
About an hour after night I put up at a miserable
cabin, fifty-two miles from Pittsburg, where I slept
on what I supposed to be corn-stalks, or something
worse ; so preferring the smooth bosom of the Ohio
to this brush heap, I got up long before day, and,
being under no apprehension of losing my way, I
again pushed out into the stream. The landscape
on each side lay in one mass of shade, but the
grandeur of the projecting headlands and vanishing
points, or lines, was charmingly reflected in the
smooth glassy surface below. I could only dis-
cover when I was passing a clearing, by the crow-
ing of cocks ; and now and then, in more solitary
places, the big-horned owl made a most hideous
hollowing, that echoed among the mountains. In
this lonesome manner, with full leisure for obser-
vation and reflection, exposed to hardships all day,
and hard berths all night, to storms of rain, hail
and snow, for it froze severely almost every night,
I persevered from the 24th of February to Sunday
7

98 ALEXANDER WILSON : POET-NATURAUST

evening, March 17th, when I moored my skiff
safely in Bear-Grass Creek, at the rapids of the
Ohio, after a voyage of seven hundred and twenty
miles. My hands suffered the most ; and it will be
some weeks yet before they recover their former
feeling and flexibility."

Steubenville, Charlestown and Wheeling, where
he stopped to visit friends, broke for a while the
hardships of his voyage. At Marietta he met the
son of General Israel Putnam, and later he viewed
Blennerhassett's Island by the light of burning
brush. At last the weather became so severe, since
it was snowing hard, that he landed on the Ken-
tucky shore and made his way to a cabin near at
hand, where he was entertained with stories of
bear-treeing, wolf-trapping and wild-cat hunting by
the old hunter, while "all night long the howling of
wolves kept the dogs in a perpetual uproar of bark-
ing." As he went on down the river in his boat, he
turned aside frequently to examine rocks or to in-
quire about fossils ; he was always eager for any-
thing interesting to the scientist. It was a welcome
sight to him when he, in the midst of a raging
storm, saw at last the houses of Cincinnati, which
he declared the "neatest and handsomest situated
place" with which he had met since leaving Phila-
delphia. Nevertheless, soon he was in the Orni-
thologist again, and on the very first afternoon he
rowed twenty miles before he rested. The weather
w^as bad, it was raining hard, and his "great-coat"
was used to cover his bird-skins, so that all which
he had to protect himself with against the cold was
a bottle of wine that he soon emptied, drinl^ing the

I

COMPLItTION OF THE ORNITHOLOGY 99

healths of his friends. When he landed ncar
Louisville in the night, he had to grope his way up
to the town through a miry swamp. The next day
he sold his skiff for just half what he had paid for it
to a man who wondered why he had given it such a
"droll Indian name" as the "Ornithologist." With
that diligence which only a scientist knows, he
traversed all the country around, sometimes with
his book under his arm, sometimes with both book
and gun, but more often it was with the gun alone
that he went, seeking specimens of unusual or
familiar birds.

At Cincinnati he had met with poor success ; the
people told him they would "think about it" when
he asked them to subscribe. "They are," he says,
"a very thoughtful people." At Louisville his re-
ception was no warmer. In his whole trip through
Kentucky he secured only fifteen subscribers, for
the country was new and had little time to spare on
works of science or of leisure.

It was in Louisville that there occurred the
famous first meeting between Wilson and the after-
ward distinguished John James Audubon, who was
then engaged in business in that city. Audubon
gave this account of their meeting, which took place
in March, 1810:

"One fair morning I was surprised by the en-
trance into our counting-room of Mr. Alexander
Wilson, the celebrated author of the 'American Or-
nithology,' of whose existence I had never, until
that moment, been apprized. This happened in
1810. * * * fje, however, proceeded imme-
diately to disclose the object of his visit, which was

lOO AI^EXANDIiR \VII.SON : POET-NATURAUST

to procure subscriptions for his work. He opened
his books, explained the nature of his occupations,
and requested my patronage.

"I felt surprised and gratified at the sight of his
volumes, turned over a few of the plates, and had
already taken a pen to write my name in his favour,
when my partner rather abruptly said to me in
French : "My dear Audubon, what induces you to
subscribe to the work? Your drawings are cer-
tainly far better ; and again, you must know as
much of the habits of American birds as this gentle-
man.' Whether Mr. Wilson understood French
or not, or if the suddenness with which I paused dis-
appointed him, I cannot tell ; but I clearly perceived
that he was not pleased. Vanity and the encomium
of my friend prevented me from subscribing. Mr.
Wilson asked me if I had any drawings of birds. I
arose, took down a large folio, laid it on the table
and showed him the whole of the contents. His
surprise appeared great, as he told me that he never
had the most distant idea that any other individual
than himself had been engaged in the forming of
such a collection. He asked me if it was my inten-
tion to publish, and when I answered in the nega-
tive, his surprise seemed to increase. And, truly,
such was not my intention; for until long after,
when I met the Prince of Musignano, in Philadel-
phia, I had not the least idea of presenting the
fruits of my labor to the world. Mr. Wilson next
examined my drawings with care, asked if I should
have any objections to lend him a few during his
stay; to which I replied that I had none. He then
bade me good morning, not, however, until I had

COMPLETION OF THE ORNITHOEOGY lOI

made an arrangement to explore the woods in the
vicinity along with him, and had promised to pro-
cure him some birds of which I had drawings in
my collection, but which he had never seen.

"It happened that he lodged at the same house
with us (at Louisville), but his retired habits, I
thought, exhibited either a strong feeling of discon-
tent, or a decided melancholy. The Scotch airs,
which he played sweetly on his flute, made me mel-
ancholy too, and I felt for him. Seeing that he was
all enthusiasm, I exerted myself as much as was in
my power to procure for him the specimens which
he wanted. We hunted together and obtained
birds which he had never before seen ; but, Reader,
I did not subscribe to his work, for even at that time
my collection was larger than his. * * *
Before many days elapsed, he left Louisville on his
way to New Orleans, little knowing how much his
talents were appreciated in our small town, at least
by myself and my friends."

Wilson's own diary has the following entries
concerning his stay in Louisville: "March 19 —
Rambled round the town with my gun. Examined
Mr. Audubon's drawings in crayons. Very good.
Saw two new birds he had — both Matacillae."
"March 21 \\^ent out this afternoon with Mr. A.
Saw a number of Sandhill Cranes. Pigeons num-
erous." "March 23 — Packed my things which I
left in care of a merchant here to be sent on to Lex-
ington ; and having parted, with great regret with
my paroquet to the gentleman of the tavern, I bade
adieu to Louisville, to which place I had four letters
of introduction, and was taught to expect much of

I02 ALEXANDER WILSON: POET-NATURAUST

everything there; but never received one act of
courtesy from those to whom I was recommended,
one subscriber, nor one new bird; though I de-
Hvered my letters, ransacked the woods repeatedly,
and visited all the characters likely to subscribe."

The words of the two men are in part contradic-
tory. Which are we to believe? Robert Bu-
chanan, who was commissioned by Mrs. Audubon
to write her husband's life, says, "We must take
Audubon's account cum grano salis." On the
other hand, the poet-naturalist, John Burroughs,*
takes Audubon's side in the matter. "Wilson," he
writes, "was of a nature far less open and generous
than was Audubon. It is evident that he looked
upon the latter as his rival and was jealous of his
superior talents; for superior they were in many
ways." We doubt if Mr. Burroughs would hold
to the charge he has made here against Wilson, on
more careful consideration. In case after case Mr.
Burroughs himself cautions his readers that certain
statements of Audubon's must, to use Buchanan's
expression, be taken "cum grano salis/' In speak-
ing of one story he even suggests that it is made
"out of the whole cloth" by Audubon and never oc-
curred at all. If this be the case, why should we ac-
cept Audubon's word in preference to Wilson's,
with whom accuracy and honesty were notable char-
acteristics? Mr. Burroughs also bears witness that
Wilson was Atidubon's "equal, if not his superior"
in accuracy of observation.

It is to be remembered, too, that Wilson's diary
was written at the time and sent in a letter to a

* John James Audubon by John Burroughs.

coMPi;eTioN OF the; ornithology 103

friend — who apparently did not even know Audu-
bon— without the shghtest idea of its ever being
pubHshed, while Audubon's account was written
after Wilson's death, after he had seen Wilson's
diary, and was in defense of his own action at the
time. Appearances are certainly in favor of Wil-
son. Moreover, why should Wilson have been
jealous of Audubon, or have regarded him as a
rival, when he had Audubon's own assurance that
he did not intend publication, whereas the second
volume of Wilson's work was already in the press ?
On the other hand, that x\udubon did regard Wil-
son as a rival was evidenced later. When three
new editions of the ''Ornithology" were to be pub-
lished in Edinburgh, Audubon heard of it and very
naturally ''set to work vigorously to get his book
out before them." Audubon evidently felt great
interest in Wilson after his death and took him for
his guide. At a Buffalo hotel he wrote after his
name, "Who, like Wilson, will ramble, but never,
like that great man, die under the lash of a book-
seller." When traveling in Great Britain through
York, Leeds, and other places, he remarked, "How
often I thought during these visits of poor Alex-
ander Wilson." Words of praise for a dead man
are cheap; deeds of kindness to a live one cost
more. When Alexander Wilson was traveling
under every hardship, giving his life for science,
Audubon, then a well-to-do business man, let his
paltry vanity restrain his first impulse to help him;
Wilson understood his action and his sensitive na-
ture was hurt. This is the whole matter, and with
all of Audubon's greatness and all his achievements,

I04 AI^DXANDER WIlvSON : POET-NATURALIST

credit should be given where credit is due, and Wil-
son will be cleared from the imputation of littleness
and falsehood.

After leaving Louisville Wilson passed on
through Shelbyville and Frankfort to Lexington,
where he spent some most pleasant days. He was
introduced among the substantial people of the
place and was charmed with the ladies that he met.
The town itself he criticised severely, but prophesied
that all its faults would be corrected by time, and
declared the place a "monument of the enterprise,
courage and industry of its inhabitants." On his
way from Lexington to Nashville (about thirteen
miles from the latter place) he met with the rare case
of a landlord who refused to accept pay for his
lodgings. This hospitable man, of the good name
of Isaac Walton, declared that since Wilson was
traveling for the good of the world he should pay
nothing whenever he stopped at his place. Blessed
be his honorable memory!

At Nashville Wilson wrote so interesting a letter
to his fiancee. Miss Sarah Miller, that it is worthy
of being quoted in full. It reveals the restraint
which Wilson held upon himself as a lover, as well
as the fact that he was among the earliest of aboli-
tionists in sympathies. It is well to bear in mind in
reading any of Wilson's letters, however, that he
was always too apt to judge a whole people by the
few examples that he might meet with. He was,
though, perfectly impartial in his criticisms. New
England, Georgia, Virginia, Kentucky, New Jer-
sey, the legislature of his own State, all come almost
equally under the stroke of his lash. Wherever he

COMPLETION 01^ THE ORNITHOLOGY IO5

thinks he sees an evil he bitterly denounces it in
writing to his friends. His letter reads :

"Nashville, May i, 1810.
"To Miss Sarah Miller :

"My Dear Friend, Nine hundred miles distant
from you sits Wilson, the hunter of birds' nests and
sparrows, just preparing to enter on a wilderness of
780 miles — most of it in the territory of Indians —
alone but in good spirits, and expecting to have
every pocket crammed with skins of new and ex-
traordinary birds before he reach the City of New
Orleans. I dare say you have long ago accused me
of cruel forgetfulness in not writing as I promised,
but that, I assure you, was not the cause. To have
forgot my friends in the midst of strangers, and to
have forgot you of all others, would have been im-
possible. But I still waited until I should have
something very interesting to amuse you with, and
am oDliged at last to take up the pen without having
anything remarkable to tell you of. Yet I don't
know but a description of the fashions of Kentucky
or Paris. What would you think of a blanket rid-
ing dress, a straw side-saddle, and a large mule
with ears so long that they might almost serve for
would be almost as entertaining as that of London
reins? I have seen many such fashionable figures
in Kentucky. Or, what think you of a beau who
had neither been washed nor shaved for a month,
with three yards of coarse blue cloth wrapped
around his legs by way of boots, a ragged great-
coat, without coat, jacket or neckcloth, and breath-
ing the rich perfume of corn whiskey? Such fig-

I06 ALEXANDER WILSON : POET-NATURAUST

iires are quite fashionable in Kentucky. This is a
charming country for ladies. From the time they
are first able to handle a cow skin, there is no amuse-
ment they are so fond of as flogging their negroes
and negro wenches. This they do with so much
coolness and seeming satisfaction, that it really
gives them an air of great dignity and manliness.
The landlady of the tavern where I lodge is a great
connoisseur at this sort of play; and while others
apply their cow skins only to the back, she has dis-
covered that the shins, elbows and knuckles are far
more sensitive, and produce more agonizing
screams and greater convulsions in the 'black
devils,' as she calls them, than any other place. My
heart sickens at such barbarous scenes, and, to
amuse you, I will change to some more agreeable
subject.

"In passing from Lexington to Nashville — a dis-
tance of 200 miles — I overtook on the road a man
mending his stirrup-leathers, who walked around
my horse several times and observed that I seemed
to be armed. I told him I was well armed with
gun and pistols, but I hoped he was not afraid to
travel with me on that account, as I should be better
able to assist in defending him as well as myself, if
attacked. After understanding the nature of my
business, he consented to go on with me, and this
man furnished me with as much amusement as
Strap did Roderick Random. He was a most zeal-
ous Methodist, and sung hymns the first day almost
perpetually. Finding that I should be obliged to
bear with this, I got him to try some of them to
good old song tunes, and I then joined with him, as

COMPIvETION OF THE ORNITHOLOGY I07

we rode along, with great piety. I found one in his
book that very nearly answered to Jones' song of
the 'Vicar and Moses,' and that soon became a
favourite air with us. He labored with so much
earnestness to make me a convert — preaching some-
times with great vehemence — that I had no other
resource on such occasions but to ride hard down
hill, which, the preacher being unable to do, gener-
ally broke the thread of his discourse. He was,
however, very useful to me in taking charge of my
horse while I went into the woods after strange
birds, and got so attached to me that he waited two
days for me in a place where I had some drawings
to make. I stopped five days in the barrens of Ken-
tucky, exploring that extraordinary country, in the
house of a good Presbyterian, who charged me
nothing, and would have kept me for a month for
some lessons in drawing which I gave his two
daughters. Here my psalm-singing Methodist left
me. These barrens are almost without wood, and
the whole face of the ground seemed to be covered
with blossomed strawberries. They must grow in
immense quantities here in the proper season.
Great numbers of beautiful flowers that I have
never seen before were seen in every direction, some
of them extremely elegant. Many of the inhabi-
tants keep their milk in caves lOO feet below the
surface of the ground, and these caves extend so
far under ground that they have never ventured to
their extremities. Frightful stories are told of
some tavern-keepers, who are suspected of de-
stroying travelers and secreting their bodies in
these caves. If I were not afraid of giving 3^ou

I08 AI^EXANDER WILSON: POET-NATURAUST

the horrors, I would relate an adventure I had in
one of the most frightful of these caves with the
fellow to whom it belongs, and who is strongly
suspected of being a murderer, even by his neigh-
bours. The town I am now in is the capital of the
State of Tennessee, and is built on the top of a
rocky mountain above the Cumberland river,
which is about as large as the Schuylkill, but much
deeper. The people are now planting in their
cotton fields, and it is curious to see the seeds
lying Hke rags of tattered cotton along in the
trenches. Apropos of rags, I have been obliged
to throw a good many of mine overboard since I
purchased a horse. My handkerchiefs are re-
duced to three, and other articles in proportion.
By the time I reach New Orleans, I expect to
carry all the remainder on my back. My para-
keet is my faithful companion yet, and I shall try
hard to bring him home with me. He creeps into
my pocket when I ride, and when I alight he
comes out to amuse the people where I stop.

"Please present my respectful compliments to
your mother and father, and don't be offended at
anything I have said. If I hear or see any ghosts
or hobgoblins between this and Natchez, or any-
thing worth telling, you may depend on hearing
from me.

Compliments to sister Jones &c., &c., and be-
lieve me to be, yours affectionately,

"Ai.i:x W11.SON "

wildest of countries to Natchez, passing on his
From Nashville Wilson traveled througfh the

COMPLETION OF THE ORNITHOI^GY IO9

way the grave of his old friend, Governor Meri-
weather Lewis of the Lewis-Clark Expedition.
The mystery of this distinguished man's death has
never been explained, there being many circmii-
stances which point to the probability of his hav-
ing been killed and robbed by the man Grinder,
at whose cabin he was stopping for the night.
Wilson, however, does not mention this rumor,
but seems to have accepted without hesitation the
very improbable story of suicide which Mrs.
Grinder herself related to him. To show his re-
spect for his dead friend, Wilson not only wrote
verses to Lewis's memory, but he also gave
Grinder money, out of his own scanty store, to
have the grave enclosed.

After reaching Natchez and searching through-
out the surrounding country for subscribers and
new birds, Wilson traveled on through west
Florida, New Orleans, east Florida, and many of
the islands near the coast. On September 2,
1810, he again reached Philadelphia after having
been traveling, sometimes in a boat, sometimes
on horseback, but chiefly on foot, for seven con-
tinuous months.

While at Nashville our traveler met with a mis-
fortune which he accepted and remedied with that
dauntless spirit which had marked his whole life.
He somewhat carelessly intrusted the drawings
which he had made since leaving home to the
mail, and they never reached their destination.
The loss was of similar nature to that which Au-
dubon suffered in the destruction bv mice of a

I lO AIv^XANDER WILSON : POET-NATURALIST

large number of his colored sheets, but Wilson's
was fortunately nothing like so great.

After his return from this trip through the
inland to Florida, Wilson set vigorously to work
preparing for the press the material which he had
collected. The year 1811 and the earlier part of
1812 was spent in Philadelphia, where he stayed
a great part of the time at the beautiful flower-
embowered home of William Bartram. Busy as
he was, he found time occasionally to write to
Scotland and to send some part of his little in-
come to his old father. Misfortunes seem to
have been gathering across the water. Wilson
wrote his brother David that his wish to "reach
the glorious rock of independence" in order that
from thence he might assist his "relatives who are
struggling with and buffeting the billows of adver-
sity" had led him on to his prodigious exertions.
Later in the same year David joined him in
America, bringing tidings of the loved ones and
of their misfortunes, and Wilson took him with
him to live.

The third volume of the "Ornitholog)^" ap-
peared in the early part of 18 11, and on July 9 of
the same year Wilson wrote George Ord that the
fourth volume was all finished, save the engrav-
ing of two plates. It appeared a little later.
The fifth and sixth volumes came from the press
in 1812, and in the early part of the following year
the seventh was published.

Late in 1812 he made his last ornithological
trip. This voyage led him up the Hudson, across
the rough, rugged country to Lake Champlain,

COMPLE^TION OF THE ORNITHOLOGY III

which he followed until he reached Burlington,
Vermont ; all the while he was adding copiously
to his collection of birds. The country about the
Connecticut River he tramped, gun in hand,
visited again Dartmouth College and Boston,
and passed through Portsmouth and Portland. At
Haverhill his unusual habits of tramping the
forests alone caused him to be arrested and im-
prisoned as a Canadian spy, but on explanation
he was soon released. His second visit to New
England was rich in results, and greatly encour-
aged he was soon at work again in Philadelphia.
Here all was not going well, for in spite of the
generous praise and thanks that he gave to all his
co-workers, in his prefaces, especially the engrav-
ers, Lawson, Murray, and Warnicke, some of
them occasioned him no little trouble. Murray,
he could no longer depend on, and all of his "col-
ourists" left him, so that he had to do a great deal
of extra work, and at this period his health was
beginning to fail. At the same time, however,
fortune was not altogether frowning on him.
His books were beginning to bring him some
fame, and he was elected a member of the Colum-
bia Society of Fine Arts and of the Philosophical
Society of Philadelphia.

By the early part of July the eighth volume of
the "Ornithology" was ready for the press, and
Wilson was eagerly planning the last one, and
outlining a work on American quadrupeds similar
to the "Ornithology." But already the strain of
his work was telling upon him, and his constitu-
tion began to weaken under it, yet like a true war-

112 ALEXANDi^R wii^son: poe;t-naturaust

horse, he was to die "in harness." While talking
with a friend he saw a bird of a species which he
especially desired to secure. He followed it
across a river and finally obtained it, but only after
he had become drenched with water. The cold
which resulted from this chase brought on dysen-
tery, a disease from which he had before sufifered a
great deal, and which in his weakened condition
he was unable to withstand. He died after only
a few days' sickness at nine in the morning on the
23rd of August, 1813, in his 48th year. All the
scientific men and clergy of Philadelphia united in
paying their last respects to his memory, when he
was buried in the yard of the Swedish Church on
Water street, Philadelphia. A marble table-tomb
above his grave bears for inscription:

THIS MONUMENT

covers the remains of

ALEXANDER WILSON,

Author of the

American Ornithology.

He was born in Renfrewshire, Scotland,

on the 6th. July, 1766 :

Emigrated to the United States

in the year 1794;

Aged 47.

On the 23rd. August, 1813,

of the dysentery,

And died in Philadelphia,

Ingeno stat sine morte decus.

At the time of his death Wilson is said to have
been engaged to Miss Sarah Miller, "daughter of
a proprietor in the vicinity of Winterton." He
appointed her an executrix of his estate.

The eighth volume of the, "Ornithology," which

COMPI^TION O]? THE ORNITHOLOGY II3

was already in the press, was committed to the
care of his friend, George Ord, who had been with
Wilson on some of his expeditions. It appeared
in January, 1814, and was followed in May by the
last volume, which Ord also edited and to which
he appended a life of Wilson. Ord wrote, partly
from Wilson's notes, the accompanying text to
the ninth volume, but the plates had been colored
under Wilson's own superintendence.

With a touch of the all-pervading sentiment
which his somewhat taciturn Scotch nature often
restrained him from expressing, Wilson had often
given utterance to the wish that his grave might
be where the birds would sing above him, and
it was a cause of much regret, after this became
known to his friends, that in the yard of the Swe-
dish Church the wish seemed unfulfilled. Alex-
ander B. Grosart, however, tells us that "Al-
though the Swedish Church is in a business-
crowded district, I myself, on paying a pilgrim-
visit to the grave, heard an oriole piping softly
and sweetly within a few yards of it." Over the
tomb of Wilson there is now growing a graceful
young willow, and in that far-away part of the city
about Water street there is not much noise to dis-
turb the quiet peace of the little grave-yard, which
lies before the quaint old Swedes' Church.

Wilson's life had been one of fierce strivings
and bitter disappointments, and it ended in the
midst of struggle. Not the faintest touch of sor-
didness had stained it ; but the forces which most
went to shape it were love of science and of his
8

114 ALEXANDER wieson: poet-naturalist

country and the alluring thirst for fame. If am-
bition be a sin, then he had sinned deeply, for in
company with great men and with angels he was
possessed of this "last infirmity of noble minds."
We shall hardly blame him for this, for though
there is an ambition of avarice and pride there is
also an ambition of love and service. Even as it
should be, the battles of his brave life ended in
victory, and if he received not the palm in life,
it was at least laid in death upon his tomb, and it
was this after all that he most desired : that he
might accomplish something by which posterity
might know that he had lived. A psean of praise
and commendation of his work went up after his
death ; his "Ornithology" carried his fame over
Europe and everywhere was hailed as a great
achievement. The Edinburgh Reviezv commented
on it with what for that staid publication may be
called enthusiasm ; the North American Reviezv
copied this notice ; and article after article ap-
peared in other magazines. In his own town of
Paisley the house which had replaced his birth-
place was marked with a memorial slab and a
monument was erected to his honor.

What Wilson's final rank as a scientist shall be,
must be left for the scientific world to decide, but
it is safe to say it will be no insignificant one.
Excluding the little work which William Bartram
and Thomas Jefferson had done in ornithology,
Wilson was the pioneer worker among the Ameri-
can birds. Prince Charles Lucian Bonaparte,
who corrected some of Wilson's mistakes of
nomenclature, declared that it was a most extra-

COMPIJ'TION OF THE ORNITHOIvOGY II5

ordinary service which Wilson performed for
science in presenting among the two hundred and
seventy-eight species of birds which he had de-
scribed, forty-eight entirely new ones. Ord was
of the opinion that the "Ornithology" presented
fifty-six* which had been hitherto midescribed.

Perhaps it is safe to say that Wilson's place as
the greatest American Ornithologist is disputed
only by Audubon, and how vastly different were
their advantages ! Audubon worked when one
might travel with comparative facility, and he not
only had the assistance which was to be gained
from Wilson's work itself, but he also entered
into the fruits of Wilson's labors to awaken in-
terest in ornithology. With all the advantages
of education also, which an indulgent and thrifty
father could offer him, among which was the time
spent under the French artist, David, he had
everything to help him surpass in his ultimate
achievements the work of the poverty-shackled
and self-educated Scotchman. Had Wilson's for-
ty-eight years been stretched to Audubon's sev-
enty-six, through the days of prosperity and ap-
probation which his books would have brought
him. the result of his labors might have been ten-
fold greater. John Burroughs in his life of Audu-
bon compares him thus with Wilson: "His draw-
ings have far more spirit and artistic excellence,
and his text shows more enthusiasm and hearty
affiliation with nature. In accuracy of observation
Wilson is fully his equal if not his superior." Of

* Mr. John BurrouRhs accepts the original figures also, viz, three
hundred and twenty species described, of which fifty-six were new.

Il6 AI^EXANDER WILSON : POET-NATURALIST

Audubon he says, "His birds are very demonstra-
tive, even theatrical and melodramatic at times.
* * Wilson errs, if at all, in the other direction.
His birds, on the other hand, reflect his cautious,
undemonstrative Scotch nature." The compari-
son is not, after all, a very severe one for Wilson's
fame.

CHAPTER VII

WIIvSON, THE MAN

He who would enter into the spirit of any man's
work must first understand something of the man.
One should know his Boswell if he would enjoy
to the fullest his Johnson; Charles Lamb and
"Old Fitz" are as delightful in themselves as in the
"Essays of Elia" or the Rubaiyat of Omar.
Even the frailties of a Bacon or a Byron must be
remembered for the light that we gain for the
understanding of what they have written. Indeed,
for myself I must confess that there are some men
who mean more to me than their books. With
all my love for the Defense of Poesy and the
Arcadia, I would sooner throw the last existing
copies of them both into the fire than have the world
forget that Sir Philip Sidney had lived; and the
personalities of Phillips Brooks and William Gil-
more Simms hold a dearer place in my own heart
than any printed pages that survive them. Even
the records of some men's faces mean a great deal
to us. Who does not love the kindly smile of
Emerson or the dreamy eyes of Hawthorne?
What lover of literature is there who does not
con over the features of his favorite author as he
would over those of a dear friend? We shall lose
none of our admiration for our Alexander Wilson
if we will introduce him to ourselves, for his life
is as full of courage, of heroic strivings, of lofty
aspirations, of patriotism and of love as it could

Il8 AI^KXANDER wii,son: POET-NATURAUST

well be, and as full of the freshness, the fragrance,
and the freedom of the woods as are his own writ-
ings. But his nature was so characterized by
growth and development that we must study him
at least in two periods of his life.

The picture that was painted of him a few years
before he came to America by James Craw is said
to be an excellent reproduction of his youthful
appearance. His face is exceedingly narrow, and
about the large dark eyes there is not the keen
expression which was noticed by some who have
described his appearance later in life, but rather
the wistfulness of the dreamer, looking far beyond
him with heavy drooping lids. His high but some-
what narrow forehead is lost in a profusion of
straight-cut hair that falls over it ; his nose is long
and thin and noticeably hooked, while above his
narrow but rounding chin is a well-bowed sensi-
tive mouth with low-hanging underlip. About
his shoulders falls his hair in long natural waves,
and the hand on which he rests his face is a slender
and graceful one for a man who has earned his
bread with such hard labor. Withal, his long thin
face, with its dreamy, almost melancholy expres-
sion, is not uncomely, though certainly not hand-
some. It is the face rather of the poet than of
the man of action, and would scarcely lead us to
expect the dauntless pertinacity of purpose which
at last made him famous ; nor in the sweet, almost
sentimental, features can we catch the faintest
glimpse of the vein of coarseness which runs
through his earlier poems.

In considering Wilson's nature we must not for-

WILSON, THE MAN II9

get one predominating characteristic of his earlier
years — moodiness. One moment he is exulting
over some little encouragement — a kind word from
some one he highly esteemed, or a few more
names on his subscription list, the next he is
plunged in the "slough of despondency" by the
smallest slight imaginable. His whole world
glows in rose colors or darkens in gloom accord-
ing to his feelings — to use his own words, "the
least beam of hope brightens and the slightest
shades horrify his tumultuous soul." From his
earliest youth Wilson's propensity for rhyming
kept hold upon him, and his abiding propensity for
rhyming kept him from devoting himself to his
other labors with that ardor which is the price of
success. Even in this early period of his life he was
not wanting in patient industry. How very assidu-
ously did he tramp the rough Scotch roads, going
from door to door, studying with all earnestness
in what manner he might please this one and
flatter that one until he had cajoled them into
subscribing for his book ; poverty often oppressed
him, but such times did not come when he devoted
his energies to the loom, but only when he heeded
the Siren-voice of his treacherous muse, which so
often led him astray. He was proud of the little
he had accomplished in a poetic way, and vain of
his poetic talents. A little praise fired him with
tumultuous enthusiasm and turned his thoughts
from the earning of bread to the winning of fame.
A character naturally brave, almost to reckless-
ness, encouraged him to leave a good and sure
living to take up a most precarious one if only it

I20 AI,KXANDE:R WILSON : POEH'-NATURAUST

brought devotion to his beloved poetry and the
chance of a reputation. But we cannot blame
such fearlessness when we remember that it was
this also that sent him across the Atlantic and at
last led him, by a new path, to the goal for which
he so ardently longed. There were other causes,
too, which united with this thirst for fame to lead
him Galahad-like upon his two searches for his
"holy-grail." There seemed to have been born
in him a love for roving and a devotion to nature
and animals which was at last to master and con-
trol all other passions of his life. Through all
his wanderings — were he gloomy or glad — never
did he forget to listen to the songs of the birds,
nor was he ever too sordid or weary to turn from
his trail to view the beauties of nature ; to him life
without the birds, the flowers, and the glorious
heavens wasn't really life after all. In his earliest
writings there is an honest candor, a love of truth
and fair dealing, and a hatred of artificiality and
falsehood that" are unmistakably real and sincere.
Save in his darkest hours of despondency when
nothing looked bright to him, he saw life with
wide-open, far-seeing eyes that looked at every-
thing in a broad, wholesome way.

Toward his brother poets, as in later life to his
fellow naturalists, there is never, even in his most
confidential letters, the least tinge of envy, but
his nature is in this respect as free and open as
the blue sky above his beloved American fields.
Yet his character has not received the refining
of suffering and experience that is to come to it
with the passing years. He is a little over self-

WILSON, THE MAN 121

conscious, a fault common to introspective natures
such as his — sometimes a Httle of bitterness creeps
into his writings ; those who will not listen to his
proposals are dubbed narrow fools, while he pours
out his wrath on the rich who keep dogs to
frighten off the poor peddlers; often there is a
biting bit of satire or sarcasm flashing out with
unexpected sharpness. How heartless is his des-
cription of a "little hunch-backed dominie" who
refused to take the book which he had subscribed
for, though at his earlier visit he had been ex-
ceedingly agreeable to him. He likened him to
a walking-stick with a head fixed between two
huge eminences, "one jutting out before, the
other heaped up behind like a mountain." His
eyes, he says, "rolled forever with a kind of jeal-
ous pride and self-importance, on all around him."
In his later years he could never have brought
himself to speak those parting words when he told
him that nature was especially unkind in giving
to one man so crazy a body with such an insigni-
ficant soul ; but on the other hand he avows his
belief in the goodness of the Duchess of Buc-
cleugh, even after that lady gave him so curt an
answer at the "Fair of Dalkeith."

Wilson's sensitiveness is again and again evi-
dent ; for instance, after the affair with the Duch-
ess he relates how with hurt and despondent feel-
ings he left his wares to retire to a corner of the
room and ponder over his fresh disappointment.

To his friends and relatives Wilson was unfail-
ingly kind, thoughtful, and faithful. Thomas
Crichton, David Brodie, William Duncan, his

122 Ar,I;XANDi:R wri^SON : POET-NATURAUST

nephew, and his father and step-mother were
never forgotten throughout his whole Hfe, and in
later years he was equally devoted to Charles Orr
and William Bartram. Once admiring President
Jefferson, he never faltered in his devotion to him,
even when he failed to get the appointment on
Pike's Expedition, for which he so much longed
for the sake of his study of the birds of that un-
known region.

Wilson's character was marked by a natural
gentleness and naive tenderness. Since his
mother died when he was a child, and he never
knew the affection of a wife, while his sister was
several years his senior, — nor was he associated
with her for any long while, — he was thus without
those more subtle sympathies which are only de-
veloped by the affections of a woman made dear
by life's closer ties. Yet to Wilson the love of
animals appealed with a force that few men know,
and to bird and beast alike throughout life his
affection went out with all the tenderness of his
nature.

A little paroquet which he carried with him
through one of his southern trips became to him
a real companion, and he speaks of his regret at
parting from it with evident, though restrained,
feeling. His account of the freeing of a wee
mouse, which he was sketching, speaks volumes
for the tenderness of the man. "One of my
boys," he wrote Bartram, "caught a mouse in
school, a few days ago, and directly marched up
to me with his prisoner. I set about drawing it
that same evening, and all the while the pantings

WILSON, THE MAN 1 23

of its little heart showed it to be in the most ex-
treme agonies of fear. I had intended to kill it,
in order to fix it in the claws of a stuffed owl, but
happening to spill a few drops of water near where
it was tied, it lapped it up with such eagerness
and looked in my face with such an eye of suppli-
cating terror, as perfectly overcame me. I im-
mediately untied it, and returned it to life and
liberty. * * * Insignificant as the object
was, I felt at that moment the sweet sensations
that mercy leaves on the mind when she triumphs
over cruelty." Though this occurred in his later
years it is characteristic of the humaneness of his
whole life.

Let us turn now from the young Scotchman to
the mature American. We shall find that though
time has plowed deep furrows in the face and in
the soul of the man, yet this has only made the
flowers — the virtues of his character — blossom
more beautifully.

Faithful as he ever was to his own ideals of life,
yet the Wilson that died at the age of forty-seven,
in Philadelphia, was in many ways different from
the young man of twenty-eight who disembarked
from the Szvift in 1794. Not only had he schooled
himself with rigorous constancy in those studies
in which he was conscious of being most deficient,
but life itself with its hardships and experiences
had disciplined him in many things. We have re-
marked on a strain of coarseness in his early
Scotch writings which was characteristic of many
of the writers with whom he was familiar; not a
line that he wrote in America but is as pure and

124 AI^EXANDER WII^ON: POET-NATURAUST

chaste as a child's thoughts. The rash impetuos-
ity which had led him into trouble in Paisley ap-
peared no more, but when his brother David
brought with him to America the poems which
were the occasion of the imprisonment in Scot-
land, Wilson is said to have given them to the
flames.

To Crichton he wrote in 1811, "You found me
in early life an enthusiastic young man, pursuing
what I thought right, without waiting to consider
its expediency, and frequently suffering (and that
feelingly too) for my temerity. At present I have
the same ardor in the pursuit of my object, but the
object is selected with more discretion." His con-
sciousness of the change in himself is often voiced
in his letters; the August before his death he
wrote to his father, "The difficulties and hardships
I have encountered in life have been useful to me.
In youth I had wrong ideas of life. Imagination
too often led judgment astray. You would find
me much altered from the son you knew me in
Paisley — more diffident of myself, and less precipi-
tate, though often wrong."

He had great confidence in the possibilities of
honest, unremitting work, and a shrewd under-
standing of the ways of men. His whole phi-
losophy of life is summed up in his remark that,
"To be completely master of one's business, and
ever anxious to discharge it with fidelity and
honor, is to be great, beloved, respected and
happy." With his canny Scotch nature he had
little respect for good-natured negligence, but
believed that it was a man's duty to look out for

WILSON, THE MAN I25

his own interest. To William Duncan he wrote,
''More than half of the roguery of one-half of
mankind is owing to the simplicity of the other
half." He distinguished clearly between the love
of church and the love of religion, "pietism" and
goodness; he was liberal in his views, but deeply
and sincerely religious in his feelings. Of his
patriotism we have already spoken. His love for
his native country and the still greater devotion
to the land of his adoption are expressed over
and over again in his writings. "Few Americans,"
he wrote to a friend in Scotland, "have seen more
of their country than I have done, and none love
it better." George Ord, who knew him well,
summed up his character thus: "Mr, Wilson was
possessed of the nicest sense of honour in all his
dealings, he was not only scrupulously just but
highly generous. His veneration for truth was
exemplary. His disposition was social and affec-
tionate. His benevolence was extensive. He
was remarkably temperate in eating and drinking ;
his love for retirement preserving him from the
contaminating influence of the convivial circle.
But, as no one is perfect, Mr. Wilson partook,
in a small degree, of the weakness of humanity.
He was of the genus irritahile and was obstinate in
opinion. It ever gave him pleasure to acknowl-
edge error, when the conviction resulted from
his own judgment alone; but he could not endure
to be told of his mistakes. Hence his associates
had to be sparing of their criticisms, through fear
of forfeiting his friendship. With almost all his
friends, he had occasionally, arising from some

126 ale;xander wii^oN : poett-naturaust

collision of opinion, some slight misunderstand-
ing, which was soon passed over, leaving no dis-
agreeable impression. But an act of disrespect,
or wilful injury, he would seldom forgive."* In
short, Wilson was a proud, independent, active,
generous, ambitious man, with the frailties and
virtues which usually accompany a restrained but
fiery spirit. We have described Wilson's appear-
ance as a young man, it remains now to paint the
picture of him as he looked in his later years in
America. His height was about five feet ten, but
from his stooping somewhat he appeared less.
Audubon thus recites his recollection of his first
sight of him : "His long, rather hooked nose, the
keenness of his eyes, and his prominent cheek-
bones, stamped his countenance with a peculiar
character. The dress, too, was of a kind not
usually seen in that part of the country; a short
coat, trousers and a waistcoat of grey cloth."
There is an excellent portrait of Wilson by Peale
which was presented by Governor S. Bradford to
Dr. N. Chapman and by him presented to the
American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia. t

Since Ord's description must represent him as
he was in his very latest years, with it we close
our portrayal of Wilson, the Man.

"In his person he was of middle stature, of a
thin habit of body; his cheek bones projected,
and his eyes, though hollow, displayed consider-
able vivacity and intelligence ; his complexion
was sallow, his mien thoughtful ; his features were

* "American Ornithology," IX.

t Through the kindness of this society we are able to use a copy of
this portrait as our frontispiece.

WILSON, THE MAN 1 27

coarse, and there was a dash of vulgarity in his
physiognomy, which struck the observer at the
first view, but which failed to impress one on ac-
quaintance. His walk was quick when traveling,
— so much so that it was difficult for a companion
to keep pace with him ; but when in the forest in
the pursuit of birds, he was deliberate and atten-
tive— he was, as it were, all eyes and all ears."

CHAPTER VIII

WILS0N''S IvlTERARY 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 like Thoreau he was a poet-
naturalist 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

Wilson's literary writings 129

delight. Read his account of the habits of the
bluebird or his chapter en the red-headed wood-
pecker, and you cannot but delight in the fresh,
naive manner in which he speaks of his friends of
the forest.

Already has the "Ornithology" been treated
of at so much length, however, that it is now
enough simply to refer the reader to the pages of
that charming book itself, with the assurance that
for the most part it will be found anything else
than dull to him who loves nature and her chil-
dren.

Whatever else Wilson wrote in prose is of little
interest save to students of his life. An oration
which he delivered at Milestown on March 4.
1801, on "The Power and Value of National
Liberty," indicates that Wilson possessed some
oratorical ability. Both this and "The Solitary
Philosopher,'' an essay published in The Bee,
a Scottish magazine, in 1791, were of too ephem-
eral a nature to be especially interesting in them-
selves.

The Journal of his travels, and his personal
letters, are all important for the gaining of a clear
light on the life and character of the man, and to
give a valuable insight into Scotch and American
life a hundred years ago, but since he wrote them
hurriedly during his travels we find in them no
literary finish ; they teem with the indications of
the scantiness of his early education, which are
not common in his more carefully corrected writ-
ings.

9

130 ai,e;xande:r WILSON : poet-naturawst

As a poet we wish to study him more fully. Wil-
son's prose is familiar to many readers, but with the
exception of "The American Blue-bird" and "The
Osprey," which have been often republished in
anthologies, his verse is almost wholly unknown.
It was a misfortune that he wrote so much verse,
for the greater part of it is drearily prosaic, and
the few pieces that are really good are like modest
little poppies that have caught the bright colors
of the sunlight and the freshness of the dewdrop,
but are overlooked in the great field of dry stubble.
How true this is may be grasped when we consider
that there are over one hundred poems which are
undeniably his, while a large number of others
have been attributed to him. Nor are they for
the most part short pieces, but many of them are
of unusual length, the longest consisting of
twenty-two hundred and nineteen lines. Of this
great mass of verse not more than twenty pieces
are of any real merit.

It is, therefore, only the claim that these few
good poems can establish for him that shall give
us any right to call him a poet at all. Before we
take up the consideration of these, let us consider
the whole great mass of his verse.

We shall find in Wilson all the faults of the
Augustan age of English literature, of which in
common with other poets of his time he was an
immediate heir. Pope had died twenty-two years
before he was born; the lives of Goldsmith and
Gray barely overlapped into his own, but the
poems of these men were still the models after
which the lesser makers fashioned their stanzas;

wiivSon's literary writings 131

it was after the mechanical smoothness of their
verse that Wilson sought. This influence had a
very enervating effect upon his measures, and it
is only when he escaped from it that his verse rose
above the commonplace.

Grosart in his edition of Wilson's poems gives
in all one hundred and twenty-six pieces, of which
four are of doubtful authorship, and three are
only variant forms of other poems included in the
same volume. The work readily falls into two
groups, the poems written in Scotland and those
composed during his later life in America. For
convenience we may again divide the former of
these groups by considering first the Scotch dia-
lect pieces and secondly those in English.

Without doubt the finest bit of work that Wil-
son ever accomplished in his vernacular is the
"Watty and Meg," which he published separately
and without his name in 1792. There is a vigor-
ous humor and a nice sense of the use of words
evident in it as in nothing else that its author ever
wrote. As a picture of the life which Wilson
knew so well, it is beyond question true, and the
very raciness of it adds to its faithfulness without
making it actually coarse. It is the story of "the
taming of the shrew" in humble Renfrewshire
life, but its chief interest rests in the characters
sketched and in the freshness of the telling, rather
than in the slight incident which forms its plot.
We see Watty as "he sat and smoket by liim-
sel' " at the jovial hostelry of Mungo Blue, and
we hear Meg as she comes in "like a Fury,"
threatening to throw his "whiskey i' the fire."

132 ALEXANDER WILSON: POET-NATURALIST

The vivid scene of the home-going, the scolding
and the fright of Meg when her Watty pretends
to have " 'Hsted" in the army are reahstic and are
depicted in language that is expressive and pic-
turesque. It was of this piece that an interesting
story was told by Burns's widow to Dr. Robert
Chambers. The poet was sitting at his desk by
the window when he heard a local hawker crying
out "Watty and Meg, a new ballad by Robert
Burns." Burns thrust his head out of the open
window and called out to the man, whom he
knew, "That's a lee, Andy, but I would make your
plack a bawbee if it were mine." There were not
wanting at the time people who credited the
poem to the greater poet, but in spite of its real
merits it has not the imprint upon it of the genius
of Burns,

Two years before "Watty and Meg" was
printed Wilson had published his first volume of
verse. The most notable thing which it contained
was "The Disconsolate Wren," an ear'y indica-
tion of its author's devotion to nature. The
motto which is prefixed to it from the "Seasons"
of James Thomson suggests a healthy influence
which had come into his life from the poetry of
this early nature poet. Simple as the poem is —
its theme is only of a little wren whose nest had
been destroyed — it is yet distinguished by several
lines descriptive of nature that are almost match-
less of their kind. "The morn," he says, "was
keekin' frae the East," and the familiar picture
takes on a new freshness from the quaintness of
his phrasing.

Wilson's uterary writings 133

"The circling nets ilk spider weaves
Bent, wi' clear dew-drops hung,"

and the

"bonnie wee bit Wren,
Lone on a fuggy stane,"

are instances of the same fehcity in the use of
more micommon Scotch words.

Another poem which is an example of Wilson's
skill at a different kind of verse is the "Epistle
to Mr. William Mitchell," dated from "Lead-
hills." Wilson was the author of several excel-
lent verse letters that really contain lines of
true poetry, but perhaps he never surpassed this
one. Its opening lines,

"Hail ! kind, free, honest-hearted swain.
My ne'er forgotten frien' ;"

strike a chord of lightsome open-heartedness that
runs through all eleven stanzas. He tells with an
unruffled good-humor a homely story of a ram
that butted his pack into the "burn," and the
whole letter is as full of brightness as are the
"wide muirs" of which it sings, "that spread wi'
purple sweep,

"Beneath the sunny glowe."

There are two other epistles in the 1790 volume
that are especially interesting. They are to An-
drew Clark, an old friend, and Ebenezer Picken,
one of Scotland's very minor poets. The first is
full of characteristically strong phrases, and the
other, though replete with references to the un-

134 ALE^XANDE^R WII.SON: POET-NATURAUST

familiar verses of Picken, is yet too genuinely
Scotch and too full of individuality not to be no-
ticed among- his Scottish pieces.

There are a number of other epistles which are
not especially noteworthy, because there is
neither particular poetic beauty about them, nor
yet any prominence of the individual note that
might otherwise make them of interest. The two
epistles to James Dobie are perhaps the best of
these. The first gives a realistic picture of Wil-
son's attic, the second, were it not for its harrow-
ing description of the filth of Edinburgh, would
be one of the best of the epistles. The remainder
of his Scotch verse-letters, which includes two
others to William Mitchell, one to James Ken-
nedy, and a second one to Andrew Clark, are in
the main commonplace and uninteresting.

In the better of his epistles Wilson attained to
a manner quite his own, although he used the
stanza forms which were familiarly associated
with the name of Robert Fergusson and which at
the very time when he was writing in them were
being consecrated by the genius of Robert Burns,
Both Burns and Fergusson wrote their epistles
in an easy, facile style that Wilson never gained,
and their poetic genius gave to them the unmis-
takable stamp of beauty and freshness that was
also beyond him. Nevertheless, there is merit
in Wilson's epistles when they are considered
apart from the work of these greater masters.
He succeeded remarkably well in reproducing the
atmosphere of the places which he described, and
their bright, cheerful and aptly turned phrases are

wiIwSon's uterary writings 13s

not their only virtues, for frequently there are
flashes of real poetry.

Of the other Scotch poems which were included
in the 1790 volume a few words will suffice. "The
Pack" is a dreary dialogue between a peddler and
his pack, the former recounting his woes, the
latter expostulating and reminding the other of
what he has for which to be thankful. "Verses
on Seeing Two Men Sawing Timber," "Rabby's
Mistake," "Callamphithre's Elegy," the "Epi-
taph on Auld Jenet," and the "Address to the
Ragged Specter, Poverty," are all equally trivial
and worthless. The two elegies, one on the "Un-
fortunate Tailor," the other on the "Long Ex-
pected Death of a Wretched Miser," are coarse
and without merit. The "Verses to a Stationer"
are very poor, but the lines on "Daybreak" are
full of suggestiveness in the pictures which are
drawn of the awakening life of the city.

There were, besides the Scotch poems, fifty-
one others in the first volume of Wilson's, written
in English verse. They are, taken collectively,
far inferior to the vernacular pieces, and it would
be bootless to consider them all individually. It
is more convenient to group them and consider
the better pieces in each group. They consist
of epistles, descriptive verses, fables, and songs
chiefly. Those which are not included in these
divisions we may speak of under the head of mis-
cellaneous pieces.

The epistles have none of the distinction of in-
dividuality which marked several of those which
he wrote in Scotch. Commonplace in thought

136 AI,i;XANDER WII<SON : POET-NATURAUST

and mechanical in metre, they move smoothly
on without disturbing the peace of our minds by
a single striking phrase or fresh thought. From
this generalization we except one only, the
"Epistle to Mr. David Brodie, written on the Last
Night of the Year." On so familiar a theme it
would be difficult for a poet to be very original,
and we do not find that this epistle surprises us by
accomplishing anything very unusual. Yet the
poem is a good one by reason of its very simplic-
ity and sincerity and contains several stanzas
that are quite worthy of Wilson at his best. The
year is described as "It leaves us, trembling at
the load it bears" ; and an excellent description
of the bare winter fields, which is strikingly con-
cluded with the line "The bleak wind whistling
o'er the drifted waste," gives a real poetic beauty
to the poem.

The fables, which include "The Fly and the
Leech," "The Monkey and Bee," and "The Wasp's
Revenge," are manifestly copied after Fergusson,
but they merely add volume without merit to the
verse productions of Wilson. The songs are of a
better quality. "Achtertool," "Matty," and "To
Delia" are examples of the greater number of
them. Smooth and mildly musical, there is
nothing uncommon about them either of merit
or of fault. They were written to familiar Scotch
airs and were doubtless composed to be sung
by Wilson and his friends around the festal board ;
no doubt they served the purpose well.

"The Group" is the one song to be especially
noticed. It is a description of the revellers gath-

wii^son's ute;rary writings 137

ered around the foaming bowl, and it has all the
gay spirit of the occasion.

The originals of the six pictures which he
sketched are somewhat doubtful, except the one
of himself beginning

"Here Wilson and Poverty sits
Perpetually boxing together."

So closely does he identif)^ himself with poverty
that a single verb answers for both. The song is
interesting chiefly as throwing a strong light on
those early days of his chequered Hfe.

The descriptive pieces comprise a large num-
ber of character-sketches, stanzas on "Morning"
and "Evening" and other similar subjects. They
maintain a common level of mediocre verse, and
there is not one among them that seems more
deserving of particular attention than the rest.
Nor shall we be greatly repaid by a study of the
remaining pieces which do not come under the
above groupings. Among these are several trivial
elegies, a few pointless epigrams, some addresses
of no great merit, and an unfinished poem on
"Hardyknute."

The most, then, that we can claim for this first
collection of poems which Wilson printed is that
there were one or two pieces which gave mild
promise of something better to come ; it would
have been far safer for his claims as a verse-writer
if these early attempts of his youth had been al-
lowed to slumber on forgotten. Wilson himself
realized later the weakness of many of them, and
when he published another edition in 1791 he

138 ai,e;xande:r wii^ON : poet-naturalist

omitted several pieces that he had included in his
first volume. Of the seven new pieces which he
added to this collection, three are worthy of fa-
vorable notice. The longest of these is "The
Laurel Disputed," which had already been sepa-
rately printed. It is a monologue spoken in the
person of an old countryman who maintains the
superiority of Robert Fergusson over the older
poet, Allan Ramsay. Wilson had delivered it in
the Pantheon at Edinburgh, and though he alone
spoke in Fergusson's favor against seven oppo-
nents he lost the vote of a large audience by only
seventeen votes.* "Eppie and the Deil" is an-
other addition of merit. Both pieces are written
in strong, racy Scotch dialect, and add much to
the strength of the volume of verse. "Eppie and
the Deil" with its very evident moral, is the story
of an old woman who expressed the wish that the
devil might take her loom. His Satanic majesty
at once complied with her request, but so com-
placently did she accept the loss that the zest of
the trick was quite gone and old "Cloots,"

"though he was the devil,
For once he acted vera civil,"

and gave her back her wheel.

The third piece to be singled out for careful
notice is a song. There is a rare swing, a musical
lilt to the "Ode for the Birthday of our Immortal
Scotch Poet" that is unusual among Wilson's

• Belfast Edition, 1844. It is claimed that the prize was won by

bribery by Mr. Gumming, who is said to have purchased forty tickets

of admission for his friends on condition that he should receive their
votes.

wii^on's i^iterary writings 139

verses. It has caught the wild, fearless spirit of
the day, which laughs "down the priest and the
devil by turns." It was set to music for Wilson
by a local "Bacchanalian Club," and though we
know nothing about the occasion for which it was
written we may well believe that Burns himself
was present when it was first sung. Nothing
could better represent the daring expression of
jubilant unrestraint which was characteristic of
the younger men in Scotland at this period than
this song which "mixes a damn" with "O rare
Robin Burns."

Of the other four pieces which were added in
the 1 79 1 edition, one is an ode on "Despondence,"
closely modeled after Shenstone, another is an
epigram, a third is a eulogistic address to a gen-
tleman of local prominence, and the other is a
very unsatisfactory attempt to put "Ossian's La-
ment" into rhyming iambic couplets.

Of the poem which was next published —
"Watty and Meg" — we have already spoken, and
we shall now mention an interesting group of
verses, separately printed. These verses were
born of the spirit of revolutionary unrest which
was moving over the troubled waters of Scotch
life, and though there is no poetry in any piece
of the group, yet they are interesting as an ex-
pression of the feelings of the day. Only one of
these verses, the "Address to the Synod of Glas-
gow and Ayr," deals with political and religious
matters, and bitterly and severely does it lash
the existing conditions. The others, of which
"The Shark," "Hab's Door," and the "Hoi-

140 Ai^EXANDER wiI/Son: poet-naturalist

lander" are examples, are biting satires on the
manufacturers, whom the weavers believed to be
oppressing them. They are crude, relentless
lampoons, and whether actually false or true, they
show the heat and bitterness of the hatred which
these weavers bore to their greedy employers.
But they brought upon Wilson the wrath of the
men against whom they were written, and it was
partly due to them that his career in Scotland
ended.

In 1791 there was printed in Paisley ''The
Psalm-singer's Assistant," by Robert Gilmour,
and for it Wilson had furnished, at the request
of his friend Thomas Crichton, seven hymns. The
little song which is numbered fourth among these
is rare for its quiet beauty and serenity.

Among the pieces of doubtful authorship at-
tributed to Wilson we mention as worthy of note
the "Spouter." It is mentioned in the "Paisley
Repository" during Wilson's own lifetime among
his poems, and the frequent references in it to
other poems of his, as well as its general style,
indicate that lie is its author. It is an humorous
account in Scotch of a rambling "Spouter" who
recites and sings for the benefit of the audience
that has gathered expecting to see a play of
some sort. The piece is chiefly made up of reci-
tations and songs of the "Spouter." The best of
these are a pathetic little song "Young Jeannie,"
and a poem entitled "The Spirit of the Lake's
Song," which is really a remarkable musical gem,
suggesting — almost anticipating in theme — the
"Cloud" of Shelley, though it had none of the

WIItSON'S lylTERARY WRITINGS I4I

magic grace and wonderful melody of that ex-
quisite lyric.

We now turn to the poems which were written
after he crossed the Atlantic. In his earHer work
Wilson had been most greatly influenced by Fer-
gusson, Shenstone, Thomson, Goldsmith, and
Pope. In a lesser degree Ramsay and the bud-
ding genius of Burns left their imprint upon his
style. There is no doubt that Wilson knew some-
thing of the older Scottish poets, and the influ-
ence of the humble writers of verse among his
own intimates may have afifected him somewhat.
Gay, Beattie, Smollett, and Gray were favorites
with him, but there was little in their verse to ex-
ert a different influence upon him from what he
also received from Pope or Goldsmith or Thom-
son. These masters of his he followed in these
early years with slavish devotion ; the result is
that his early English pieces are but cold, com-
monplace copies of his models. He attained
much of the smooth, mechanical ease of these
poets, but none of their inspiration, and it was he
who was perhaps least among them — Shenstone
— that Wilson was most pleased to copy. When
he wrote in his own Scotch tongue he was more
original and Fergusson and Ramsay were as
often mere incentives to his muse as they were
models. So it was that his one very noteworthy
poem which he produced in Scotland was the
Scotch "Watty and Meg."

In America new conditions confronted him,
and when he sang it was less often with a con-
scious sense of copying after another. The man-

142 AI,e;XAND^R WIIvSON: poeH'-naturalist

ner of the day was his manner, and he had not
sufficient poetic genius to completely break away
from it; but it was composite rather than the
style now of one poet, now another.

Ten years passed by with scarcely a poem writ-
ten. In this period he composed a few exceed-
ingly poor songs, such as "Bloomfield," "The
Aristocrat's Warwhoop," and "My Landlady's
Nose." That some of them were widely reprinted
in the newspapers is a commentary on the taste
of these editors rather than a proof of the merit
of the pieces. "Jefferson and Liberty" is another
song of this period. It is superior to the others
and is interesting in the light of the relations of
esteem and admiration which existed between
Jefferson and the author; it also shows the ar-
dent love of Wilson for his adopted land.

It was not until 1800, however, that Wilson
really produced anything in America which was
worth his while. This was the verse letter to
Charles Orr. He did not publish this until it ap-
peared greatly altered in the July issue of TJic
Literary Maga::inc and American Register, under
the name of "The Invitation." This poem was
followed in the Literary Magadne by "A Rural
Walk," "The Solitary tutor,'" "Lines on Seeing
a Portrait of Burns," and one or two others which
are not worthy of comparison with those we have
named. During this period he published sepa-
rately his longest poem, "The Foresters," and in
the "American Ornithology," he includes several
of his best verses ; these were "The American
Blue-bird," "Tlic Osprey," and "The King-bird."

Wilson's uterary writings 143

"The Foresters" was Wilson's most preten-
tious poem; it was by no means his best. Its
conscious attempt at the grandiose style would
have quite spoiled it, had not the very nature of
the poem been impracticable. It is a long, tire-
some piece of twenty-two hundred and nineteen
lines, with a subject no more exciting than a hunt-
ing expedition to Niagara Falls. Wilson himself
expected great things of it, and declared to his
nephew William Duncan that if it did not prove
to be good he would despair of ever producing
anything that would. Its success in book form,
however, was poor, as it deserved to be. The at-
tempt throughout the poem seems to be almost
an endeavor to acquire the stately, splendid style
of Milton, who is several times mentioned in the
piece. But imagine a writer striving to engraft
the grandeur of "Paradise Lost" on a poem writ-
ten in rhyming heroic couplets, descriptive of a
bird-hunting expedition ! The greater portion of
the poem is cumbersome and stiff, and at times
the style reaches the extreme of bombast and
bathos. There are lines of beauty, however,
throughout the piece. A lovely picture of au-
tumn begins with the forty-first line and at line
twelve hundred and seventy-five there is a good
passage representing an Indian's lament over his
lost land. These few well-written passages here
and there are unable to redeem the poem, how-
ever, for the larger part of it is a dreary waste of
words.

The poem on Burns's portrait is in the main
good, but its chief interest is biographical. It

144 ALEXANDER WILSON: POET-NATURAUST

has a significance as showing that the two poets
were undoubtedly acquainted and that the poet-
naturahst admired and loved ardently his "Brither
Scot." There are manifest faults in the poem,
but it tells us that to Wilson the subject was the
"well-known Burns," his friend, whom he knew
when though he was "his country's pride," he
was "yet left dark Poverty's cold winds to brave."
We have come now to the consideration of a
small group of nature poems on which we must
at last base Wilson's fame as a poet. The first
of these was "The Invitation." It is in the form
of a verse letter from Wilson to Charles Orr and
is descriptive of the inducements which the coun-
try offers to city-stifled workers. It is full of the
beating pulse of blossoming summer, painting a
land of almost oriental brilliancy. A rich color-
ing lights up the whole extent of its almost a
century and a half of lines with the "green and
gold and purple" hues of bird and flower. The
little humming-bird "chirps his gratitude" as he
hovers over the honeyed sweetness of the lines,
flitting by the poet's art through the verse-gar-
den. We see the "richest roses," as fanned by
the ceaseless beating of his wings they "shrink
from the splendour of his gorgeous breast" ; we
listen with the poet when he tells us how

"Sweet sings the thrush to morning and to me;"

we watch the king-bird as he "Snaps the return-
ing bee with all her sweets." And delighted we
follow on as he leads us through his favorite
haunts where the birds sing

Wilson's uterary writings 145

"From the first dawn of dewy morning gray
In sweet confusion till the close of day."

There is a lack of imagination in "The Invita-
tion" and an overbalancing of adjective with ad-
jective ; in short it has the faults of the school
from which Wilson learned his measures. The
locusts rise in ^'countless millions" to our "wonder-
ing eyes." "The richest harvests choke each
loaded field" ; one tires of this careful adjusting
of the scales, the even swing of the metre grows
monotonous, but the fault is in the taste of the age
rather than in the poet, and did we condemn a
writer for this, Pope and Goldsmith would be as
gross sinners as Wilson. The beauty of the poem
redeems it. True to nature, a just picture, rather
than an idealized impression, it stands out in
pleasing relief against the tediously pretentious
epics of the day, such as Barlow's "Columbiad,"
or monotonous panegyrics of the order of Hum-
phrey's "Happiness of America." It is not a great
poem, certainly, but it is full of beauty and inter-
est, and, when considered historically in view of
what was being produced in America at that pe-
riod, it has its own importance.

"A Rural Walk" is another descriptive nature
poem of slightly greater length than "The Invita-
tion." It is written in four-stressed iambic quat-
rains with alternate rhyme instead of the suc-
cessive pentameters of the other poem. Though
it has some of the fresh beauty of the other piece
yet it is far less striking in the richness of the
pictures drawn and in the aptness of poetical ex-
10

146 AI^HXANDER WILSON: POET-NATURALIST

pression. The poem is partly addressed to Wil-
liam Bartram, the delightful old botanist of Phil-
adelphia, and it contains a pleasant note of ac-
knowledgment to him. Though perhaps the least
important of this late group of nature poems, yet
"A Rural Walk" has caught enough of the spirit
of nature to give it a fresh beauty, and there is a
sense of sweet melody which it leaves with you
as though, to quote its repeated line, one had in-
deed been where "thrushes pipe their evening
song."

In "The Solitary Tutor," which appeared in the
October Literary Magamne two months later than
the "Rural Walk," Wilson produced what is per-
haps from an artistic point of view the best of his
longer EngHsh poems. In this Wilson evidently
set himself a definite model, Shenstone's "School-
mistress," adopting therefor the Spenserian stanza.
The poem is autobiographical and depicts very
vividly the scenes of Gray's Ferry ; Wilson himself
is the "Solitary Tutor." In Shenstone's poem
there is a very real character drawn, and some vivid
touches of portraiture distinguish it. The sketch of
the good old lady and her hen is most felicitous, and
very human indeed is the picture of the schoolmis-
tress when a culprit stands before her, and

"brandishing the rod she doth begin
To loose the brogues, the stripling's late delight,
And down they drop, appears his dainty skin,
Fair as the furry coat of whitest ermilin."

Wilson is more subjective and does not succeed
so well in producing a character, but the poetical
beauties of his poem compare quite favorably

Wilson's literary writings 147

with the stanzas of "The Schoohnistress" and ex-
ceed by far those of the contemporary American
poet Dwight, written in the same metre, in his
"Indian Temple."

The poem has a less imaginative beauty' than
the "Invitation," and never rises to poetic fervor,
but it flows on in a pleasingly musical measure, —
slightly monotonous perhaps, — with many rich
nature-pictures and much interesting local color.

The only poems that are now left to be consid-
ered are "The Blue-bird," "The Osprey," and "The
King-bird," three charming poems which were
printed in the "American Ornithology." "The
King-bird or Tyrant Fly-Catcher" is the long-
est of these, being more in the descriptive vein,
and is written in rhyming pentameters. The
other two are far superior to it as poems. Here
at last we have the best expression of Wilson's
poetic art. In both of these poems there is an
original note that we find to the same extent in
nothing else that he wrote except the Scotch
"Watty and Meg." "The Fisherman's Hymn"
in "The Osprey" has a merry swinging measure
that excellently fits its subject. It is marred by
the enumeration of the various fishes in the sec-
ond stanza, but it is one of the best of our early
American poems.

"The American Blue-bird," however, is even
better in its rhythmical melody and genuine em-
bodiment of the spirit of nature. He was inspired
to sing by this very love of nature. In his "For-
esters" he exclaimed.

148 ALEXANDER WILSON : POET-NATURAUST

"What though profuse in many a patriot's praise
We boast a Barlow's soul — exalting lays ;
An Humphreys, blessed with liumer's nervous glow,
And Freedom's friend and champion in Freneau ;
Yet Nature's charms that bloom so lovely here,
Unhailed arrive, unheeded disappear."

These were the bards that now fired his emula-
tion and this the theme which should inspire his
pen. It is in this historical setting that we must
consider Wilson before we conjecture his place in
American literature.

Joel Barlow, David Humphreys, Timothy
Dwight, John Trumbull, and Philip Freneau were
the poets whose works were best known among
the native writers. The first three were authors
of long, pretentious, but hopelessly dreary works,
with no distinctive style to mark one from the
other. Their verses were counterparts of the
pompous lines of Wilson's own "Foresters," and
like that piece are best remembered only histori-
cally. Trumbull really produced a verse full of
a rough, ready wit, but he was certainly no poet.
Freneau was the one poet of this group, and
wrote a few nature poems of simple, real beauty.

There were some little lyrics being produced of
unusual beauty by John Shaw, Richard Dana, and
Richard Wilde, but they were exceedingly few in
number. Wilson in his nature poems most re-
sembled Dana and Freneau, and "The Blue-
bird" and "The Osprey" may justly claim a place
with Freneau's "Wild Honeysuckle" and "To a
Honey Bee," and Dana's "Little Beach-bird":
delicate little poems all of them, that were to be
forerunners of the nature poems of Whittier and

Wilson's literary writings 149

Bryant and our later poets. These early singers
were the beginnings of an American school of
poetry, and so, historically, their names are very
significant. Among them Wilson must have a
place. In volume he left enough to show the se-
riousness with which he considered himself as a
writer of verse, but the volume of his poetical
work does not help his reputation. In the full
edition edited in 1876 by Alexander B. Grosart
the few good poems which Wilson produced are
lost in the great mass of rubbish which the editor
has gathered together from the author's youth-
ful past. Part of it is made up of puerile attempts
at verse ; part, of mere doggerel written offhand
at some odd moments to enclose in letters to his
friends. Some of the pieces, produced under the
influence of the old chap-books, are positively re-
volting in their vulgar coarseness and utter lack
of motif. Thrown promiscuously together they
seem a hopeless collection of worthless verse
which it were best to leave to grow dusty on for-
gotten shelves.

When the chaff is winnowed out, however,
something is still left of real worth and enough
of it to make a respectable-sized volume. Such a
collection would include about twenty poems.
Among these would certainly be "The American
Blue-bird," "The Osprey," "The Invitation,"
"The Solitary Tutor," "A Hymn" (IV in the
series of hymns), "Watty and Meg," "Eppie and
the Deil," "The Disconsolate Wren," "Epistle to
William Mitchell," and "The Laurel Disputed."

Others that would perhaps be included are

150 AIvEXANDER WII^ON: poet-naturalist

"The King-bird," "A Rural Walk," the two
poems on Burns, the group, "Epistles" to An-
drew Clark, David Brodie, and Eben Picken, and
selections from "The Foresters." These would in-
clude amonof them the best of Wilson's work in
verse; the first eight are undeniably good.

In his poetry Wilson was not remarkable for
his originality, and it was only his intense love
for the birds that sometimes made him so forget
all models that he was able to produce something
that had on it the true mark of his own personal-
ity. He lacked critical judgment and often his
most excellent lines occur in otherwise barren
poems, while just as frequently his strongest
stanzas are marred by strikingly poor lines. He
was too reserved to ever put his innermost feel-
ings into his verse, and his taciturn Scotch nature
rarely granted to him a moment of heated fervor.
Yet his ardent love for nature and the close ob-
servation which he made of her ways, combined
with his poetic sensibilities, enabled him to write
some exceedingly attractive nature poems which
should assure him consideration among our early
lesser poets. His pictures of nature are emi-
nently true and his verse is usually rhythmical,
while sometimes his lines are exquisitely musical.

When we come to count over American poets,
we shall find many greater and more splendid
names, but America can never be so rich in poetry
that we should forget the early beginnings of our
song, or altogether overlook the modest verses
of Alexander Wilson, "the poet-naturahst," in
whose heart the birds "nestled and sang."

BIBUOGRAPHY

The American Ornithology, by Alexander Wil-
son. 9 vols., folio, with a life of Wilson by
George Ord. Bradford and Inskeep, Phila.,
i8o8-'i4.

The American Ornithology. Second Edition. 3
vols. New York and Phila. i828-'29.

The American Ornithology, by Alexander Wil-
son and Charles Lucian Bonaparte. Edited
with notes and additions by Robert Jameson.
(Including a life by Dr. W. M. Hethering-
ton.) Edin. Constable's Miscell : IXVIII-
IXXI, 4 vols, 1 83 1.

The American Ornithology with a continuation
by Charles Lucian Bonaparte. New and En-
larged Edition completed by the insertion of
above 100 birds omitted in the Original
Work, and illustrated by Notes, with a Life
of the Author by Sir William Jardine, Bart.,
&c.

The American Ornithology by Wilson with notes
by Jardine, to which is added a synopsis of
American Birds including those described by
Bonaparte, Audubon, and Richardson. Ed-
ited by T. M. Brewer. 8vo. Boston, 1840;
New York, 1852; Philadelphia, 1856, Etc.

Memoir and Literaiy Remains of Alexander
Wilson, the American Ornithologist. Ed-
ited with memorial introduction, essay, notes,
illustrations and glossary by the Rev. Alex. B.
Grosart, Paisley. A Gardner, 1876. 2 vols.

152 ALEXANDER WILSON : POET-NATURAUST

The Poetical Works of Alexander Wilson, also
his miscellaneous prose writings, journals,
letters, essays, etc., now first collected. Il-
lustrated by critical and explanatory notes,
with an extended memoir of his life and writ-
ings and a glossary. (By Thomas Smith
Hutcheson.) Belfast: J. Henderson (1844).
i2mo.

The Poetical Works of Alexander Wilson with a
Memoir. Belfast: J. Henderson, 1853. 240.

Wilson the Ornithologist; a new chapter in his
life (embodying many letters hitherto un-
pubHshed) by Allan Park Paton. London:
Longmans, Green & Co., 1863.

Memoir of Wilson by Sir William Jardine, Bart.,
F. R. S. E., etc. Vol. IV of the Naturalist's
Library. London: Chatto and Windus,
Piccadilly.

Life of Alexander Wilson, by Wm. B. O. Pea-
body, in the Library of American Biography
conducted by Jared Sparks. Vol. II, Harper
& Bros., New York, 1854.

Difficulties Overcome; Scenes in the Life of Al-
exander Wilson, the Ornithologist. By C.
Lucy Brightwell. London, 1861, i2mo.

Sketch of the Life of Alexander Wilson, Author
of the "American Ornithology." By George
Ord, F. L. S., etc. Phila., 1828. 8vo.

Poems of Alexander Wilson (with account of Liie
and Writings) : Paisley, 1816, i2mo.

English and Scotch Sketches, pp. 277-284. Thos.
O. P. Hiller. London, 1857.

BIBUOGRAPHY 1 53

The Lives of Eminent Philadelphians, pp. 968-

969. Henry Simpson. Phila., 1859.
Memorable Facts in the Lives of Memorable

Americans, Sir Rom. de Camden.
Bird Life : Stories from Comparisons of Writings

of Audubon, Wilson, etc., by C. M. Weed.

Chicago : Rand, McNally & Co., 1904.
Wilson, the Ornithologist; D. Gardner, Scrib-

ner's Monthly, March, 1876, vol. 2, pp. 690-

703-
Potter's American Monthly, vol. 4, pp. 263-267.

April, 1875.
Obituary Notice of Alexander Wilson, Port Folio

3rd Series, vol. 2, Sep., 1813, pp. 345-353-
Alexander Wilson, The Great Naturalist, by

Henry Coyle, The Chautauquan, Nov., 1893.
Letters of Wilson, Penn. Monthly, vol. 10, 443.
Wilson's Ornithology, American Quarterly, vol.

10, PP- 433-

Alexander Wilson with portrait. Popular Sci-
ence Monthly, vol. 36, pp. 400.

Chambers's Miscellany, No. 452.

Griswold's Prose Writers, p. 577.

F. Saunders's Famous Books, p. 143.

C. C. B. Seymour's Self-Made Men, p. 215.

B. B. Edwards's Self-taught Men, p. 594.

Lossing's Eminent Americans, p. 181.

Museum Foreign Literature, vol. 9, p. 399.

North American Review, vol. 24, 24-110.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 19, p. 661,
June, 1826.

Jules Michelet's L'Oiseau, pp. 121-127.

154 AI^EXANDKR wii^son: poet-naturaust
OTHER BOOKS RKI^I^RRED TO

Social Life in Scotland in the Eighteenth Cen-
tury, 2 vols., by Henry Gray Graham. Lon-
don: Adam and Charles Black, 1899.

Social England. Vols. IV and V, Edited by H.
D. Traill. London: Cassell & Co., 1896.

The Union of Scotland and England. A Study
of International History by James Mackin-
non, Ph. D. Longmans, Green & Co., Lon-
don, New York and Bombay, 1896.

Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, A. D.
1803. By Dorothy Wordsworth.

Remarks on Local Scenery and Manners in Scot-
land during the Years 1799 & 1800, by John
Stoddard, LL. B, London: Wm. Miller,
1801.

SELECTED POEMS

THE AMERICAN BLUE-BIRD

When Winter's cold tempests and snows are no more,
Green meadows, and brown furrow'd fields reap-
pearing.

The fishermen hauling their shad to the shore.
And cloud-cleaving geese to the lakes are a-steer-

When first the lone butterfly flits on the wing,

When red glow the maples, so fresh and so pleasin' ;

O then comes the blue-bird, the herald of spring.
And hails with his warblings the charms of the
season.

Then loud piping frogs make the marshes to ring;

Then warm glows the sunshine, and fine is the
weather ;
The blue woodland flowers just beginning to spring,

And spicewood and sassafras budding together ;
O then to your gardens, ye housewives, repair!

Your walks border up ; sow and plant at your leis-
ure;
The blue-bird will chant from his box such an air.

That all your hard toils will seem truly a pleasure.

He flits thro' the orchard, he visits each tree.

The red flowering peach, and the apple's sweet
blossoms ;
He snaps up destroyers wherever they be.

And seizes the caitififs that lurk in their bosoms ;
He drags the vile grub from the corn it devours.

The worms from their webs where they riot and
welter ;
His song and his services freely are ours.

And all that he asks, is, in summer a shelter.

158 ALEXANDER WIESON: POET-NATURAEIST

The ploughman is pleased when he gleans in his train,

Now searching the furrows, now mounting to cheer
him ;
The gard'ner delights in his sweet simple strain,

And leans on his spade to survey and to hear him;
The slow-ling'ring schoolboys forget they'll be chid,

While gazing intent as he warbles before 'em.
In mantle of sky-bue, and bosom so red,

That each little loiterer seems to adore him.

When all the gay scenes of the summer are o'er,

And autumn slow enters so silent and sallow,
And millions of warblers, that charm'd us before.

Have fled in the train of the sun-seeking swallow.
The blue-bird, forsaken, yet true to his home.

Still lingers, and looks for a milder to-morrow ;
Till forc'd by the horrors of winter to roam,

He sings his adieu in a lone note of sorrow.

While Spring's lovely season, serene, dewy, warm,

The green face of earth and the pure blue of heaven.
Or Love's native music, have influence to charm.

Or Sympathy's glow to our feelings are given —
Still dear to each bosom the blue-bird shall be ;

His voice, like the thrilling of hope, is a treasure ;
For, thro' bleakest storms, if a calm he but see,

He comes to remind us of sunshine and pleasure.

THE OSPREY

Soon as the sun, great ruler of the year,
Bends to our northern dime his bright career.
And from the caves of ocean calls from sleep
The finny shoals and myriads of the deep ;
When freezing tempests back to Greenland ride,
And day and night the equal hours divide ;
True to the season, o'er our sea-beat shore,
The sailing osprey high is seen to soar,
With broad unmoving wing, and circling slow
Marks each loose straggler in the deep below;
Sweeps down like lightning ! plunges with a roar !
And bears his struggling victim to the shore.
The long-housed fisherman beholds with joy.
The well known signals of his rough employ;
And as he bears his nets and oars along.
Thus hails the welcome season with a song:

the; fisherman's hymn

The osprey sails above the Sound,

The geese are gone, the gulls are flying;
The herring shoals swarm thick around,

The nets are launched, the boats are plying.
Yo ho, my hearts ! let's seek the deep,

Raise high the song and cheerly wish her ;
Still as the bending net we sweep,

"God bless the fish-hawk and the fisher,"

She brings us fish — she brings us spring,

Good times, fair weather, warmth and plenty;

Fine store of shad, trout, herring, ling,

Sheeps-head and drum, and old wives dainty.

l6o ALEXANDER WILSON : POET-NATURALIST

Yo ho, my hearts ! let's seek the deep,
Ply every oar, and cheerly wish her,
Still as the bending net we sweep,

"God bless the fish-hawk and the fisher !"

She rears her young on yonder tree.

She leaves her faithful mate to mind 'em ;
Like us, for fish she sails the sea.

And, plunging, shows us where to find 'em.
Yo ho, my hearts ! let's seek the deep.

Ply every oar, and cheerly wish her.
While slow the bending net we sweep,

"God bless the fish-hawk and the fisher!"

THE INVITATION.

Addressed to Mr. Charles Orr

How blest is he who crowns in shades like these
A youth of labour with an age of ease ;
Who quits a world where strong temptations try,
And since he cannot conquer, learns to fly. — Goldsmith.

From Schuylkill's rural banks o'erlooking wide
The g-litt'ring pomp of Philadelphia's pride,
From laurel groves that bloom forever here,
I hail my dearest friend with heart sincere,
And fondly ask, nay ardently implore.
One kind excursion to my cot once more.

The fairest scenes that ever blest the year
Now o'er our vales and yellow plains appear;
The richest harvest choke each loaded field,
The ruddiest fruit our glowing orchards yield.
In green, and gold, and purple plumes array'd.
The gayest songsters chant in ev'ry shade.

O could the muse but faithfully portray

The various pipes that hymn our rising day.

Whose thrilling melody can banish care,

Cheer the lone heart, and almost soothe despair.

My grateful verse should with their praises glow,

And distant shores our charming warblers know ;

And you, dear sir, their harmony to hear,

Would bless the strain that led your footsteps here,

n

1 62 AIvEXANDER WILSON : POET-NATURALIST

When morning dawns, and the bright sun again
Leaves the flat forests of the Jersey main,
Then through our woodbines, wet with gUtt'ring dews,
The flow'r-fed humming-bird his round pursues,
Sips with inserted tube the honey'd blooms,
And chirps his gratitude, as round he roams;
While richest roses, though in crimson drest.
Shrink from the splendor of his gorgeous breast.
What heav'nly tints in mingling radiance fly !
Each rapid movement gives a difif'rent dye ;
Like scales of burnish'd gold they dazzling show ;
Now sink to shade, now furnace-bright they glow.

High on the waving top of some tall tree.

Sweet sings the thrush to morning and to me ;

While round its skirts, 'midst pendent boughs of green,

The orange Baltimore is busy seen.

Prone from the points his netted nest is hung.

With hempen cordage curiously strung;

Here his young nestlings safe from danger lie.

Their craving wants the teeming boughs supply.

Gay chants their guardian, as for food he goes.

And waving breezes rock them to repose.

The white-wing'd woodpecker with crimson crest,

Who digs from solid trunks his curious nest.

Sees the long black snake stealing to his brood.

And, screaming, stains the branches with its blood.

Here o'er the woods the tyrant king-bird sails.
Spreads his long wings, and every foe assails.
Snaps the returning bee with all her sweets.
Pursues the crow, the diving hawk defeats.
Darts on the eagle downwards from afar,
And 'midst the clouds prolongs the whirling war.

POEMS 163

Deep in the thickest shade, with cadence sweet,
Soft as the tones that heaven-bound pilgrims greet.
Sings the wood-robin close retir'd from sight.
And swells his solo 'mid the shades of night.
Here sports the mocking-bird with matchless strain.
Returning back each warbler's notes again :
Now chants a robin, now o'er all the throng,
Pours out in strains sublime the thrush's song.
Barks like the squirrel, like the cat-bird squalls,
Now "Whip-poor-will," and now "Bob White" he

calls.
The lonely red-bird too adorns the scene.
In brightest scarlet through the foliage green,
With many a warbler more, a vocal throng.
That shelter'd here their joyous notes prolong.
From the first dawn of dewy morning grey,
In sweet confusion till the close of day.
Ev'n when still night descends serene and cool.
Ten thousand pipes awake from yonder pool ;
Owls, crickets, tree-frogs, katydids resound.
And flashing fire-flies sparkle all around.
Such boundless plenty, such abundant stores
The rosy hand of nature round us pours.
That every living tribe their powers employ,
From morn to eve, to testify their joy.
And pour from meadow, field, and boughs above,
One general song of gratitude and love.
Even now, emerging from their prisons deep,
Wak'd from their seventeen years of tedious sleep,
In countless millions to our wondering eyes
The long-remembered locusts glad arise,
Burst their enclosing shells, at Nature's call.
And join in praise to the great God of aK.

164 AI^EIXANDER WILSON : POET-NATURAUST

Come then, dear sir, the noisy town forsake,

With me awhile these rural joys partake ;

Come, leave your books, your pens, your studious

cares,
Come, see the bliss that God for man prepares.
My shelt'ring bow'rs, with honeysuckles white.
My fishy pools, my cataracts invite ;
My vines for you their clusters thick suspend,
My juicy peaches swell but for my friend;
For him who joins, with elegance and art.
The brightest talents to the warmest heart.
Here as with me at morn you range the wood.
Or headlong plunge amid the crystal flood.
More vig'rous life your firmer nerves shall brace,
A ruddier glow shall wanton o'er your face,
A livelier glance re-animate your eye.
Each anxious thought, each fretting care shall fly.
For here, through every field and rustling grove.
Sweet Peace and rosy Health for ever rove.

Come, then, O come ! your burning streets forego.

Your lanes and wharves, where winds infectious blow,

Where sweeps and oystermen eternal growl.

Carts, crowds, and coaches harrow up the soul.

For deep, majestic woods, and op'ning glades,

And shining pools, and awe-inspiring shades ;

Where fragrant shrubs perfume the air around,

And bending orchards kiss the flow'ry ground.

And luscious berries spread a feast for Jove,

And golden cherries stud the boughs above;

Amid these various sweets thy rustic friend

Shall to each woodland haunt thy steps attend.

His solitary walks, his noontide bowers,

The old associates of his lonely hours;

While Friendship's converse, gen'rous and sincere.

Exchanging every joy and every tear.

Shall warm each heart with such an ardent glow.

As wealth's whole pageantry could ne'er bestow.

POEMS 165

Perhaps (for who can nature's ties forget?)

As underneath the flowery shade we sit,

In this rich western world remotely plac'd,

Our thoughts may roam beyond the wat'ry waste ;

And see, with sadden'd hearts, in memory's eye,

Those native shores, where dear-lov'd kindred sigh :

Where War and ghastly Want in horror reign,

And dying babes to fainting sires complain.

While we, alas ! these mournful scenes retrace.

In climes of plenty, liberty, and peace.

Our tears shall flow, our ardent pray'rs arise.

That Heaven would wipe all sorrow from their eyes.

Thus, in celestial climes, the heavenly train,

Escap'd from earth's dark ills, and all its pain

Sigh o'er the scenes of suffering man below.

And drop a tear in tribute to our woe.

THE SOLITARY TUTOR.

Who'er across the Schuylkill's winding tide,
Beyond Gray's Ferry half a mile, has been,
Down in a bridge-built hollow must have spy'd
A neat stone school-house on a sloping green :
There tufted cedars scatter'd round are seen,
And stripling poplars planted in a row ;
Some old gray white-oaks overhang the scene,
Pleas'd to look upon the youths below,
Whose noisy noontide sports no care or sorrow know.

On this hand rise the woods in deep'ning shade.
Resounding with the songs of warblers sweet,
And there a waving sign-board hangs display'd
From mansion fair, the thirsty soul's retreat;
There way-worn pilgrims rest their weary feet.
When noontide heats or evening shades prevail :
The widow's fare, still plentiful and neat.
Can nicest guest deliciously regale.
And make his heart rejoice the sorrel horse to hail.

Adjoining this, old Vulcan's shop is seen.
Where winds, and fires, and thumping hammers roar,
White-wash'd without, but black enough within * * *
Emblem of modern patriots many a score.
The restive steed impatient at the door.
Starts at this thundering voice and brawny arm,
While yellow Jem with horse-tail fans him o'er.
Driving aloof the ever buzzing swarm,
Whose shrill blood-sucking pipes his restless fears
alarm.

POEMS 167

An ever-varying scene the road displays,
With horsemen, thundering stage, and stately team.
Now burning with the sun's resplendent rays.
Now lost in clouds of dust the travellers seen,
And now a lengthen'd pond or miry stream.
Deep sink the wheels, and slow they drag along.
Journeying to town, with butter, apples, cream.
Fowls, eggs, and fruit, in many a motley throng,
Coop'd in their little carts their various truck among.

And yonder, nestled in enclust'ring trees.
Where many a rose-bush round the green yard glows,
Wall'd from the road, with seats for shade and ease,
A yellow-fronted cottage sweetly shows :
The towering poplars rise in spiry rows.
And green catalpas, white with branchy flowers;
Her matron arms a weeping willow throws
Wide o'er the dark green grass, and pensive lours,
Midst plum-trees, pillar'd hops, and honey-suckle bow-
ers.

Here dwells the guardian of these younglings gay,
A strange recluse and solitary wight,
In Britain's isle, on Scottish mountains gray.
His infant eyes first open'd to the light.
His parents saw with partial fond delight
Unfolding genius crown their fostering care.
And talk'd with tears of that enrapturing sight.
When, clad in sable gown, with solemn air.
The walls of God's own house should echo back his
pray'r.

Dear smiling Hope ! to thy enchanting hand,
What cheering joys, what ecstasies we owe!
Touch'd by the magic of thy fairy wand,
Before us spread, what heavenly prospects glow !

1 68 AI^EXANDDR WII^SON : POET-NATURAUST

Thro' Life's rough thorny wild we lab'ring go,

And tho' a thousand disappointments grieve,

Ev'n from the grave's dark verge we forward throw

Our straining, wishful eyes on those we leave,

And with their future fame our sinking hearts relieve.

But soon, too soon, these fond illusions fled !
In vain they pointed out that pious height;
By Nature's strong resistless impulse led,
These dull dry doctrines ever would he slight.
Wild Fancy form'd him for fantastic flight ;
He lov'd the steep's high summit to explore.
To watch the splendor of the orient bright.
The dark deep forest, and the sea-beat shore,
Where thro' resounding rocks the liquid mountains
roar.

When gath'ring clouds the vaults of Heav'n o'er-

spread.
And op'ning streams of livid lightning flew.
From some o'erhanging cliff the uproar dread,
Transfix'd rapt'rous wonder, he would view.
When the red torrent big and bigger grew.
Or deep'ning snows for days obscur'd the air,
Still with the storm his transports would renew.
Roar, pour away ! was still his eager pray'r,
While shiv'ring swains around were sinking in de-
spair.

That worldly gift which misers merit call,

But wise men cunning and the art of vrade.

That scheming foresight how to scrape up all.

How pence may groats, and shillings pounds be made.

As little knew he as the moorland maid

Who ne'er beheld a cottage but her own :

POEMS 169

Sour Parsimony's words he seldom weigh'd,
His heart's warm impulse was the guide alone,
When suffering friendship sigh'd, or weeping wretch
did moan.

Dear, dear to him Affection's ardent glow,
Alas ! from all he lov'd for ever torn.
E'en now, as Memory's sad reflections flow,
Deep grief o'erwhelms him and he weeps forlorn ;
By hopeless thought, by wasting sorrow worn,
Around on Nature's scenes he turns his eye,
Charm'd with her peaceful eve, her fragrant morn,
Her green magnificence, her gloomiest sky,
That fill th' exulting soul with admiration high.

One charming nymph with transport he adores.
Fair Science, crown'd with many a figur'd sign;
Her smiles, her sweet society implores,
And mixes jocund with th' encircling nine;
While Mathematics solves his dark design.
Sweet Music soothes him with her syren strains.
Seraphic Poetry with warmth divine,
Exalts him far above celestial plains.
And Painting's fairy hand his mimic pencil trains.

Adown each side of his sequester'd cot,

Two bubbling streamlets wind their rocky way,

And mingling as they leave this rural spot,

Down thro' a woody vale meandering stray.

Round many a moss-grown rock they dimpling play.

Where laurel thickets clothe the steeps around,

And oaks thick, towering quite shut out the day.

And spread a venerable gloom profound,

Made still more sweetly solemn by the riv'let's sound.

170 ALEXANDER WII^ON : POET-NATURAUST

Where down smooth ghstening rocks it rambling

pours,
Till in a pool its silent waters sleep,
A dark brown cliff o'ertopped with fern and flowers,
Hangs grimly frowning o'er the glassy deep ;
Above thro' ev'ry chink the woodbines creep.
And smooth bark beeches spread their anns around.
Whose roots cling twisted round the rocky steep:
A more sequester 'd scene is no where found.
For contemplation deep and silent thought profound.

Here many a tour the lonely tutor takes,
Long known to Solitude, his partner dear.
For rustling woods his empty school forsakes.
At morn, still noon, and silent evening clear.
Wild Nature's scenes amuse his wand'rings here;
The old gray rocks that overhang the stream.
The nodding flow'rs that on their peaks appear.
Plants, birds, and insects are a feast to him,
Howe'er obscure, deform'd, minute, or huge they seem.

Sweet rural scenes ! unknown to poet's song.
Where Nature's charm in rich profusion lie.
Birds, fruits, and flowers, an ever pleasing throng,
Deny'd to Britain's bleak and northern sky.
Here Freedom smiles serene with dauntless eye,
And leads the exil'd stranger thro' her groves.
Assists to sweep the forest from on high.
And gives to man the fruitful field he loves,
Where proud imperious lord or tyrant never roves.

In these green solitudes one fav'rite spot
Still draws his slow meanderings that way,
A mossy cliff beside a little grot.
Where two clear springs burst out upon the day.
There overhead the beechen branches play.

POEMS 171

And from the rock the clustered columbine,
While deep below the brook is seen to stray,
O'erhung with alders, briar, and mantling vine.
While on th' adjacent banks the glossy laurels shine.

Here Milton's heavenly themes delight his soul.

Or Goldsmith's simple heart-bewitching lays;

Now drives with Cook around the frozen pole,

Or follows Bruce with marvel and amaze:

Perhaps Rome's splendour sadly he surveys,

Or Britain's scenes of cruelty and kings ;

Thro' Georgia's groves with gentle Bartram strays.

Or mounts with Newton on archangels' wings,

With manly Smollet laughs, with jovial Dibdin sings.

The air serene, and breathing odours sweet,
The sound of falling streams, and humming bees,
Wild choirs of songsters round his rural seat.
To souls like his have ev'ry pow'r to please.
The shades of night with rising sigh he sees
Obscure the stream and leafy scenes around,
And homeward wending thro' the moon-lit trees.
The owl salutes him with her trem'lous sound,
And many a flutt'ring bat pursues its mazy round.

Thus peaceful pass his lonely hours away;
Thus, in retirement from his school affairs,
He tastes a bliss unknown to worldings gay,
A soothing antidote for all his cares.
Adoring Nature's God, he joyous shares
With happy millions Freedom's fairest scene,
His ev'ning hymn some plaintive Scottish airs,
Breath'd from the flute or melting violin,
With life-inspiring reels and wanton jigs between.

WATTY AND MEG

A TALE
"We dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake." — Pope.

Keen the frosty winds were blawing,

Deep the snaw had wreath'd the ploughs;

Watty, weary'd a' day sawing,
Daunert^ down to Mungo Blue's.

Dryster Jock was sitting cracky ,2

Wi' Pate Tamson o' the Hill;
"Come awa'," quo' Johnny, "Watty !

Haith we'se hae anither gill."

Watty, glad to see Jock Jabos,

And sae mony neibours roun',
Kicket frae his shoon the snawbas,

Syne ayont^ the fire sat down.

Owre a broad wi' bannocks heapet,
Cheese, and stoups, and glasses stood;

Some were roaring, ithers sleepit,
Ithers quietly chewt their cude.*

Jock was selling Pate some tallow,

A' th2 rest a racket hel',
A' but Watty, wha, poor fallow !

Sat and smoket by himsel'.

Mungo fill'd him up a toothfu',

Drank his health and Meg's in ane;
Watty, puffing out a mouthfu',

Pledged him wi' a dreary grane.

1 Strolled. ^ "Jokey." ^ Then before. * Chewed their cud.

POEMS 173

"What's the matter, Watty, wi' you?

Trouth your chafts^ are fa'ing in !
Something's wrang — I'm vex'd to see you —

Gudesake ! but ye're desp'rate thin !"

"Ay," quo' Watty, "things are alter'd,

But it's past redemption now;
Lord ! I wish I had been halter'd

When I marry 'd Maggy Howe!

"I've been poor, and vex'd, and raggy,
Try'd wi' troubles no that sma' ;

Them I bore — but marrying Maggy-
Laid the cap-stane o' them a'.

"Night and day she's ever yelping,
With the weans® she ne'er can gree;

When she's tired with perfect skelping,'^
Then she flees like fire on me.

"See ye, Mungo! when she'll clash on^

With her everlasting clack,®
Whiles I've had my neive,^° in passion.

Lifted up to break her back."

"O, for Gudesake, keep frae cufYets !"

Mungo shook his head and said:
"Weel I ken what sort of life it's;

Ken ye, Watty, how I did? —

"After Bess and I were kippled,

Soon she grew like ony bear;
Bark my shins, and, when I tippled,

Harl't out my very hair !

= Cheeks. « Children. ' Whipping. » Chatter.

9 Din. '" Clenched fist.

174 ai,e;xander wiIvSon : poet-naturaust

"For a wee I quietly knuckled,

But when naething would prevail,

Up my claes and cash I buckled,
Bess, for ever fare-ye-weel —

"Then her din grew less and less aye,
Haith I gart her change her tune;

Now a better wife than Bessy
Never stept in leather shoon.

"Try this, Watty — When ye see her

Raging like a roaring flood,
Swear that moment that ye'll lea' her;

That's the way to keep her good."

Laughing, sangs, and lasses' skirls, ^^

Echo'd now out-thro' the roof;
"Done !" quo' Pate, and syne his erls^^

Nail'd the Dryster's wauked loof.^^

In the thrang of stories telling,

Shaking hauns, and ither cheer ;
Swith ! a chap comes on the hallan,^*

"Mungo, is our Watty here ?"

Maggy's well kent tongue and hurry,

Darted thro' him like a knife ;
Up the door flew — like a Fury

In came Watty's scawling wife.

"Nasty, gude-for-naething being!

O ye snuffy, drucken sow !
Bringing wife and weans to ruin.

Drinking here wi' sic a crew !

" Peals of laughter. ^'^ Pledge money. " Hardened palm.

" Outside-door.

POEMS 175

"Devil, nor your legs were broken !

Sic a life nae flesh endures;
Toiling like a slave to sloken

You, you dyvor,^^ and your 'hores!

"Rise, ye drunken beast o' Bethel !

Drink's your night and day's desire;
Rise, this precious hour! or faith, I'll

Fling your whiskey i' the fire !"

Watty heard her tongue unhallow'd,

Pay'd his groat wi' little din ;
Left the house, while Maggy fallow'd,

Flytin'^'' a' the road behin'.

Fowk frae every door came lamping ;^'^

Maggy curst them ane and a' ;
Clappet wi' her hands, and stamping,

Lost her bauchles^^ i' the sna'.

Hame, at length she turn'd the gavel,

Wi' a face as white's a clout •,'^^
Raging like a very devil.

Kicking stools and chairs about.

"Ye'll sit wi' your limmers round you !

Hang you, sir? I'll be your death!
Little hauds^° my hands, confound you,

But I cleave you to the teeth !"

Watty, wha' midst this oration,

Ey'd her whiles, but durstna speak.
Sat like patient Resignation,

Trem'ling by the ingle cheek. ^^

1° Drunkard. " Scolding. " Striding. ^^ Slippers.

19 Cloth. ^ Holds. 21 Fireside.

176 ai.exande;r wiivSON : poet-naturaust

Sad his wee drap brose he sippet,
Maggy's tongue gaed like a bell;

Quietly to his bed he slippet,
Sighing aften to himsel' :

"Nane are free frae some vexation,

Ilk ane has his ills to dree f^
But thro' a' the hale creation

Is a mortal vexed like me !"

A' night lang he rowt and gaunted.

Sleep or rest he cou'dna tak ;
Maggy, aft wi' horror haunted,

Mum'ling, started at his back.

Soon as e'er the morning peepit,
Up raise Watty, waefu' chiel;^^

Kist his weanies, while they sleepit,
Wauken'd Meg, and sought fareweel.

"Farewell, Meg! — and, O, may Heaven
Keep you aye within His care ;

Watty's heart ye've lang been grievin',
Now he'll never fash^* you mair.

"Happy cou'd I been beside you,
Happy, baith at morn and e'en ;

A' the ills that e'er betide you,
Watty aye turn'd out your frien' ;

"But ye ever like to see me
Vext and sighing, late and air ;

Farewell, Meg! I've sworn to lea' thee.
So thou'll never see me mair."

» Endure. ^ Fellow. ?* Disturb.

POEMS J 77

Meg, a' sabbin sae to lose him,

Sic a change had never wist ;
Held his hand close to her bosom,

While her heart was like to burst.

"O, my Watty, will ye lea' me,

Frien'less, helpless, to despair?
O ! for this ae time forgi'e me :

Never will I vex ye mair."

"Ay ! ye've aft said that, and broken

A' your vows ten times a week ;
No, no, Meg! See, there's a token

Glittering on my bonnet cheek.

"Owre the seas I march this morning,

Listed, tested, sworn and a' ;
Forced by your confounded giming —

Farewell, Meg ! for I'm awa'."

Then poor Magg}''s tears and clamour

Gush afresh and louder grew ;
While the weans, wi' mournfu' yaumour,-^

Round their sabbing mother flew.

"Thro' the yirth-*' I'll waunner wi' you —

Stay, O Watty ! stay at hame ;
Here upo' my knees I'll gi'e you

Ony vow ye like to name ;

"See your poor young lamies pleadin',

Will ye gang and break our heart?
No a house to put our head in !

No a friend to take our part !"

^ uproar. ^ Earth.

178 ALEXANDER WILSON : POET-NATURAUST

Ilka word came like a bullet,
Watty's heart begoud to shake ;

On a kist^" he laid his wallet,

Dig-hted-- baith his een and spake, —

"If ance niair I cou'd, by writing,

Lea' the sogers, and stay still ;
Wad you swear to drop your flyting?"

"Yes, O Watty ! yes, I will."

"Then," quo Watty, "mind, be honest;

Aye to keep your temper strive;
Gin you break this dreadfu' promise.

Never mair expect to thrive ;

"Marget Howe ! this hour ye solemn
Swear by everything that's gude.

Ne'er again your spouse to scal'^^ him.
While life warms your heart and blood ;

"That you'll ne'er in Mungo's seek me;

Ne'er put drucken to my name :
Never out at e'ening steek^° me;

Never gloom when I come hame ;

"That ye'll ne'er like Bessy Miller,
Kick my shins, or rug^^ my hair;

Lastly, I'm to keep the siller ;^^
This upon your saul you swear?"

"O-h!" quo' Meg; "Awell," quo' Watty,
Farewell ! faith, I'll try the seas ;"

"O stand still," quo' Meg, and grat^^ aye;
"Ony, ony way ye please."

^ Chest. 28 Wiped. =» Scold. "> Lock.

" Pull. 32 Silver. ^ Cried.

POEMS 179

Maggy syne,^* because he prest her,
Swore to a' thing o'er again ;

Watty lap,^^ and danc'd, and kist her;
Wow ! but he was won'rous fain.

Down he threw his staff, victorious;

Aff gaed bonnet, claes, and shoon;
Syne below the blankets, glorious.

Held anither Hinnymoon !

^ Then. «^ I,eaped.

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