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Henry James Pye
1745-1813

Born, in London, 20 Feb. 1745. Early education at home. Matric., Magdalen Coll., Oxford, 12 July 1762; created M. A. 3 July 1766. Married (i) Mary Hook, 1766. Created D. C. L., Oxford, 9 July 1773. M. P. for Berkshire, 1784-90. Appointed Poet Laureate, 1790. Police Magistrate for Westminster, 1792. Play "The Siege of Meaux" produced at Covent Garden, 19 May 1794; "Adelaide," Drury Lane, 25 Jan. 1800. "A Prior Claim" (written with S. J. Arnold), Drury Lane, 29 Oct. 1805. Wife died, 1796. Married (ii) Martha Corbett, Nov. 1801. Died at Pinner, 11 Aug. 1813. Works: "the Rosciad of Covent Garden" (anon.; attrib. to Pye), 1762; "Beauty" (anon.), 1766; "Elegies (anon.), 1768; "The Triumph of Fashion" (anon.), 1771; "Farringdon Hill" (anon.), 1774. "The Progress of Refinement," 1783; "Shooting" (anon.), 1784; "Aeriphorion," 1784; "Poems" (collected), 1787; "Amusement" 1790; "The Siege of Meaux," 1794; "The Democrat" (anon.), 1795; "War Elegies of Tyrtæus imitated," 1795; "Sketches on Various Subjects," (anon.), 1796; "Naucratia" 1798; "The Inquisitor" (with J. P. Andrews), 1798; "The Aristocrat" (anon.), 1799; "Carmen Seculare" 1800; "Adelaide," 1800; "Alfred," 1801; "Verses on Several Subjects," 1802; "A Prior Claim" (with S. J. Arnold), 1805; "Comments on the Commentators of Shakespeare," 1807; "Summary of the Duties of a Justice of the Peace out of Sessions," 1808. He translated: "Six Olympic Odes of Pindar," 1775; Aristotle's "Poetics," 1788; Bürger's "Lenore," 1796; Homer's "Hymns and Epigrams," 1810; and edited : Francis's translation of the Odes of Horace, 1812.-SHARP, R. FARQUHARSON, 1897, A Dictionary of English Authors, p. 234.

PERSONAL

"Mr. Pye"-a celebrity whom even the encyclopædias scorn, and of whom we know nothing save that he was PoetLaureate (!) before Southey took and vindicated the office. He was "a master of correct versification," Lord Beaconsfield says.-OLIPHANT, MARGARET O. W., 1882, The Literary History of England, XVIIIth XIXth Century, vol. II, p. 313.

Byron said of him that he was eminently respectable in everything but his poetry. This, indeed, appears to have been the case, but certainly affords no reasonable explanation of his appointment to the office of Laureate. As Pye was

a pleasant, convivial man, it was somewhat peculiar that the Laureate's annual perquisite of a tierce of canary from the Royal cellar, should, during his tenure of the office, have been commuted for an annual payment of £27.-HAMILTON, WALTER, 1879, The Poets Laureate of England, pp. 203, 214.

He doubtless owed his good fortune to the support he had given the prime minister, Pitt, while he sat in the House of Commons. No selection could have more effectually deprived the post of reputable literary associations, and a satire, "Epistle to the Poet Laureate," 1790, gave voice to the scorn with which, in literary circles,

the announcement of his appointment was
received. . . . Every year on the king's
birthday he produced an ode breathing the
most irreproachable patriotic sentiment,
expressed in language of ludicrous tame-
ness. His earliest effort was so crowded
with allusions to vocal groves and
feathered choir that George Steevens, on
reading it, broke out into the lines:

And when the pie was opened
The birds began to sing;
And wasn't that a dainty dish

To set before the king?

-LEE, SIDNEY, 1896, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XLVII, pp. 68, 69.

GENERAL

I have been rhyming as doggedly and as dully as if my name had been Henry James Pye. SOUTHEY, ROBERT, 1814, Letter to G. C. Bedford, Life and Correspondence, ch. xix.

The monarch, mute till then, exclaimed,
64 What! what!

Pye come again? No more—no more of that!”
-BYRON, LORD, 1824, The Vision of
Judgment.

We must admit that, as a poet, his Muse's chief attributes are Mediocrity and Morality. . . . An industrious student, a wellinformed, cultivated, graceful writer; but a poet he assuredly was not. Weighed in the balance of contemporaneous criticisms,

he was found wanting; and Time has sanctioned the severe decree.-Austin, WillSHIRE STANTON, JR., AND RALPH, J., 1853, Lives of the Poets-Laureate, pp. 333, 345.

He was always made fun of as a poet, and, unfortunately for him, there was another poet in the House at the same time called Charles Small Pybus; hence the jest, "Pye et Parvus Pybus," which was in everyone's mouth. He was a voluminous author and diligent translator, but I do not recollect ever seeing a single book of his in a shop, or on a stall, or in a catalogue. Great Pye is dead-as dead as Parvus Pybus, M. P.-BIRRELL, AUGUSTINE, 1894, Essays about Men, Women and Books, p. 165.

Pye was devoted to the stage, and he tried his hand at writing some plays, but they are wholly forgotten. For a complete list of these we have to go to a foreign dictionary: English encyclopædias ignore this industrious, conscientious worker.

Pye's most ambitious work was an epic poem on King Alfred, but even he himself did not speak highly of his effort, and he had no hope that it would live. Indeed, Pye was as modest as Eusden had been egotistical. The contrast between them in this respect is well illustrated in their portraits. Many of Pye's minor

poems show graceful fancy and have considerable melody of versification and sparkle of style; but there is no originality of thought in them, no eloquent fervour, no imaginative strength. They are rhetorical efforts merely. His laureate odes are ardent and enthusiastic, even if they do not soar very high. He shows in them an earnest patriotism; and earnestness of itself is a form of strength and power. But Pye, with all his brilliancy of mind and his perseverance and industry, had not the making of a true poet, and his work has passed into oblivion.-HOWLAND, FRANCES, 1895, The Laureates of England, p. 142.

Alexander Wilson

1766-1813.

Born at Paisley, Scotland, July 6, 1766; died at Philadelphia, Aug. 23, 1813. A Scotch-American ornithologist. In early life he was a weaver; was prosecuted and imprisoned for writing lampoons (in the dispute between the weavers and manufacturers at Paisley); emigrated to the United States in 1794; labored as a peddler, schoolmaster, and editor of an edition of "Rees's Cyclopædia ;" and made many pedestrian and other expeditions through the country. He published "American Ornithology" (7 vols. 1808-1813; vols. 8 and 9 edited after his death; supplement by C. L. Bonaparte, 1825), poems (1791), "The Foresters" (1805), etc. His collected works were edited by Grosart (1876).-SMITH, BENJAMIN E., 1894-97, The Century Cyclopædia of Names, p. 1065.

PERSONAL

This Monument
covers the Remains of
Alexander Wilson,
Author of the

AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY,
He was born in Renfrewshire, Scotland,
on the 6th of July, 1766;
Emigrated to the United States

in the year 1794;

and died in Philadelphia,
of the Dysentery,

on the 23d of August, 1813,
Aged 47,

-INSCRIPTION ON MONUMENT IN THE CEMETERY OF THE SWEDISH CHURCH, Southwark, Philadelphia.

The library of Wilson occupied but a

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small space. On casting my eyes, after his decease, over the ten or a dozen volumes of which it was composed, I was grieved to find that he had been the owner of only one work on Ornithology, and that was Bewick's "British Birds. For the use of the first volume of Turton's "Linnæus," he was indebted to the friendship of Mr. Thomas Say; the Philadelphia Library supplied him with "Latham."ORD, GEORGE, 1825, Life of Wilson.

One fair morning I was surprised by the sudden entrance into our counting-room, at Louisville, of Mr. Alexander Wilson, the celebrated author of the "American Ornithology," of whose existence I had never until that moment been appraised. This happened in March 1810. How well do I remember him, as then he walked up

His

to me! His long, rather hooked nose, the keenness of his eye, and his prominent cheek-bones, stamped his countenance with a peculiar character. His dress, too, was of a kind not usually seen in that part of the country; a short coat, trowsers, and a waistcoat of gray cloth. stature was not above middle size. H9 had two volumes under his arm; and, as he approached the table at which I was working, I discovered something like astonishment in his countenance.-AUDUBON, JOHN JAMES, 1839? American Ornithological Biography.

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Mr. Bradford, the same liberal patron who enabled me to study painting, enabled Wilson to publish the most interesting account of birds, and to illustrate it with the best representations of their forms and colours, that has ever appeared. Wilson was engaged by Mr. Bradford as tutor to his sons, and as editor of the American edition of Rees's "Cyclopædia," while at the same time he was advancing his "Ornithology" for publication. I assisted him to colour some of its first plates. worked from birds which he had shot and stuffed, and I well remember the extreme accuracy of his drawings, and how carefully he had counted the number of scales on the tiny legs and feet of his subject. He looked like a bird; his eyes were piercing, dark, and luminous, and his nose shaped like a beak. He was of a spare bony form, very erect in his carriage, inclining to be tall; and with a light elastic step, he seemed perfectly qualified by nature for his extraordinary pedestrian achievements.LESLIE, CHARLES ROBERT, 1860, Autobiographical Recollections, ed. Taylor, ch. xii.

His personal appearance was that of a modest, rather retiring man, of good countenance, not decidedly Scotch, but still with a cast of it, rather more like a New England Congregational clergyman in his black dress than any other description I can give. He was held in great esteem for probity, gentle manners, and accomplishments in his special branch of natural science.-BINNEY, HORACE, 1873, Letter to James Grant Wilson, Feb. 8; The Poets and Poetry of Scotland, vol. 1, p. 420.

Thus closed a life and a work which, it is no exaggeration to say, are without a parallel. When Wilson's deprivations are borne in mind, that his early instruction was scant and contemptible; that, as a boy,

he was put at an uncongenial occupation, which formed his means of livelihood through nearly half his days; that his was a lifelong struggle with difficulties, which only the sheer indomitable resolution of a man never cheerful or sanguine enabled him to surmount; that he was thirty years of age when, in a strange land, he effected his own education by becoming the instructor of others; that he was thirtythree when he began the study of ornithology, with scarcely any resources beyond his own powers of observation, and the practice of drawing without any previously suspected aptitude; that he was forty years old before an opportunity disclosed itself for the commencement of his work, forty-two when he first accomplished publication, and only forty-seven when his life was closed,—it must be admitted that few careers so brief have been equally productive.-GARDNER, DORSEY, 1876, Wilson the Ornithologist, Scribner's Monthly vol. 11, pp. 702.

POEMS

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In his humor and feeling Wilson, as a poet, belongs to the family of Burns. addresses his friends in verse with the old loving feeling of Scottish brotherhood, has his song for love and beauty, and his similar choice of subject in ludicrous tale or ballad, with a smarting sense of wrong and poverty; while an early observation in natural history, and his pursuit of descriptive poetry, belong especially to Wilson the naturalist. In that fine descriptive poem of the "Foresters," in which he describes an October journey through Pennsylvania, and across the Alleghanies from Philadelphia to Niagara, the reader may have a true enjoyment of his poetic tastes and of his ardent love of nature and adventure.-DUYCKINCK, EVERT A., AND GEORGE L., 1855-65-75, Cyclopædia of American Literature, ed. Simons, vol. 1, pp. 570, 571.

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I have placed "Watty and Meg, or the Wife Reformed: a Tale" in the fore-front of the "Poems." It is unique in our literature. "Christ's Kirk on the Green" and the "Midden Fecht" have bits perhaps as effective in homely portraiture. But as a whole it stands alone for rough, coarse, realistic painting. It isn't altogether such a scene or incident as many would elect to paint, any more than one would those drinking groups which in Ostade and

Teniers give renown to a gallery; but having been chosen I know not where to look for such raciness, vigour, genuineness. Only a native-born Scotchman can take in the flavour of its thoroughly Scotch wording and motif. But he is an emasculated Scot who does not relish it all through. Hector Macneil's "Will and Jean" is a thin, vapid, namby-pamby production beside it.-GROSART, ALEXANDER B., 1876, ed., The Poems and Literary Prose of Alexander Wilson, Essay, vol. II, p. x.

More famous though he certainly is in other fields, the great American ornithologist is also a claimant for a place of honour among the poets of his native country. "Watty and Meg," from the popularity of its subject-the reform of a scolding wife by a threat of leaving her-has generally been placed first among Wilson's compositions. Nothwithstanding its high merits, however, of vividness and realism, it is handicapped heavily by the four-line trochaic measure in which it is written, and it does not appear unjust to say that it contains nothing which might not have been as well expressed in prose. The best qualities of Wilson's genius-the graphic touches by which whole scenes of the peasant life in Scotland are brought vividly before the eye, and a happiness of epithet which gives the freshness in individuality to its work-are to be found, with a higher quality of art, in his slightly longer piece, "The Laurel Disputed."EYRE-TODD, GEORGE, 1896, Scottish Poetry of the Eighteenth Century, vol. II, pp. 284, 285.

He commended his wares even in poetic broadsides, and dealt not ungraciously with Scottish dialect at a time when Burns was singing; indeed his longest dialect poem was for some time attributed to Burns-only by the unwary, however. 'Tis hard to listen contentedly to the chirping of a sparrow, when a thrush (like Burns) fills the air with melody. But Wilson's verses, written on this side of the water, after he had made a tramp across the Alleghanies, are not to be scorned, and are without the grossness which belongs to many of his dialect poems.-MITCHELL, DONALD G., 1897, American Lands and Letters, The Mayflower to Rip-Van-Winkle, p. 199.

In Alexander Wilson's "The Foresters"

(1809), the humble home of a Pennsylvania Dutch farmer is pictured with courageous truth of detail. In its neat perspective this sketch of a landscape as seen from a mountain-top resembles passages from Cowper.-BRONSON, WALTER C., 1900, A Short History of American Literature, p. 84.

AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY

1808-13

"The Ornithology" of this naturalist, we look upon as quite a magnificent affair for America. The plates are good; colouring fine; typography capital; editorial matter excellent.-NEAL, JOHN, 1825, American Writers, Writers, Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 17, p. 204.

All his pencil or pen has touched is established incontestably: by the plate, description, and history he has always determined his bird so obviously as to defy criticism and prevent future mistake. . . We may add, without hesitation, that such a work as he has published in a new country is still a desideratum in Europe. -BONAPARTE, CHARLES LUCIEN, 182533, Wilson's American Ornithology.

It is as an ornithologist that Wilson's fame will last for after ages. . . . Wilson was an observing naturalist; and, perhaps, Nature never had a more ardent pursuer. His object was to illustrate the different birds in their various states, as closely to the truth as possible, and to describe those parts of their manners which he could from actual observation, throwing aside all hearsay evidence and seldom indulging in any theories of classification, or the scale they hold in Nature. It is from these circumstances that his work derives its worth; the facts can be confidently quoted as authentic, and their value depended on in our reasonings upon their history their migrations-their geographical distribution.-JARDINE, SIR WILLIAM, 1832, ed. Wilson's American Ornithology, Life.

There are few examples to be found in literary history of resolution equal to that of Wilson. Though he was made fully aware, both by his friends and his own reflections, of the difficulty of the enterprise in which he was engaged, his heart never for a moment failed him. By his agreement with his publisher, he bound himself to furnish the drawings and descriptions for the work, indeed everything,

except the mechanical execution. To procure the materials, he was obliged to encounter heavy expenses; and the money which he received for coloring the plates, was the only revenue from which he defrayed them. It is easy to imagine the difficulties which he must have encountered; but his success was complete; and though he did not live to enjoy, he certainly anticipated, what has come to pass; that his work would always be regarded as a subject of pride by his adopted country, and would secure immortal honor for him whose name it bears. -PEABODY, WILLIAM B. O., 1834, Alexander Wilson, Sparks' Library of American Biography, vol. II, p. 168.

Alexander Wilson was the great pioneer in this branch of American science; and who that appreciates his chaste and eloquent style, his accurate and happy delineation of a class of the most lovely objects in nature, can fail to experience the greatest delight in reviewing the pages of the "American Ornithology?"-TOWNSEND, JOHN K., 1839, Ornithology of the United States, Introduction.

One of the most splendid works of Natural History ever produced. . . No learned society gave it encouragement; no distinguished name in the world of science was its author. A poor Scotch peddler, who had left his native country in the hope of bettering his fortune, was the writer and the artist who, unaided except by the general public support, produced the most superb book of its class that the world had then seen. Well

did he deserve his hard-earned fame. As a writer he has a merit which seldom belongs to systematic naturalists; his descriptions are at once accurate and brilliant. He looks at Nature with the eye of a poet; he describes with an exactness which might satisfy the most rigid classifier.-KNIGHT, CHARLES, 1847-48, Half-Hours with the Best Authors, vol. II, pp. 137, 138.

The types, which were very beautiful, were cast in America; and though at that time paper was largely imported, he (Mr. Bradford) determined that the paper should be of American manufacture; and I remember that Amies, the papermaker, carried his patriotism so far that he declared that he would use only American rags in making it. The

result was that the book far surpassed any other that had appeared in that country, and I apprehend, though it may have been equalled in typography, has not before or since been equalled in its matter or its plates. Bewick comes nearest to it; but his accounts of birds are not so full and complete, and his figures, admirably characteristic and complete as they are in form, have not the advantage of the much larger scale of Wilson's, or of colour. Unfortunately Wilson's book was necessarily expensive, and therefore not remunerative; but nothing discouraged him.LESLIE, CHARLES ROBERT, 1860, Autobiographical Recollections, ed. Taylor, ch. xii.

Like Audubon, and like every great Ornithologist worthy of the name, Wilson was a poet as well as a man of science. He had an eye to see the beauty of the bird's life as well as of his plumage, and records the doings and ways of his little friends with the fondness of a lover and the imagination of an artist. Wilson's intense love for his subject and the intrinsic beauty of the theme itself seem to have had a transforming and educating influence on the man. When writing on some favorite bird he is no longer the mere scientific naturalist, but rises into the region of poetic fancy. There is nothing in Irving or Goldsmith finer, as mere literary efforts, than some of Wilson's descriptions of the birds of his acquaintance. -HART, JOHN S., 1872, A Manual of American Literature, p. 118.

His labors were not merely in a field in which he had to open a new path, but where the steps that had been taken were false and misleading, and in which there were but few fellow-travelers. His journeys, largely performed on foot, exceeded ten thousand miles. His work was unappreciated by those to whom he had the clearest right to appeal, and patronage was withheld by almost every incumbent of exalted position. Nevertheless, though discouraged by neglect, and hampered not merely by poverty, but by the necessity of succoring those in still deeper need than himself, he both laid the foundation for the study of natural history on this continent and bequeathed to his successors the outlines for its subsequent development; and he described the habits of American birds with fidelity to truth, graphic vigor, and a poetical realization of the beauties of

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