Wilson had said in his earlier review:
We do not believe that till within these few years, he had any practice in composition.... Yet Genius, if from circumstances behindhand in any common accomplishment, soon supplies it—soon makes up its lee-way—or rather, it has only to try to do what it has never done before, and it succeeds in it to admiration. Audubon, who had written but little even in his native tongue—French—under a powerful motive, took to writing English; and he was not long in learning to write it well, not only with fluency, but eloquence, as the fine extracts we have quoted show in unfading colours.
The following comment on Audubon's second volume of the Biography appeared in the Athenæum for 1835:
If only considered as evidence that it is in the power of man to achieve whatever he wills, and that no obstacles are too great to be overcome by energy and devotion of purpose, it would claim our good will and best wishes.
He has told what he has seen and undergone, not perhaps in the smooth nicely balanced periods of a drawing-room writer ... but with unstudied freedom, rising at times to eloquence, nor been ashamed to utter the thousand affectionate and benevolent feelings which a close and enthusiastic communion with nature must nourish. The work is full of the man.
The winter and spring of 1835 were spent in London, and though suffering from the strain of overwork, Audubon kept doggedly at his tasks. On April 20 he wrote to Bachman:
Immediately on my arrival in London I set to writing, and finished in one month, one 4th. of the Biographies of my 3d. vol. This rendering me puffy, I could scarcely breathe—my appetite was gone—my digestion bad—in other words I was attacked by Dyspepsia as bad as ever. Then I thought of a change of work—for in change of labour the body and the mind undergo sure and certain relief. I took to Drawing! and what do you think—I have positively finished 33 drawings of American birds in England. This has enabled me to swell my 3d. vol. of Illustrations with 57 species not given by Wilson and therefore forestalling my friend Charles Bonaparte.
On the 28th of April Audubon wrote to Edward Harris, begging him to send specimens of certain birds which he needed, as well as a circumstantial account of the shad fisheries of the Delaware River as material for an "Episode" for the third volume of his Biography; the fiftieth number of his illustrations was then in the hands of the colorist. He continued:[128]
I thought better to push my publication on account of the woeful dulling of the times in this country, where political strife engrosses the mind of every person so much that arts and sciences are, as it were, put on the shelves. Ministers are beings of six weeks lives now-a-days. The Reformers are struggling against the Tories, and vice versa. The Churchmen are aghast at the prospect of the future, and all this puts a complete stoppage to business, independent of such matters. Even since my return to England I have obtained only two or three subscribers, and have lost more than a dozen; nay, I may safely say, two dozen. In America, on the contrary, things appear to go on more prosperously. May God's will grant a long continuation of this to our only Land of Liberty. France, you will have heard, has at last passed an order for the payment of her debts to the citizens of the United States, and I hope that this may prove amply sufficient to save us from having a war with that powerful nation.... I wrote you that Dr. George Parkman, of Boston, would have my 2d. volume of Biographies reprinted in his city. I have seen 100 pages of this reprint here, but do not know if the Vol. (American Ed.) has appeared before the Public?
My—Friends—erton, Ord & Co. keep up their curious animadversions against me still—methinks they must be shockingly mortified at my stubborn silence toward them. Some unknown friends now & then reply to their absurdities.