LIFE AND CHARACTER 13 



The scientific contribution of William Bartram is of interest to 

 natural scientists. Generally classed as a " botanist and ornitho- 

 logist," *^ he had a multiplicity of scientific interests. His assist- 

 ance to Alexander Wilson deserves special mention. Wilson, poor 

 and friendless, employed for a time as a school teacher at King- 

 sessing, not far from the Bartram Garden, was befriended by 

 Bartram and encouraged in his ornithological studies, with the 

 result that he "' was persuaded by William Bartram to undertake 

 that splendid production, ' The American Ornithology.' " *' 

 What Bartram' s interest in Wilson meant to the school teacher 

 struggling to become an ornithologist is effectively indicated in 

 a letter Wilson wrote to Bartram in 1805: "' Accept my best 

 wishes for your happiness ; wishes as sincere as ever one human 

 being breathed for the happiness of another. To your advice 

 and encouragement I am indebted for these few specimens, and 

 for all that will follow. They may yet tell posterity that I was 

 honored with your friendship, and that to your inspiration they 

 owe their existence." ** 



It is with the literary contribution of William Bartram, par- 

 ticularly in relation to his own age and to his influence on sub- 

 sequent writers, that this study is primarily concerned. If it is 

 true that Bartram represents " the first combination of accurate 

 observation, aesthetic appreciation and philosophical interest in 

 the realm of natural history literature " in America,*^ it is neces- 

 sary to consider the various forces that produced this combina- 

 tion. The influence of his father has already been noted; it 

 shaped his life and developed his character. But a larger influ- 

 ence that shaped the ideas of both father and son, and which 

 is visible behind the combination of elements which Mr. Hicks 

 finds in Bartram, must not be overlooked. It is the entire 

 eighteenth-century movement of sentiment de la nature. William 

 Bartram was, perhaps, too simple and humble an individual to 



" Encyclopaedia Americana. 



" Harshberger, op. cit., p. 87. 



" Peabody, op. cit., p. 100. 



** Philip Marshall Hicks, The Development of the Natural History Essay in 

 American Literature. Doctoral Dissertation, The University of Pennsylvania, 

 1924, p. 23. 



