CHAPTER II 



THE ART OF BARTRAM 



Throughout this study Bartram's " style" has received inci- 

 dental mention. This has been inevitable because of the amount 

 of attention it has attracted from both literary and scientific com- 

 mentators. English reviewers noted his " luxuriant and poeti- 

 cal " language; Carlyle enjoyed his " wondrous kind of flound- 

 ering eloquence"; Zimmermann, in translating the Travels, 

 corrected his " poetischen Floskeln";^ Squier insisted on re- 

 taining " the antiquated and somewhat quaint phraseology and 

 style of the author " ^ of the Observations; Miss Dondore was 

 impressed by his " luxuriant detail "; ^ a modern American re- 

 viewer has been pleased by his "lush descriptions";* and 

 Tracy has found his language " rhetorical," not, however, with- 

 out at the same time being aware of the prime virtue of Bar- 

 tram's art, his " genuine sensitiveness " to all the aspects of 

 nature.^ 



It is this sensitiveness that nourishes Bartram's art and stamps 

 his reactions to nature with originality. His style may derive 

 partly from the conventional nature notations of his time, but 

 his senses are acute and his sensations genuine. His love of 

 nature transcends the occasionally stilted diction in which it is 

 expressed and infuses his writings with an infectious enthusi- 

 asm. Imperceptibly, what begins by sounding as bombast, soon 

 establishes itself as native exuberance. Alexander Wilson ack- 

 nowledged that he had caught this enthusiasm from Bartram, 

 when he wrote: 



* Reisen, p. 50. 



* Op. cit.. Prefatory Note, p. 6. 



'Dorothy Anne Dondore, The Prairie and the Making of Middle America: 

 Four Centuries of Description. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, p. 133. 



*" Notes of a Rapid Reader," The Saturday Review of Literature, April 21, 

 1928. 



" Op. cit., p. 38. 



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