102 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



I confess that I was always an enthusiast in my admiration of the 

 rural scenery of nature; but since your example and encouragement 

 have set me to attempt to imitate her productions, I see new beauties in 

 every bird, plant, or flower I contemplate.® 



And we today must acknowledge that it is Bartram's enthusiasm, 

 exuberance, or gusto which vitalizes his landscape and compels 

 us to sense it as an immediate experience. The record of his 

 sense impressions is not only genuine, accurate, and varied, but 

 it is shot through with poetic coloring, which, while it never 

 distorts, adds a touch of the glamorous to his descriptions. 



One form of the glamorous, imparted by his enthusiasm, is a 

 frequent lapse into sheer rhapsody. As a consequence, his visual 

 impressions, which are for the most part carefully and temper- 

 ately expressed, occasionally become fervent and exclamatory. 

 A sunrise inspires him to such a passage as the following: 



Behold how gracious and beneficent smiles the roseate morn! now 

 the sun arises and fills the plains with light, his glories appear on the 

 forests, encompassing the meadows, and gild the top of the terebinthine 

 Pine and exalted Palms, now gently rustling by the pressure of the 

 waking breezes: the music of the seraphic crane resounds in the skies, 

 in separate squadrons they sail, encircling their precincts, slowly descend 

 beating the dense air, and alight on the green dewy verge of the 

 expansive lake; its surface yet smoaking with the grey ascending mists, 

 which, condensed aloft in clouds of vapour, are born away by the morn- 

 ing breezes and at last gradually vanish on the distant horizon (pp. 

 245-46). 



A forest scene makes him exclaim: 



Behold yon promontory, projecting far into the great river, beyond 

 the still lagoon, half a mile distance from me, what a magnificent grove 

 arises, on its banks! how glorious the Palm! how majestically stands 

 the Laurel, its head forming a perfect cone! its dark green foliage, 

 seems silvered over with milkwhite flowers. They are so large, as to 

 be distinctly visible at the distance of a mile or more (p. 85) . 



The rhapsodist is, of course, never entirely separated from the 

 scientist, and frequently his style is a combination of botany 

 and poetry: 



What sylvan scene is here! the pompous Magnolia, reigns sovereign 

 * Ibid., p. 38. 



