106 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



gins pick strawberries, and even the rocks and the forests ap- 

 proach or recede as Bartram travels from or toward them. His 

 rivulets " glide in serpentine mazes," his creeks are " brisk- 

 flowing " and his rivers run " with foaming rapidity." There is 

 perpetual change and flux in his landscape. The flowers are in 

 the very act of " painting the coves with a rich and cheerful 

 scenery, continually unfolding new prospects as I traverse the 

 shores; the towering mountains seem continually in motion as 

 I pass along, pompously rising their superb crests towards the 

 lofty skies, traversing the far distant horizon " (p. 346) . 



The rhapsodic element which Bartram' s record of his sense 

 impressions often contains is mingled with an emotion deeper 

 than mere aesthetic enthusiasm, a sensation of awe and sublim- 

 ity. The vastness of the landscape evokes a feeling of grandeur, 

 of magnitude, of majesty, so that the air of exuberance which 

 pervades his descriptions is not merely a physical quality but is 

 a more subtle and spiritual emotion. He discerns " few objects 

 out at sea . . . but what are sublime, awful, and majestic . . ." 

 (p. 2) . Standing on the shore he notes " how awfully great and 

 sublime is the majestic scene ... ! " (p. 6l) . A forest of pine 

 trees continuing for five or six miles is " sublime." A tempest 

 exhibits " a very awful scene." In high, projecting promon- 

 tories he sees '" grandeur and sublimity." He approaches a vale 

 and observes that it is situated " amidst sublimely high forests " 

 and " awful shades! " (p. 343) . He is struck " with a kind of 

 awe, at beholding the stateliness of the trunk " of the Cupressus 

 distkha tree (p. 96) . 



Bartram was no theorist in aesthetics, yet in regarding sub- 

 limity as a vital element in landscape he shows his kinship with 

 the aestheticians of his time. " The Sublime," Hussey tells us, 

 had been noted by Shaftesbury as " the highest order of scenery," 

 but it was Edmund Burke who was " the first to recognize it as 

 a category co-ordinate with the Beautiful." '' Hussey could, of 

 course, have gone back all the way to Longinus but it is true 

 nevertheless that the eighteenth century sav/ the development 

 of the idea of the Sublime as an element of beauty to a degree 

 which previous centuries had not dreamed of. " Vastness," 



' Christopher Hussey, The Picturesque. London, 1927, p. 55. 



