no WILLIAM BARTRAM 



birds, fishes, or flowers. Phenomena of nature receive the same 

 bold treatment. Little of the grandeur and power of the sub- 

 tropical gales he observed fails to be translated, as in the follow- 

 ing description: 



now the earth trembles under the peals of incessant distant thunder, 

 the hurricane comes on roaring,^^ ^nd I am shocked again to life: I 

 raise my head and rub open my eyes, painted with gleams and flashes 

 of lightning; when just attempting to wake my aflBicted brethren and 

 companions, almost overwhelmed with floods of rain, the dark cloud 

 opens over my head, developing a vast river of the etherial fire ; ^^ j am 

 instantly struck dumb, inactive and benumbed; ... (p. 386). 



A quality in Bartram's artistry which deserves special men- 

 tion is his happy faculty of seizing upon the dominant trait of 

 a particular scene or object and making it impressive and mem- 

 orable. This descriptive method can best be designated by the 

 French word "' raccourci." By means of it Bartram often reduces 

 a long, diffuse passage into a single unforgettable sentence or 

 phrase and even when he begins his description with secondary 

 aspects he can sum up its dominant impression, its distinctive 

 character, in a " raccourci." The selective quality which such a 

 method involves is of the highest artistic order, as only essen- 

 tials must be seized upon. The frequency and ease with which 

 Bartram employs this method are ample proof that he was 

 never at a loss to detect the essence of a scene. Thus after 

 describing an old champion alligator and his attitude toward 

 the other alligators in the lake, Bartram writes: " He acts his 

 part like an Indian chief when rehearsing his feats of war " 

 (p. 130). Again, he compresses a long paragraph describing 

 the sun fish into this vivid phrase: " a warrior in a gilded coat 

 of mail " (p. 154) . Or he finishes a description of the noise of 

 frogs " uttered in chorus " with the striking comparison to " the 

 rushing noise made by a vast quantity of gravel and pebbles 

 together, at once precipitated from a height " (p. 278). 



The diction of Bartram presents an interesting problem. It is 

 a peculiar mixture. At times it is simple and straightforward, 

 at other times it is stilted and florid. In the same paragraph, 

 even in the same sentence, it may vary from austere clearness to 



^' For the use which Coleridge made of the last phrase see next chapter. 



