THE ART OF BARTRAM 111 



overlush vagueness, from bare exposition to imagistic rhapsody. 

 So that both the commentators who, like Carlyle, have praised 

 his style and those who, like Zimmermann, have condemned it 

 can be said to have been justified according to their respective 

 points of view; Carlyle liked Bartram's " eloquence," which he 

 found in abundance, and Zimmermann, being a scientist, would 

 have preferred Bartram's accurate observations without his 

 rhapsodic overtones. The key to an understanding of Bartram's 

 diction is, however, simple; it lies in a knowledge of his educa- 

 tion, his reading, his Quaker upbringing, his scientific absorp- 

 tion, and his own personality, for, if ever style adequately 

 expressed the man, Bartram's style surely and completely 

 expressed Bartram. It is this complete self-expression of an 

 interesting personality, of a man who could be " by turns enthu- 

 siastic, sober; dramatic. Idyllic; reflective, naive ; diffusive, firm; 

 redundant, precise," ^^ and, above all, natural, to which the 

 vitality of his writings is due. 



Bartram, as has been shown, was not highly educated. There 

 is evidence that he attended the old college in Philadelphia and 

 that for a time Charles Thomson was his tutor. The value of 

 this education or whether he received any other is not known. 

 It may reasonably be assumed that most of what real knowledge 

 Bartram possessed came to him through his own efforts, picked 

 up in a desultory way. At any rate, he never quite mastered 

 the English language for literary purposes. His grammar is 

 often shaky and his construction sometimes beyond his abilities, 

 defects which account for the numerous minor " improve- 

 ments " made in the London and subsequent editions of the 

 Travels. And even in the editions where his English has been 

 corrected such sentences as the following are still to be found: 



indeed the musquitoes alone would have been abundantly sufficient to 

 keep any creature awake that possessed their perfect senses.^* 



his eyes red as burning coals, and his brandishing forked tongue of 

 the colour of the hottest flame, continually menaces death and destruc- 

 tion, yet never strikes unless sure of his mark.^^ 

 the sooty sons of Afric forgetting their bondage, in chorus sung. . . .i« 



^^ Review of Ti^e Travels in The Nation, CXXVI (1928), 328. 



^^ Travels, Van Doren ed., p. 128. ''^ Ibid., p. 222. ^'' Ibid., p. 257. 



