112 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



Nor was Bartram's reading without its influence on his liter- 

 ary style. The poetic diction of his purple passages is the same 

 as that commonly found in eighteenth-century English poetry. 

 Echoes of Pope have already been noted; it is reasonable to 

 suppose that Bartram read other eighteenth-century English 

 poets and that they left their impress upon his mind. At any 

 rate, his diction frequently is reminiscent of the worst of Thom- 

 son, Gray, Collins, Akenside. It has what Professor Havens has 

 called the " elegant pseudo-classic " note and the "' vicious 

 ' poetic diction ' which blighted English poetry for a century, 

 worming its way into the work even of the best and most natural 

 poets of the time, and giving to many excellent productions an 

 affected and artificial tone." ^^ Bartram speaks of " cool eve's 

 approach," of " feathered songsters," and " of leafy coverts " 

 {Travels, pp. 81-2) ; of " solitary groves and peaceful shades " 

 (p. 140) ; of resuming his " sylvan pilgrimage " (p. 153) ; of 

 " the glorious sovereign of day, calling in his bright emana- 

 tions " and leaving " in his absence . . . the milder government 

 ... of the silver queen of night, attended by millions of brilliant 

 luminaries " (p. 190) ; of " winged emigrants " celebrating 

 their nuptials (p. 287) ; of " those moral virtues which grace 

 and ornament the most approved and admired characters in 

 civil society" (p. 310). His tendency towards periphrases is 

 obvious. Zimmermann, who was interested in Bartram's scien- 

 tific facts and not his style, found this tendency irksome and in 

 his translation trimmed down many passages to simple state- 

 ments. " Schade," he wrote of Bartram, " das er mit alien 

 diesen Vorziigen nicht auch einen guten Style verbinded. . . . 

 Das Publikum wird mir daher hoffentlich Dank wissen, dass 

 ich ihm in der Uebersetzung lesbarer zu machen gesucht, und 

 von dem Ueberfliissigen vieles weggestrichen, oder es doch sehr 

 zusammen gezogen habe." ^^ As an example of Zimmermann' s 

 attempt to make Bartram " lesbarer," a comparison of the fol- 

 lowing passage from the Travels with Zimmermann's transla- 

 tion of it is instructive: 



^'' Raymond Dexter Havens, " The Poetic Diction of the English Classicists," 

 Anniversary Papers by Colleagues and Pupils of George Lyman Kittredge. Bos- 

 ton, 1913, pp. 437-38. 



*' E. A. W. Zimmermann, Reisen, pp. ix-x. 



