138 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



brass) colour ... the scales . . . powdered with red, russet, 

 silver, blue and green specks," while at the gills is '" a little 

 spatula . . . encircled with silver, and velvet black " (Travels, 

 pp. 153-54). Coleridge's reminiscences, Professor Lowes be- 

 lieves, coalesced, the bream's velvet black completing the water- 

 snakes' rich attire.^° However, E. H. Coleridge, in an earlier 

 study, has suggested that even the snakes themselves came out 

 of Bartram. He refers to the episode related by Bartram who 

 had gone during the night many times to a spring to fetch water, 

 and later found by daylight that the fountain was guarded by 

 a huge rattlesnake. Bartram refused to kill the snake, inasmuch 

 as the " generous creature " had spared him and his companions. 

 " If Coleridge read this passage," E. H. Coleridge remarks, '" no 

 doubt he read it with approval." "^ Combining Professor Lowes's 

 hypothesis of Bartram's influence on the coloring of Coleridge's 

 water-snakes with E. H. Coleridge's suggestion the if in the 

 latter's statement becomes considerably lessened. But a further 

 strengthening of the hypothesis of Bartram's influence on these 

 lines is possible. Bartram's reaction to the episode is significant. 

 " My imagination and spirits," he says, " were in a tumult, al- 

 most equally divided betwixt thanksgiving to the Supreme Crea- 

 tor and preserver, and the dignified nature of the generous 

 though terrible creature " (p. 269) . The Mariner narrates that, 

 upon beholding the water-snakes, 



A spring of love gushed from my heart, 

 And I blessed them unaware (284-85). 



The other passage which invites comment is the stanza 



He prayeth best, who loveth best 

 All things both great and small; 

 For the dear God who loveth us, 

 He made and loveth all (614-17). 



Here the indebtedness to Bartram, if there be any, is manifestly 

 of the type which E. H. Coleridge calls a " coincidence of moral 

 feeling and sentiment." The following address to singing birds 

 in Bartram is credited by E. H. Coleridge with the responsibility 

 for this coincidence: 



"* Ibid., 47. *^ Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature. 



