144 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



that swelling slope, 

 Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on, 

 All golden with the never-bloomless furze, (11. 4-6) 



could hardly have failed to think of Bartram. The Gordonia, 

 with which the furze was associated in the Note Book and, 

 inevitably in Coleridge's mind, does not appear in the poem, 

 but other echoes of Bartram, of the native habitat of the Gor- 

 donia Lasianthus, do. There is a " green and silent spot, amid 

 the hills " and " The minstrelsy that solitude loves best " and 

 "Religious meanings in the forms of Nature! " A suspicion 

 creeps in that Coleridge in his idealization of England saw a 

 good deal of Bartram's country with its " fields," its " clouds," 

 its " rocky shores," its " seas," its "" streams and wooded hills " 

 {Poems, I, 262). 



Attention has been called to Coleridge's use of Bartram's 

 description of a fight between a hawk and a snake in " The 

 Wanderings of Cain." Bersch has expressed a belief that the 

 wild animals mentioned in this poem, as well as in " Religious 

 Musings," *^ were suggested by Coleridge's reading of Bar- 

 tram.*- The best proof of this assertion was given by Ernest 

 Hartley Coleridge when he published a rough draft of the poem, 

 which he had found among Coleridge's papers. In it occurs the 

 statement that Cain and the evil shape that guides him come 

 " to an immense gulph filled with water, whither they descend, 

 followed by alligators," *^ and we know that Bartram's alliga- 

 tors found a place in Coleridge's Note Book. To the alligators, 

 the snake and the vulture, must be added at least the bison (I, 

 289) as definitely coming out of Bartram; the other animals, 



*^ No one has noticed, however, that in this poem there is more than the 

 wild animals to suggest Bartram. While Coleridge quotes a passage from 

 Bruce's Travels (vol. 4, p. 557) as the source of his simoom, his description of 

 other storms strongly recalls Bartram; e.g., "the mad careering of the storm" 

 (1. 245), "wild and wavy chaos " (I. 246), " fruit Shook from the figtree by a 

 sudden storm" (1. 314). Also the landscape, foliage and sentiment recall 

 Bartram: "sea-breeze," "blossoms," "wafted perfumes," "many-tinted streams," 

 " gorgeous company of clouds," " precious fountain," " green herbs," " landscape 

 streams with glory! ", " Nature more medicinal than . . . soft balm." 



" Op. cit., p. 101. 



" Athenaeum, Jan. 27, 1894, p. 114. 



