150 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



sentence points to the use which Wordsworth made of such 

 reading; in this case it amounted to his absolute dependence 

 upon it. Naturally, his poetry reflects this extensive reading of 

 travel literature and it is therefore not surprising for Prof, de 

 Selincourt to find that " the pages of The Prelude,'' for instance, 

 " are studded with simile, metaphor, and allusion drawn from 

 the narration of famous navigators, and explorers of unknown 

 continents." ^ 



Exactly when Wordsworth read Bartram's Travels is un- 

 known. Professor Cooper believes that the poet " became fam- 

 iliar with Bartram ... at Alfoxden " ® and that " if he did not 

 carry Bartram's Travels . . . with him to Germany, he must 

 have had that entertaining journal almost by heart before he 

 started." '^ The last statement is especially plausible, for it is 

 in a note to " Ruth," written in Germany and published in 1800, 

 that Wordsworth specifically refers to Bartram: " The splendid 

 appearance of these scarlet flowers," he writes, explaining lines 

 64-66, " which are scattered with such profusion over the Hills 

 in the Southern parts of North America is frequently mentioned 

 by Bartram in his Travels." ® However, there is no definite 

 reason for assuming that Wordsworth could not have read 

 Bartram before Alfoxden. The Palestinian and Syrian landscape 

 of The Borderers (composed in 1795-6), like the landscape in 

 Coleridge's " Wanderings of Cain," seems tinged with Bartram, 

 and the pelican of the desert in III, 220 is very much the bird 

 which, later, more elaborately comes out of Bartram into the 

 third book of The Prelude. 



In spite of Wordsworth's own reference to Bartram, it was 

 not until 1893 that a definite claim of an indebtedness to Bar- 

 tram appears in an anonymous review of Dowden's Aldine 

 edition of Wordsworth's poems.^ " It is not a little to be re- 

 gretted," says the reviewer, '" that Wordsworth's references to 



" The Prelude, p. xxix. 



'Modern Language Notes, XXII, 113. 



'' Methods and Aims in the Study of Literature, p. 110. Wordsworth moved to 

 Alfoxden in July, 1797, and left for Germany in September, 1798 (G. M. Harper, 

 William Wordsworth, his Life, Works and Influences, I, 316, 362). 



' Poems, II, 108. 



"The Athenaeum, August 12, 1893, pp. 218-20. 



