BARTRAM'S INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE 151 



Bartram's ' Travels ' should have escaped Prof. Dowden's atten- 

 tion. That fascinating book was a great favourite with both 

 Coleridge and Wordsworth in Quantockian days, and traces of 

 its picturesque descriptions are to be found in the poems of 

 each. ' Ruth ' is saturated with Bartram." ^° The reviewer then 

 points to the fourth, ninth and tenth stanzas in " Ruth." " 



Subsequent scholarship, however, has discovered a much 

 greater indebtedness to the Travels than merely these three 

 stanzas. " Ruth " is indeed " saturated with Bartram." Not 

 only its images and diction are, to a large extent, derived from 

 Bartram, but some of its philosophical implications regarding 

 nature generally are colored by the Philadelphia Quaker's ideas. 

 Beginning, then, with the fourth stanza, the influence of Bar- 

 tram on " Ruth " can be traced with a measure of certainty. The 

 " youth from Georgia's shore " wears a " military casque . . . 

 With splendid feathers drest," a headgear worn by "' Micco 

 Chlucco the Long Warrior, or King of the Siminoles," whose 

 portrait is the frontispiece of the Travels. This headgear is fur- 

 ther described by Bartram in another place: " A very curious 

 diadem or band, about four inches broad, and ingeniously 

 wrought or woven, and curiously decorated . . . encircles their 

 temples, the front peak of which is embellished with a high 

 waving plume, of crane or heron feathers " (pp. 501-2) . These 

 are the same feathers that nod in the breeze and make " a gal- 

 lant crest " in Wordsworth's poem. The youth himself, although 

 Wordsworth tells us that he was not of Indian blood, that he 

 " spake the English tongue. And bore a soldier's name " (stanza 

 v) , is undoubtedly modeled upon Bartram's " young Orpheus ": 



The young mustee, who came with me to the Mucclasses from Mobile, 

 having Chactaw blood in his veins from his mother, was a sensible 

 young fellow, and by his father had been instructed in reading, writing 

 and arithmetic, and could speak English very well. He took it into his 

 head, to travel into the Chactaw country: his views were magnanimous, 

 and his designs in the highest degree commendable, nothing less than 

 to inform himself of every species of arts and sciences, that might be 



"■"Ibid., p. 219. 



^^ Professor Dowden later rectified his oversight by adding a note to the poem 

 in his selected edition of Poems by William Wordsworth. Boston, 1897, pp. 

 378-79. 



