BARTRAM'S INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE 159 



I looked upon those hills and plains, 

 And seemed as if let loose from chains, 

 To live at liberty" (stanza xxix), 



he, along with Wordsworth, is still thinking of Bartram's coun- 

 try. The compliment which Professor Lowes pays to Words- 

 worth for these lines is at the same time a compliment to the 

 Philadelphia botanist: " Nobody ever put the romance of discov- 

 ery more magnificently into words than Wordsworth, in a poem 

 shot through with reminiscences of William Bartram's glowing 

 delineations of strange beauty." -* The spirit of Bartram, no 

 less than his diction and imagery, permeates this poem. And, in 

 spite of Wordsworth's implied disapproval of Bartram's predi- 

 lection for the "" irregular " in " a too gaudy region," not a little 

 of the Quaker traveler's philosophy creeps into the poem. To 

 Professor Cooper the lines. 



The engines of her pain, the tools 

 That shaped her sorrow, rocks and pools. 

 And airs that gently stir 

 The vernal leaves — (stanza xxxix) 



" betray a philosophy not wholly foreign to Bartram's notion of 

 an immanent spirit penetrating all the individual mechanisms 

 of nature." ^° The fact that this philosophy is also reflected, in 

 more convincing forms, in other poems by Wordsworth, sup- 

 ports this view. 



But Wordsworth's philosophical colorings from Bartram will 

 have to wait a while. It has been shown that the scenery and 

 imagery of Bartram are everywhere in " Ruth "; so are they in 

 many other of Wordsworth's poems. It can be said of Words- 

 worth, even with greater accuracy than of Coleridge, that he 

 had a tenacious memory. The Prelude is proof enough. Impres- 

 sions of childhood, of people met, of books read, of remarks 

 overheard — all was retained and came out of the imaginative 

 repository when the creative need urged. Professor Cooper has 

 pointed out an instance where an impression from Bartram 

 seems to have lain dormant in the poet's mind for something 

 like five years, awaiting utilization. " It had become," he com- 



**■ Xanadu, p. 3l4. "Athenaeum, April 22, 1905, p. 500. 



