160 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



merits, " an assimilated experience, and was in the nature of a 

 purified emotion, " recollected in tranquillity.' " ^^ Another in- 

 stance may be added of an impression which Wordsworth seems 

 to have retained for a much longer period. The " gallant crest " 

 of " splendid feathers " which the youth in " Ruth " wears, and 

 which Wordsworth remembered from Bartram's frontispiece 

 and the description of " a waving plume, of crane or heron 

 feathers," waves again, ten years after the composition of 

 " Ruth," in " Hoffer," where we are told about the Tyrolese 

 hero that 



upon his head, 

 That simple crest, a heron's plume, is worn (7-8). 



Other images that lingered in Wordsworth's mind are more 

 difficult to relate to their sources. Are the " green savannahs " 

 of " Ruth " — unmistakably from Bartram — and the " wide sa- 

 vannah " of The Excursion (III, 938) one and the same thing? 

 The latter phrase appears in a passage that in almost every line 

 suggests Bartram. It pictures regions 



Whose shades have never felt the encroaching axe, 



. . . There, Man abides 

 Primeval Nature's child . . . 

 . . . contemplations . . . 



attend 

 His independence, when along the side 

 Of Mississippi, or that northern stream 

 That spreads into successive seas, he walks, 

 Pleased to perceive his own unshackled life, 

 And his innate capacities of soul, 

 There imaged: or when, having gained the top 

 Of some commanding eminence, which yet 

 Intruder ne'er beheld, he thence surveys 

 Regions of wood and wide savannah, vast 

 Expanse of unappropriated earth, 

 IF/V^ mi7id that sheds a light on what he sees; 

 Free as the sun . . . 



Pouring above his head its radiance down 

 Upon a living and rejoicing world! (Ill, 915-943) 



*' Modern Language Notes, XXII, 113. In Methods and Aims in the Study of 

 Literature, p. 120, Prof. Cooper changes " seems to have Iain " to the more 

 cautious " may have lain." 



