BARTRAM'S INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE 163 



There are at least two places in the Travels which could have 

 suggested this picture of the Sage " whom time and nature had 

 made wise " (1287) delivering an '" eloquent harangue " like an 

 Indian chief before the " assembled tribes, In open circle round." 

 Bartram narrates: 



... we took our seats in a circle of venerable men, round a fire in the 

 centre of the area. ... I was struck with awe and veneration at the 

 appearance of a very aged man . . . the whole circle saluted him . . . 

 (p. 499). 



And again: 



The people being assembled and seated in order, . . . the ball opens, 

 first with a long harangue . . . spoken by an aged chief. . . . This 

 oration was delivered with great spirit and eloquence ... (p. 369) . 



The coalescing of images in a poet's mind is so natural as to 

 need no discussion. Here not only two Indian assemblies be- 

 come one and Wordsworth's Wanderer assumes, for a moment, 

 the lineaments of Bartram' s aged chief, but England itself for 

 the moment merges into the remote wilderness which flashes up 

 in Wordsworth's mind. 



The phenomenon happens again in The Prelude. The poet, 

 writing of the time 



when rock and hill, 

 The woods, and distant Skiddaw's lofty height, 

 Were bronzed with deepest radiance, 



and he " stood alone Beneath the sky," suddenly sees himself 



as if I had been born 

 On Indian plains, and from my mother's hut 

 Had run abroad in wantonness, to sport 

 A naked savage, in the thunder shower (I, 294-300). 



The diction here is much too general to be traced to Bartram or 

 to any other particular source. Yet it is easy to see that Bartram 

 must have contributed his share in fixing within Wordsworth's 

 mind the image of " Indian plains," which are only the " green 

 savannahs " of " Ruth." That Bartram did come to his mind 

 during the composition of The Prelude is evident from other 

 passages in this most ambitious of Wordsworth's poems. We 

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