168 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



tained in Wordsworth's " Stanzas written in my Pocket-Copy 

 of Thomson's ' Castle of Indolence ' ": 



Retired in that sunshiny shade he lay; 



And, like a naked Indian, slept himself away (26-27). 



These lines suggest to Professor Cooper a passage in Bartram: 



How happily situated is this retired spot of earth! What an elisium 

 it is! where the wandering Siminole, the naked red warrior, roams at 

 large, and after the vigorous chase retires from the scorching heat of 

 the meridian sun. Here he reclines, and reposes under the odoriferous 

 shades of Zanthoxilon, whilst the balmy zephyrs fan him to sleep 

 (p. 107). 



A similar scene is described in another place, with Bartram him- 

 self as the subject. '" And now being weary and drowsy," he 

 writes, " I was induced to indulge and listen to the dictates of 

 reason and invitations to repose, which consenting to, after 

 securing my boat and reconnoitering the ground, I spread my 

 blanket under the Oaks near my boat, on which I extended my- 

 self, where, falling to sleep, I instantaneously passed away the 

 sultry hours of noon, what a blissful tranquil repose! " (p. 137) . 

 There can be no doubt that the numerous similarities in dic- 

 tion and collocations in Wordsworth and Bartram are more than 

 mere coincidences. In poems such as " Ruth " and in some in- 

 stances in The Excursion and The Prelude the parallelisms prove 

 an actual indebtedness, and though this cannot be claimed as 

 definitely in all instances, the similarities are striking enough to 

 merit attention. Besides diction and imagery Wordsworth bor- 

 rowed from the reading of travel literature a coloring which 

 often creeps into even his most English of poems. The word 

 " Indian," for example, is used in one form or another no less 

 than thirty times." We have already noticed the Indian chief 

 in The Excursion (IV, 1278), the Indian plains in The Prelude 

 (I, 298) and the naked Indian in " Stanzas written in my Pocket- 

 Copy of Thomson's ' Castle of Indolence.' " ^^ Other illustra- 

 tions of the use he makes of this image in The Prelude may 

 be cited: 



*' See A Concordance to the Poems of William Wordsworth, edited by Lane 

 Cooper. London, 1911. 



"Cf. ""The naked Indian of the wild" (""Presentiments," 34). 



