BARTRAM'S INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE 173 



There can be no question that both the owl and the whippoor- 

 will, as well as the naked Indians, came out of a book of travels. 

 Wordsworth himself appended a note next to the whippoorwill: 

 '" See Waterton's Wanderings in South America^' ^^ but we have 

 already noted the whippoorwill in a much earlier poem and 

 supposedly coming out of Carver's Travels. 



Wordsworth's indebtedness to Bartram is certain in cases 

 where his adaptation has not obscured the source. It is less sus- 

 ceptible to proof in other cases, but it is reasonable to assume 

 that even there such an indebtedness exists. A book which left 

 such vivid impressions that they crept, sometimes bodily, into 

 such personal poems as The Vr elude, The Recluse, and The 

 Excursion could not help coloring much of his other work. Even 

 if the coloring is a composite one, Bartram contributed his share. 

 When Wordsworth writes: 



— Ye have seen 

 The Indian's bow, his arrows keen, 

 Rare beasts, and birds with plumage bright 



("The Blind Highland Boy," 106-108), 



we know that he has retained impressions from his reading of 

 books on America, particularly when he tells us in a note that 

 he took a suggestion for the story of the poem from Dampier's 

 Voyages.** But suggestions from Dampier do not exclude the 

 possibility of coalescing impressions from Bartram where long 

 before he had found " Rare beasts, and birds with plumage 

 bright." Bartram may just as plausibly have suggested, or 

 helped to suggest, such a picture as this: 



— Hadst thou been of Indian birth, 

 Couched on a casual bed of moss and leaves, 

 And rudely canopied by leafy boughs, 

 Or to the churlish elements exposed 



** Poems, VII, 179. The book referred to is Charles Waterton's Wanderings 

 in South America, the North-west of the United States and the Antilles. London, 



1825. 



'■'■Poems, II, 430. The work referred to is A New Voyage round the world. 

 Describing particularly the isthmus of America, etc. By Captain William Dampier. 

 London, 1703-09. 



