174 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



On the blank plains, — the coldness of the night, 

 Or the night's darkness, or its cheerful face 

 Of beauty, by the changing moon adorned, 

 Would, with imperious admonition, then 

 Have scored thine age . . . 



(" Address to My Infant Daughter Dora," 18-26). 



All the elements in this picture are to be found in Bartram, even 

 the " churlish elements " ( Bartram' s memorable storms) and 

 the " changing moon " (which undergoes a sudden eclipse on 

 p. 51, just four paragraphs after the description of the pelican, 

 which Wordsworth certainly read and used) . In Bartram also 

 is to be found the 



, . . Indian conjurer 

 Quick ... in feats of art 



("The Kitten and Falling Leaves," 30-31) 



Two pages before his description of the Indian headdress, a 

 description which Wordsworth utilized in "' Ruth," Bartram 

 presents the " high priest, usually called by the white people . . . 

 conjurers " (p. 497). 



It has been stated that Bartram' s philosophy, no less than his 

 imagery, is often discernible in Wordsworth. Beginning with 

 "Ruth," where Bartram' s notion of an immanent spirit pene- 

 trating the mechanisms of nature is echoed, we realize in many 

 other poems that, in the words of Professor Cooper, " Words- 

 worth's ' pantheism ' is more likely to have come from the 

 Travels than from other sources sometimes advanced." *^ Such 

 a doctrine as that 



Matter and Spirit are as one Machine 

 ("Stanzas Suggested ... Off St. Bees' Heads," 157) 



is, again in Professor Cooper's words, " wholly in keeping with 

 the creed in the Travels." A typical expression of this creed is 

 found in the Introduction: 



If then the visible, the mechanical part of the animal creation, the 

 mere material part is so admirably beautiful, harmonious and incom- 

 prehensible, what must be the intellectual system, that inexpressibly 

 more essential principle, which secretly operates within.? that which 



^^ Athenaeum, April 22, 1905, p. 500. 



