BARTRAM'S INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE 177 



and interesting parallels " between a passage in her Grasmere 

 journal and some lines in Bartram. Describing a field of flowers 

 she saw while out walking she says: 



A few primroses by the roadside — wood sorrel flower, the anemone, 

 scentless violets, strawberries, and that starry, yellow flower which Mrs. 

 C. calls pile wort ... we saw a few daffodils close to the water-side. 

 We fancied that the sea had floated the seeds ashore, and that the little 

 colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and 

 yet more ; and at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there 

 was a long belt of them along the shore. ... I never saw daffodils 

 so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about and above them ; 

 some rested their heads upon these stones, as on a pillow, for weariness ; 

 and the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily 

 laughed with the wind, that blew upon them over the lake ; they looked 

 so gay, ever glancing, ever changing.^ 



Bartram coming to a " rural retirement " describes " a charm- 

 ing circle of mountain vegetable beauties ": 



. . . some of these roving beauties are strolling over the mossy, shelv- 

 ing, humid rocks, or from off the expansive wavy boughs of trees, 

 bending over the floods, salute their delusive shades, playing on the 

 surface, some plunge their perfumed heads and bathe their flexible 

 limbs in the silver stream, whilst others by the mountain breezes are 

 tossed about, their blooming tufts bespangled with pearly and chrystal- 

 line dew-drops collected from the falling mists, glisten in the rain bow 

 arch (p. 342). 



" The likeness," comments Professor Lowes, " is probably sheer 

 coincidence (for "William Bartram and Dorothy Wordsworth 

 were kindred souls), but Dorothy must have had the Travels 

 well in mind, and there may be touches of unconscious reminis- 

 cence in her lovely picture of the daffodils beside the lake." ^ 



Such an '" unconscious reminiscence " may have also crept in- 

 to her poem, " Floating Island ": ^ 



^ Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, edited by William Knight. London, 1910, 

 I, 106. 



* Xanadu, p. 506; also see p. 172. The similarity between Dorothy Words- 

 worth's entry in her journal and Wordsworth's poem "' I Wandered Lonely as 

 a Cloud " is well known. Whether the employment of similar diction in express- 

 ing what they saw is also a coincidence, or whether one influenced the other, 

 or both "" unconsciously " echo Bartram, remains a subject of speculation. 



* Poems by William Wordsworth, VIIL 



