178 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



Once did I see a slip of earth 



Loosed from its hold; — 



... all might see it float, obedient to the wind; 



Might see it, from the mossy shore 



Dissevered, float upon the lake, 



Float with its crest of trees adorned 



On which the warbling birds their pastime take. 



Food, shelter, safety, there they find; 



There berries ripen, flowerets bloom; 



There insects live their lives, and die; . . . 



It has been noted that Wordsworth's description of just such an 

 island, in both The Prelude and the Guide to the Lakes, was 

 influenced by Bartram's floating islands. May not his sister have 

 carried away similar impressions from the same book.^ 



Robert S out hey: 



In the Catalogue of the Library of Robert S out hey, issued by 

 Sotheby & Company, May, 1884, Item 125 reads, " Bartram 

 (Wm.) Travels — 1794." Southey, then, owned a copy of the 

 second London edition of Bartram's Travels, the same edition 

 a copy of which, we have seen, was also owned by Coleridge. 

 His interest in America, however, dates earlier. In a letter to 

 Horace Walpole Bedford, dated at Bristol, on November 13, 

 1793, he writes: 



It was the favourite intention of Cowley to retire with books to a 

 cottage in America, and seek that happiness in solitude which he could 

 not find in society. My asylum there would be for different reasons. . . . 

 I should be pleased to reside in a country where men's abilities would 

 ensure respect; where society was upon a proper footing, and man was 

 considered as more valuable than money; and where I could till the 

 earth, and provide by honest industry the meat which my wife would 

 dress with pleasing care. . . .* 



A month and a day later he writes to Grosvenor C. Bedford: 



Now, if you are in the mood for a reverie, fancy only me in America ; 

 imagine my ground uncultivated since creation, and see me wielding 



* The Life and Correspondence of the late Robert Southey, edited by his son, 

 the Rev'd Charles Cuthbert Southey. London, 1849, I, 193-94. 



