BOWLES, WILLIAM LISLE (1762-185o), English poet and critic, was born at King's Sutton, Northamptonshire, of which his father was vicar. He was educated at Winchester and at Trinity college, Oxford. In 1789 he published Fourteen Sonnets, which was hailed with delight by Coleridge and his young con temporaries. They were a revival, a return to the older and purer poetic style, and by their tender tone of feeling and vivid apprecia tion of the life and beauty of nature stood.out in strong contrast to the elaborated commonplaces which then formed the bulk of Eng lish poetry. Bowles entered the church and held various prefer ments, including a prebend and then a canonry of Salisbury. He became, in 1804, vicar of Bremhill, Wilts.
The principal longer poems published by Bowles are The Spirit of Discovery (1804), which was mercilessly ridiculed by Byron; The Missionary of the Andes (5855); The Grave of the Last Saxon (1822); and St. John in Patmos (5833). In 1806 he pub lished an edition of Pope's works with notes and an essay on the poetical character of Pope. In this essay he laid down certain canons as to poetic imagery which were resented by all admirers of Pope and his style. The "Pope and Bowles" controversy brought into sharp contrast the opposing views of poetry, which may be roughly described as the natural and the artificial. Bowles maintained that images drawn from nature are poetically finer than those drawn from art, and that in the highest kinds of poetry the themes or passions handled should be of the general or ele mental kind and not the transient manners of any society. These positions were vigorously assailed by Byron and others, but Haz litt and the Blackwood critics championed Bowles.