BOWLES, WII.I./AM LISLE, D.D., an English poet, was b. 24th Sept., 1762, at Ring's Sutton, in Northamptoushire, where his father was then vicar. Ile received his edu cation at Winchester school, and at Trinity college, Oxford, and became at last a preb endary of Salisbury cathedral in 1803, and rector of Brenthill, in Wiltshire, in 1805. here he spent, in comparatively affluent circumstances, the remainder of his long life. Ibis poetical career began with the publication, in 1789, of Fourteen Sonnets, teritlen chiefly on picturesque Spots during a Journey. This unpretending little volume was received with extraordinary favor; the sonnets were fresh and natural, and to many minds, all the more charming because of the contrast which they presented to the style of poetry which had long been prevalent. Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey were among their enthusiastic admirers; and through the influence which he exercised over them, 13. may be regarded as the founder of a school of English poetry, in which their names soon became treater than his own. The subsequent poetical works of B. are very numerous, of which The Spirit of Discovery and The Missionary are generally regarded as the best of his longer blank-verse poems. As a poet, 13. shows a fino appre
ciation of the beauties of nature, and pleases by the expression of pure and generous sentiment, as well as by playfulness of fancy and perfect scholarly correctness, but he is greatly deficient in vigor and depth. Ile published an edition of Pope's works in 1807; and an opinion which he expressed on the poetical merits of Pope, led at a subsequent period to a rather memorable controversy, in which Campbell and Byron were his antagonists, and which turned chiefly upon the comparative value in poetry of derived from nature and those derived from art. B. was generally admitted to have discomfited his opponents. B. frequently employed his pen in defense of the church of England, and endeavored to vindicate all the peculiarities of the older English educational institutions. Of his prose writings may be mentioned a volume of sermons (Lond. 1826), and a rather dry Life of Thomas Ken, drprired,Dishop of Bath and Wills (2 vols., Lond. 1830-31). B. died at Salisbury on 7th April, 1850, in the 88th year of his age.