Background
William Lisle Bowles was born on the 24th of September 1762 at King's Sutton, Northamptonshire, of which his father was vicar.
(The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 - With...)
The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 - With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes - by George Gilfillan is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by William Lisle Bowles is in the English language, and may not include graphics or images from the original edition. If you enjoy the works of William Lisle Bowles then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection.
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William Lisle Bowles was born on the 24th of September 1762 at King's Sutton, Northamptonshire, of which his father was vicar.
At the age of fourteen William Lisle Bowles entered Winchester school, the head-master at the time being Dr Joseph Warton. Later he proceeded studies in Trinity College, Oxford, where he had gained a scholarship.
After taking his degree at Oxford he entered the Church.
In 1789 William Lisle Bowles published, in a small quarto volume, Fourteen Sonnets, which met with considerable favour at the time, and were hailed with delight by Coleridge and his young contemporaries. In 1797 he received the vicarage of Dumbleton in Gloucestershire, and in 1804 was presented to the vicarage of Bremhill in Wiltshire.
The longer poems published by Bowles are not of a very high standard, though all are distinguished by purity of imagination, cultured and graceful diction, and great tenderness of feeling.
The most extensive were The Spirit of Discovery (1804), which was mercilessly ridiculed by Byron; The Missionary of the Andes (18Г5); The Grave of the Last Saxon (1822); and'At John in Patmos (Г833).
Bowles is perhaps more celebrated as a critic of poetry than as a poet.
In 1806 William Lisle Bowles published 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, subject to some modification, have been since recognized as true and valuable, but which were received at the time with strong opposition 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.
These positions were vigorously assailed by Byron, Campbell, Roscoe and others of less note, while for a time Bowles was almost solitary.
Among other prose works from his prolific pen was a Life of Bishop Ken (2 vols. , 1830 - 1831).
His Poetical Works were collected in 1855, with a memoir by G. Gilfillan.
(The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 - With...)
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 elemental kind, and not the transient manners of any society.
Bowles was an amiable, absent-minded, and rather eccentric man. His poems are characterised by refinement of feeling, tenderness, and pensive thought, but are deficient in power and passion.