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The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
William Lisle Bowles (1762–1850)
Bowles, William Lisle. An English poet; born in King’s Sutton, Northamptonshire, Sept. 24, 1762; died in Salisbury, April 7, 1850. He was educated at Oxford, and from 1804 until a few years before his death was vicar of Bremhill, Wiltshire. His ‘Fourteen Sonnets Written Chiefly on Picturesque Spots during a Journey’ (1789), was received with extraordinary favor. Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey greatly admired the poems, which reflected the author’s thoughts and the moods of nature to such an extent that Bowles is considered to have created by his influence the Lake School of poetry. In 1806 he issued a critical edition of Pope, which led to a memorable controversy (1809–25), in which Byron and Campbell were his opponents. His other works include: ‘The Grave of Howard’ (1790); ‘Coombe Ellen’ (1798); ‘The Battle of the Nile’ (1799); ‘The Spirit of Discovery’ (1804), his longest poem; and ‘St. John in Patmos’ (1832).