would deride the memory or depreciate the merits of B. No man ever did
better service to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put
him into the hands of intelligent and imaginative children." B.
subsequently essayed a similar enterprise in regard to Gibbon, which,
however, was not so successful.

BOWER, ARCHIBALD (1686-1766).--Historian, _b._ at Dundee, and _ed._ at
the Scots Coll., Douay, became a Jesuit, but afterwards joined the Church
of England, and again became a Jesuit. He wrote a _History of Rome_
(1735-44), a _History of the Popes_ (1748-66). These works are
ill-proportioned and inaccurate. His whole life appears to have been a
very discreditable one.

BOWER, or BOWMAKER, WALTER (_d._ 1449).--Was Abbot of Inchcolm, and
continued and enlarged Fordun's _Scotichronicon_.

BOWLES, WILLIAM LISLE (1762-1850).--Poet and antiquary, _b._ at King's
Sutton, Northamptonshire, of which his _f._ was vicar, and _ed._ at
Winchester and Oxf., was for the most of his life Vicar of Bremhill,
Wilts, and became Prebendary and Canon Residentiary of Salisbury. His
first work, _pub._ in 1789, was a little vol. containing 14 sonnets,
which was received with extraordinary favour, not only by the general
public, but by such men as Coleridge and Wordsworth. It may be regarded
as the harbinger of the reaction against the school of Pope, in which
these poets were soon to bear so great a part. B. _pub._ several other
poems of much greater length, of which the best are _The Spirit of
Discovery_ (1805), and _The Missionary of the Andes_ (1815), and he also
enjoyed considerable reputation as an antiquary, his principal work in
that department being _Hermes Britannicus_ (1828). In 1807 he _pub._ a
_Life of Pope_, in the preface to which he expressed some views on poetry
which resulted in a rather fierce controversy with Byron, Campbell, and
others. He also wrote a _Life of Bishop Ken_. B. 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.

Other works are _Coombe Ellen and St. Michael's Mount_ (1798), _The
Battle of the Nile_ (1799), _The Sorrows of Switzerland_ (1801), _St.
John in Patmos_ (1833), etc.

BOWRING, SIR JOHN (1792-1872).--Linguist, writer, and traveller, was _b._
at Exeter. His talent for acquiring languages enabled him at last to say
that he knew 200, and could speak 100. He w