s of this remarkable
period. It is indeed almost dangerous to embark on the third class of
poets; yet its members here would in some cases have been highly
respectable earlier, and even at this time deserve notice either for
influence, or for intensity of poetic vein, or sometimes for the mere
fact of having been once famous and having secured a "place in the
story." The story of literature has no popular ingratitude; and, except
in the case of distinct impostors, it turns out with reluctance those
who have once been admitted to it. Sometimes even impostors deserve a
renewal of the brand, if not a freshening up of the honourable
inscription.

The first of this third class in date, and perhaps the first in
influence, though far indeed from being the first in merit, was William
Lisle Bowles, already once or twice referred to. He was born on 24th
September 1762; so that, but for the character and influence of his
verse, he belongs to the last chapter rather than to this. Educated at
Winchester, and at Trinity College, Oxford, he took orders, and spent
nearly the last half century of his very long life (he did not die till
1850) in Wiltshire, as Prebendary of Salisbury and Rector of Bremhill.
It was in the year of the French Revolution that he published his
_Fourteen Sonnets_ [afterwards enlarged in number], _written chiefly on
Picturesque Spots during a Journey_. These fell early into Coleridge's
hands; he copied and recopied them for his friends when he was a
blue-coat boy, and in so far as poetical rivers have any single source,
the first tricklings of the stream which welled into fulness with the
Lyrical Ballads, and some few years later swept all before it, may be
assigned to this very feeble fount. For in truth it is exceedingly
feeble. In the fifth edition (1796), which lies before me exquisitely
printed, with a pretty aquatint frontispiece by Alken, and a dedication
of the previous year to Dean Ogle of Winchester, the Sonnets have
increased to twenty-seven, and are supplemented by fifteen
"miscellaneous pieces." One of these latter is itself a sonnet "written
at Southampton," and in all respects similar to the rest. The
others--"On Leaving Winchester," "On the Death of Mr. Headley" the
critic, a man of worth,[8] "To Mr. Burke on his Reflections," and so
forth--are of little note. The same may be said of Bowles' later
poetical productions, which were numerous; but his edition of Pope,
finished in 1807, brought about