. He studied medicine at the
universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh, graduating M.D. in 1776. After
four years spent in foreign travel, he settled in London, where he
became intimate with Mrs Montague and other learned ladies. In 1800 he
left London to live in the Isle of Wight, and later on he removed to
South Wales. He was an energetic philanthropist, and carried on John
Howard's work in the prisons and penitentiaries. In 1818 he published
_The Family Shakespeare_ "in ten volumes, in which nothing is added to
the original text; but those words and expressions are omitted which
cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family." Criticisms of this
edition appeared in the _British Critic_ of April 1822. Bowdler also
expurgated Edward Gibbon's _History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire_ (published posthumously, 1826); and he issued a selection from
the Old Testament for the use of children. He died at Rhyddings, near
Swansea, on the 24th of February 1825.

From Bowdler's name we have the word to "bowdlerize," first known to
occur in General Perronet Thompson's _Letters of a Representative to his
Constituents during the Session of 1836_, printed in Thompson's
_Exercises_, iv. 126. The official interpretation is "to expurgate (a
book or writing) by omitting or modifying words or passages considered
indelicate or offensive." Both the word and its derivatives, however,
are associated with false squeamishness. In the ridicule poured on the
name of Bowdler it is worth noting that Swinburne in "Social Verse"
(_Studies in Prose and Poetry_, 1894, p. 98) said of him that "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," and
stigmatized the talk about his expurgations as "nauseous and foolish
cant."

BOWDOIN, JAMES (1726-1790), American political leader, was born of
French Huguenot descent, in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 7th of August
1726. He graduated at Harvard in 1745, and was a member of the lower
house of the general court of Massachusetts in 1753-1756, and from 1757
to 1774 of the Massachusetts council, in which, according to Governor
Thomas Hutchinson, he "was without a rival," and, on the approach of the
War of Independence, was "the principal supporter of the opposition to
the government." From August 1775 until the summer of 1777 he was the
president of the council, which had then become to a greater ext