792 to the vicarage of Chicklade in Wiltshire. In 1797 he
received the vicarage of Dumbleton in Gloucestershire, and in 1804 was
presented to the vicarage of Bremhill in Wiltshire. In the same year he
was collated by Bishop Douglas to a prebendal stall in the cathedral of
Salisbury. In 1818 he was made chaplain to the prince regent, and in
1828 he was elected residentiary canon of Salisbury. He died at
Salisbury on the 7th of April 1850, aged 88.

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_ (1815); _The Grave of the Last
Saxon_ (1822); and _St John in Patmos_ (1833). Bowles is perhaps more
celebrated as a critic of poetry than as a poet. In 1806 he 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. 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. These
positions were vigorously assailed by Byron, Campbell, Roscoe and others
of less note, while for a time Bowles was almost solitary. Hazlitt and
the _Blackwood_ critics, however, came to his assistance, and on the
whole Bowles had reason to congratulate himself on having established
certain principles which might serve as the basis of a true method of
poetical criticism, and of having inaugurated, both by precept and by
example, a new era in English poetry. 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.

BOWLINE (a word found in most Teutonic languages, probably connected
with the "bow" of a ship), a nautical term for a rop