stantly, so the list of his works is a long one; but in the present study we are concerned only with the poems before 1798, the ones that stirred Coleridge to abandon metaphysics for poetry.

From fourteen to nineteen years of age Bowles was in Winchester school under the tutelage of Dr. Joseph Warton, who won the boy's confidence and inspired him with his own tastes. In the Monody on the Death of Dr. Warton, written eighteen years after these school days, Bowles says of Warton,

"Thy cheering voice,

O Warton! bade my silent heart rejoice,
And wake to love of nature; every breeze
On Itchin's brink was melody; the trees
Waved in fresh beauty;

And witness thou

Catherine, upon whose foss-encircled brow
We met the morning, how I loved to trace

The prospect spread around.

So passed my days with new delight.”

Warton also taught him to love literature. He learned to read Greek poets with "young-eyed sympathy," and he went with "holier joy" to

"The lonely heights where Shakespeare sat sublime."

Charmed, the lad bent his soul

"Great Milton's solemn harmonies to hear."

“Unheeded midnight hours" were beguiled by the wild song of Ossian, and his fancy found a "magic spell" in the Odes of his master, Dr. Warton.

The influences of these early school days had awakened Bowles to love of nature and of poetry, and when sorrow came it was to nature and to poetry that be turned for relief. His Sonnets are the direct and genuine expression of a personal grief. They were composed, he says, during a tour in which he "sought forgetfulness of the first disappointment in early affections," and they are pervaded by a melancholy unmistakably real. But along with this deep sadness is a frequent recognition of the power of nature

1 Bowles: Poems, Introduction to edition of 1837.

to give at least temporary respite from grief. Not only does she steep each sense in still delight, but she bestows “a soothing The lovely sights and sounds of morning

charm."2

"Whate'er betide, yet something have I won
Of solace, that may bear me on serene." 5

In the midst of sorrow he is

"Thankful that still the landscape beaming bright
Can wake the wonted sense of pure delight."

What Bowles saw in nature was largely determined by his state of mind. His own sadness led him to a quick perception of the pensive or melancholy suggestions in any scene. He loved sequestered streams, romantic vales, the hush of evening. The sounds he heard were soft and plaintive. The river Wainsbeck makes "a plaintive song among its "mossy-scattered rocks."7 He listens to the wind and seems to hear a plaint of sorrow. Sea sounds are

8

Of summer days, and those delightful years
When from an ancient tower, in life's fair prime,
The mournful magic of their mingling chime
First waked my wondering childhood into tears.”

Again, his own striving after self-control leads him to look with
pleasure on such natural objects as have withstood the shock of
tempests. Rugged Malvern Hill, on which the "parting sun sits
smiling," teaches him a lesson of victory over grief, and he
exclaims,

The shades of sorrow I may meet, and wear

The smile unchanged of peace, though pressed by care!"

Some of the brief descriptions in these sonnets are beautiful in themselves, as

"How shall I meet thee, Summer, wont to fill

My heart with gladness, when thy pleasant tide
First came, and on the Coomb's romantic side
Was heard the distant cuckoo's hollow bill."3

Or this from Dover Cliffs,

"On these white cliffs, that calm above the flood
Uprear their shadowing heads, and at their feet
Hear not the surge that has for ages beat,
How many a lonely wanderer has stood !

And, whilst the lifted murmur met his ear,

And o'er the distant billows the still eve

Sailed slow, has thought of all his heart must leave
Tomorrow, "4

But here, as elsewhere in the poems, the chief thought is human
grief; and the most important characteristic of the poems, taken
as a whole, is the intimate union between the spirit of a man
and the spirit of nature. It was always Bowles's theory, says

'The Bells, Ostend.

2 At Malvern.

3 The Approach of Summer.

4 Dover Cliffs.

Clark,' that nature is the true subject of poetry; but he does not, in his later work, strike so true and simple a note as in these early sonnets.

Such general statements as are to be drawn from this study of specific poets can be more conveniently made after the studies in Gardening, Fiction, Travels, and Painting, for these four studies, brief as they are, yet offer facts that modify or confirm the impression gained from the poetry.

1 Bowles's Memoir.

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CHAPTER III.

GARDENING.

Gardening

Up to the beginning of the eighteenth century the garden that had satisfied public taste was some form of the Ancient, Geometrical, Roman, Architectural, or Regular Garden, as it has been variously styled. In English literature this garden plays but a small part. In Evelyn's Diary we find many descriptions of French and Italian gardens which are eminently suggestive as showing the taste of the age. His approbation is always given to proofs of ingenuity in the way of mechanical devices. We find the same general tone in a letter by Mallet. He had been traveling in Wales for six weeks, and had found the journey simply "tedious" till he came to Sir Arthur Owen's garden, which consisted of an acre and a half, laid out like a mariner's compass with a tree in the centre for the needle and a grove cut into thirty-two sections by paths answering to the points in the compass. This was the only remarkable thing Mallet saw in Wales. The classical and the only important article on the Formal Garden before 1700 is by Sir William Temple. According to his taste Moor Park was the sweetest garden known. It was divided into quarters by gravel walks, and adorned with two fountains and eight statues in each quarter. Its terrace walk had a summerhouse at each end. On each side of the parterre was a cloister, over each cloister an airy walk, and so on. "Among us," he explains, "the beauty of building and planting is placed chiefly in chiefly in some certain proportions, symmetries, or uniformities, our walks and our trees ranged so as to answer one another and at exact distances." This sentence is especially interesting as show

2

1 Mallet in Letter to Pope (1734).

2 Temple; On the Gardens of Epicurus; or of Gardening in the year 1685.

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