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