2-887-984 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The late Rev. W. Lisle Bowles, 1850. Portrait of English priest and poet William Lisle Bowles, whose life, '...like that of country clergymen in general, has been little diversified by incidents. One of the only occasions in which he came before the public in any other than a poetic or literary character, was as a magistrate of the county of Wilts, when he did good service to the cause of humanity by energetically and effectually remonstrating against a sentence of unparalleled severity inflicted by a fellow-magistrate on an unfortunate woman for a very trifling theft...His poetry, always good in style and pure in sentiment, bears the stamp of a virtuous and reflective mind; its deficiency lies in the absence of passion or the stronger emotions of the heart; it has all the elegant evenness and cold correctness of the scholar, but elevation and novelty of thought are wanting'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.