IV : Romanticism Inspired : William Lisle Bowles
The Warton brothers were formidable teachers , and unsurprisingly inspired many of their pupils to published poetic expression . Pupils of Joseph included the poets John Codrington Bampfylde ( 1754-97 ), Francis Noel Clarke Mundy ( 1739-1815 ), and Thomas Russell ( 1762-88 ). Pupils of Thomas at Trinity included Henry Kett ( 1761-1825 ), William Benwell ( 1765-96 ), Edward Gardner ( 1752-1823 ), Henry Headley ( 1765-88 ), and George Richards ( 1767-1837 ). The most famous poet of these , William Lisle Bowles ( 1762-1850 ), had the good fortune to be a pupil of both brothers – of Joseph at Winchester from 1776 , and Thomas theYounger , at Trinity , from 1781 .
Bowles was a Wykehamist through and through , the great-nephew of a Fellow who tried to redesign Meads , and in his own right Sen Co Prae , or Senior Prefect . Even when composing a sonnet about Ostend , Bowles manages to mention Winchester . He won the Chancellor ’ s Medal for LatinVerse at Oxford , and published , in 1789 , Fourteen Sonnets . The volume was an immediate success . The sonnets have common features : a riparian setting , skill in variation of the sonnet form , a poetic persona of youthful sensibility , with particular focus on personal development and poetic inspiration , and a tripartite structural form involving scenes which are left , revisited , and recollected , in an overall process of healing , solace and recovery .
William Lisle Bowles , by William Humphrys ;
© National Portrait Gallery , London .
Robert Southey , by PeterVandyke ;
© National Portrait Gallery , London .
Here is Bowles at Winchester :
‘ To the River Itchin ’ Itchin ! when I behold thy banks again , Thy crumbling margin , and thy silver breast , On which the self-same tints still seem to rest , Why feels my heart a shivering sense of pain ! Is it , that many a summer ’ s day has past Since , in life ’ s morn , I carolled on thy side ! Is it , that oft since then my heart has sighed , AsYouth , and Hope ’ s delusive gleams , flew fast ! Is it , that those who gathered on thy shore , Companions of my youth , now meet no more ! Whate ' er the cause , upon thy banks I bend , Sorrowing ; yet feel such solace at my heart , As at the meeting of some long-lost friend , From whom , in happier hours , we wept to part .
William Wordsworth , by Henry Edridge , courtesy of the Wordsworth Trust , Grasmere .
Samuel Taylor Coleridge , by PeterVandyke ;
© National Portrait Gallery , London .
Success of this volume , published in the explosive year of 1789 , was immediate and lasting . “ For 40 years ”, Southey confessed , he took “ the sweet and artless style of Bowles for a model ”. Coleridge went further :“ These are the poems , which we can lay up in our hearts , and our soul , and repeat them when we walk by the way , and when we lie down , and when we rise up ”. They were soon “ a part of our identity ”, he felt , and displayed “ marked superiority over all other sonnets ”. He copied the volume out 40 times by hand , and , in 1796 , edited a small collection of sonnets by himself and his friends to be bound up with those of Bowles . Like Southey , Coleridge was soon imitating the style :
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