"To Bowles" was written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...

 and published in the 26 December 1794 Morning Chronicle as part of the Sonnets on Eminent Characters

Sonnets on Eminent Characters

Sonnets on Eminent Characters or Sonnets on Eminent Contemporaries is an 11 part sonnet series created by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and printed in the Morning Chronicle between 1 December 1794 and 31 January 1795...

series. William Lisle Bowles

William Lisle Bowles

William Lisle Bowles was an English poet and critic.-Life and career:He was born at King's Sutton, Northamptonshire, where his father was vicar. At the age of fourteen he entered Winchester College, the headmaster at the time being Dr Joseph Warton...

's poetry was introduced to Coleridge in 1789 and Bowles had an immediate impact on Coleridge's views of poetry. The sonnet celebrates Bowles's status as a poet. The poem also discusses Bowles's political beliefs, as these views also help shaped Coleridge's ideas on government and politics.

Background

Bowles had an important part in Coleridge's early poetry; he served as a model Coleridge. This influence can be traced to when Coleridge was given a copy of Bowles's Sonnets, Written Chiefly on Picturesque Spots, During a Tour in 1789. Later, Coleridge dedicated a poem to Bowles in order to praise him. The poem "To Bowles" was the seventh of his Sonnets on Eminent Characters series. It was first printed on 26 December 1794 in the Morning Chronicle

Morning Chronicle

The Morning Chronicle was a newspaper founded in 1769 in London, England, and published under various owners until 1862. It was most notable for having been the first employer of Charles Dickens, and for publishing the articles by Henry Mayhew which were collected and published in book format in...

and rewritten for Coleridge's 1796 collection of poems.

As a footnote, Coleridge explained that Bowles was "Author of Sonnets and other Poems, published by Dilly. To Mr. Bowles's Poetry I have always thought the following remark, from Maximus Tyrius, peculiarly applicable [...] 'I am not now treating of that Poetry, which is estimated by the pleasure it affords to the ear—the ear having been corrupted and the judgment-seat of the perceptions; but of that which proceeds from the intellectual Helicon, that which is dignified, and appertaining to human feelings, and entering into the soul."—The 13th Sonnet [...] the 19th [...] and the 25th [...] are compositions of, perhaps, unrivalled merit. Yet, while I am selecting these, I almost accuse myself of causeless partiality; for surely never was a Writer so equal in excellence!" Coleridge's quoting of Maximus Tyrius

Maximus of Tyre

Cassius Maximus Tyrius Cassius Maximus Tyrius Cassius Maximus Tyrius (Maximus of Tyre; was a Greek rhetorician and philosopher who flourished in the time of the Antonines and Commodus. His writings contain many allusions to the history of Greece, while there is little reference to Rome; hence it...

 leaves out part of Maximus's quote that suggests the sentence is describing music.

Poem

The original version reads:

My heart has thank'd thee, BOWLES! for those soft strains,

That, on the still air floating tremblingly

Wak'd in me Fancy, Love, and Sympathy!

For hence, not callous to a Brother's pains,

Thro' Youth's gay prime and thornless paths I went;

And, when the darker day of life began,

And I did roam, a thought-bewilder'd man!

Thy kindred Lays an healing solace lent,

Each lonely pang, with dreamy joys combin'd,

And stole from vain REGRET her scorpion stings;

While shadowy PLEASURE, with mysterious wings,

Brooded the wavy and tumultuous mind,

Like that great Spirit, who with plastic sweep

Mov'd on the darkness of the formless Deep! (lines 1–14)

The 1796 version of the poem reads:

My heart has thank'd thee, BOWLES! for those soft strains,

Whose sadness soothes me, like the murmuring

Of wild-bees in the sunny showers of spring!

For hence, not callous to a Brother's pains,

* * * * *

And I did roam, a thought-bewilder'd man!

Their mild and manliest melancholy lent,

A mingled charm, such as the pang consign'd,

To slumber, tho' the big tear it renew'd;

Bidding a strange mysterious PLEASURE brood

Over the wavy and tumultuous mind,

As that great Spirit erst with plastic sweep

Mov'd on the darkness of the formless Deep! (lines 1–4, 7–14)

Themes

The sonnet praises Bowles's abilities as a poet while comparing him to other poets. This occurred in many of Coleridge's works including a comparison of Bowles with William Cowper in a December 1796 letter to John Thelwall: "But do not let us introduce an act of Uniformity against Poets—I have room enough in my brain to admire, aye & almost equally, the head and fancy of Akenside, and the heart and fancy of Bowles, the solemn Lordliness of Milton, & the divine Chit chat of Cowper." This was followed in Biographia Literaria

Biographia Literaria

Biographia Literaria, or in full Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of MY LITERARY LIFE and OPINIONS, is an autobiography in discourse by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which he published in 1817. The work is long and seemingly loosely structured, and although there are autobiographical...

with a claim that the two poets that were, "the first who combine natural thoughts with natural diction; the first who reconciled the heart with the head".

Most of the Sonnets on Eminent Characters is devoted to those Coleridge considered heroes. Although Coleridge praises Bowles for "soft Strains", Coleridge was to turn to flashy type of poetic model as he developed as a poet. However, the sonnets as a whole were not just about poetry but about Coleridge's political beliefs. Coleridge emphasizes Bowles within the poem in political terms because, as Coleridge claimed, the other poet influenced Coleridge's political beliefs. In particular, Bowles provided Coleridge with the ideas of a universal brotherhood.