John Westland Marston

“ It shows the writer's powers of description, chastened and matured, and his usual deep insight into character and motive. In this tale he also displayed a humour peculiar to himself, and a rare aptitude for portraying the natures and habits of children and animals. ”

“ Its descriptions, moreover, which combine realistic accuracy with imaginative suggestiveness, are often most impressive, while certain passages show a vein of deep reflection and speculation, to which perhaps no parallel can be cited from the works of juvenile writers. At times with such strange weird power is some crisis of the story presented that it seems to arrest the eye with its ominous significance. ”

“ Moore, the poet, in his journal, gives some interesting particulars of him, illustrating his keen susceptibility to impressions, his high-church principles, his love of simple language in the pulpit, together with certain eccentricities, such as his constant refusal to be measured by a tailor. ”

“ This was followed by a water-colour, ‘A Scene from Silas Mariner,’ exhibited, in 1872 at the gallery of the Society of French Artists in New Bond Street. These two latter works especially showed so much of idea, force of expression, and, with regard to the scene from ‘Silas Marner,’ so much beauty of execution, as to indicate that the lad, had he lived, would have signally distinguished himself as a painter. His youthful successes in art, however, were overshadowed by those which he achieved in literature, particularly in prose fiction. ”

“ Bowles's Poetical Works, collected edition, with Memoir, &c., by Rev. George Gilfillan, Edin., 1855; Eng. Cyclop. Biog. vol. i., 1856; Bowles's Autobiog. Introd. to Scenes and Shadows of Departed Days, 1837; Maginn's Gall, of Illust. Characters, ed. by G. W. Bates, 1873; Bowles's edition of Pope in ten vols., 1806; Campbell's Specimens of British Poets, &c., with an Essay on Poetry, 1819; Bowles's Invariable Principles of Poetry, 1819; Byron's Letter to John Murray and Observations upon Observations, &c., 1821; Bowles's Letters to Byron and Campbell, 1822 ”