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 favourite yachting, boating, fishing and tourist centre. The church of St Martin is ancient, and contains stained glass from Cartmel priory in Furness. (See .)

 BOWRING, SIR JOHN (1792–1872), English linguist, political economist and miscellaneous writer, was born at Exeter, on the 17th of October 1792, of an old Puritan family. In early life he came under the influence of Jeremy Bentham. He did not, however, share his master’s contempt for belles-lettres, but was a diligent student of literature and foreign languages, especially those of eastern Europe. As a linguist he ranked with Mezzofanti and von Gabelentz among the greatest of the world. The first-fruits of his study of foreign literature appeared in Specimens of the Russian Poets (1821–1823). These were speedily followed by Batavian Anthology (1824), Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain (1824), Specimens of the Polish Poets, and Servian Popular Poetry, both in 1827. During this period he began to contribute to the newly founded Westminster Review, of which he was appointed editor in 1825. By his contributions to the Review he obtained considerable reputation as political economist and parliamentary reformer. He advocated in its pages the cause of free trade long before it was popularized by Richard Cobden and John Bright. He pleaded earnestly in behalf of parliamentary reform, Catholic emancipation and popular education. In 1828 he visited Holland, where the university of Groningen conferred on him the degree of doctor of laws. In the following year he was in Denmark, preparing for the publication of a collection of Scandinavian poetry. Bowring, who had been the trusted friend of Bentham during his life, was appointed his literary executor, and was charged with the task of preparing a collected edition of his works. This appeared in eleven volumes in 1843. Meanwhile Bowring had entered parliament in 1835 as member for Kilmarnock; and in the following year he was appointed head of a government commission to be sent to France to inquire into the actual state of commerce between the two countries. He was engaged in similar investigations in Switzerland, Italy, Syria and some of the German states. The results of these missions appeared in a series of reports laid before the House of Commons. After a retirement of four years he sat in parliament from 1841 till 1849 as member for Bolton. During this busy period he found leisure for literature, and published in 1843 a translation of the Manuscript of the Queen’s Court, a collection of old Bohemian lyrics, &c. In 1849 he was appointed British consul at Canton, and superintendent of trade in China, a post which he held for four years. After his return he distinguished himself as an advocate of the decimal system, and published a work entitled The Decimal System in Numbers, Coins and Accounts (1854). The introduction of the florin as a preparatory step was chiefly due to his efforts. Knighted in 1854, he was again sent the same year to Hong-Kong as governor, invested with the supreme military and naval power. It was during his governorship that a dispute broke out with the Chinese; and the irritation caused by his “spirited” or high-handed policy led to the second war with China. In 1855 he visited Siam, and negotiated with the king a treaty of commerce. After the usual five years of service he retired and received a pension. His last employment by the English government was as a commissioner to Italy in 1861, to report on British commercial relations with the new kingdom. Sir John Bowring subsequently accepted the appointment of minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary from the Hawaiian government to the courts of Europe, and in this capacity negotiated treaties with Belgium, Holland, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. In addition to the works already named he published—Poetry of the Magyars (1830); Cheskian Anthology (1832); The Kingdom and People of Siam (1857); a translation of Peter Schlemihl (1824); translations from the Hungarian poet, Alexander Petöfi (1866); and various pamphlets. He was elected F.R.S. and F.R.G.S., and received the decorations of several foreign orders of knighthood. He died at Claremont, near Exeter, on the 23rd of November 1872. His valuable collection of coleoptera was presented to the British Museum by his second son, Lewin Bowring, a well-known Anglo-Indian administrator; and his third son, E. A. Bowring, member of parliament for Exeter from 1868 to 1874, became known in the literary world as an able translator.

 BOWTELL, a medieval term in architecture for a round or corniced moulding; the word is a variant of “boltel,” which is probably the diminutive of “bolt,” the shaft of an arrow or javelin. A “roving” bowtell is one which passes up the side of a bench end and round a finial, the term “roving” being applied to that which follows the line of a curve.

 BOWYER, WILLIAM (1663–1737), English printer, was born in 1663, apprenticed to a printer in 1679, made a liveryman of the Stationers’ Company in 1700, and nominated as one of the twenty printers allowed by the Star Chamber. He was burned out in the great fire of 1712, but his loss was partly made good by the subscription of friends and fellow craftsmen, as recorded on a tablet in Stationers’ Hall, and in 1713 he returned to his Whitefriars shop and became the leading printer of his day. He died on the 27th of December 1737.

His son, (1699–1777), was born in London on the 19th of December 1699. He was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, and in 1722 became a partner in his father’s business. In 1729 he was appointed printer of the votes of the House of Commons, and in 1736 printer to the Society of Antiquaries, of which he was elected a fellow in 1737. In 1737 he took as apprentice John Nichols, who was to be his successor and biographer. In 1761 Bowyer became printer to the Royal Society, and in 1767 printer of the rolls of the House of Lords and the journals of the House of Commons. He died on the 13th of November 1777, leaving unfinished a number of large works and among them the reprint of Domesday Book. He wrote a great many tracts and pamphlets, edited, arranged and published a host of books, but perhaps his principal work was an edition of the New Testament in Greek, with notes. His generous bequests in favour of his own profession are administered by the Stationers’ Company, of which he became a liveryman in 1738, and in whose hall is his portrait bust and a painting of his father. He was known as “the learned printer.”

 BOX (Gr. , Lat. buxus, box-wood; cf.  , a pyx), the most varied of all receptacles. A box may be square, oblong, round or oval, or of an even less normal shape; it usually opens by raising, sliding or removing the lid, which may be fastened by a catch, hasp or lock. Whatever its shape or purpose or the material of which it is fashioned, it is the direct descendant of the chest, one of the most ancient articles of domestic furniture. Its uses are infinite, and the name, preceded by a qualifying adjective, has been given to many objects of artistic or antiquarian interest.

Of the boxes which possess some attraction beyond their immediate purpose the feminine work-box is the commonest. It is usually fitted with a tray divided into many small compartments, for needles, reels of silk and cotton and other necessaries of stitchery. The date of its introduction is in considerable doubt, but 17th-century examples have come down to us, with covers of silk, stitched with beads and adorned with embroidery. In the 18th century no lady was without her work-box, and, especially in the second half of that period, much taste and elaborate pains were expended upon the case, which was often exceedingly dainty and elegant. These boxes are ordinarily portable, but sometimes form the top of a table.

But it is as a receptacle for snuff that the box has taken its most distinguished and artistic form. The snuff-box, which is now little more than a charming relic of a disagreeable practice, was throughout the larger part of the 18th century the indispensable companion of every man of birth and breeding. It long survived his sword, and was in frequent use until nearly the middle of the 19th century. The jeweller, the enameller and the artist bestowed infinite pains upon what was quite as often a delicate bijou as a piece of utility; fops and great personages possessed numbers of snuff-boxes, rich and more ordinary, their selection being regulated by their dress and by the relative splendour of the occasion. From the cheapest wood