74    THE EARLY LIFE OF ROBERT SOUTHEY


acknowledged in later life,' was that of William Lisle
Bowles. Many, without doubt, as compared with the num-
ber of sonnets that Southey preserved in his printed poems,
were those that he committed to the flames. Bowles, the
indigent son of a clergyman who had left a widow and
seven children, had, in 1789, knocked three times at the
door of one Cruttwell, a printer in Bath, before he could
gain admittance and submit for publication a sheaf of four-
teen sonnets. Cruttwell at first declined to accept them,
but finally consented to publish one hundred copies at a
cost of about five pounds. The young man left his manu-
script and went back to his unpaid bills at Oxford, little
expecting to hear again from his poems. They appeared
as Fourteen Sonnets written chiefly on Picturesque Spots dur-
ing a Journey,2 and in six months Bowles received a letter
from Cruttwell saying that an edition of five hundred could
be sold. This was immediately issued (1789), seyen new
sonnets having been added by the author, and it was fol-
lowed in a few years by three more editions (1794, 1796,
1796). The wine of Bowles was thin, to be sure, but it
had the true Pierian flavor to young men who longed to
be stirred in such ways and by such causes as Bowles had
found. Coleridge, then a youth at Cambridge, had come
upon the volume (probably the second edition, 1789), had
written a letter of commendation to the author, and had
transcribed copies of the work to give away to his friends.
Meanwhile Southey, too, although there is no evidence of
the fact in his letters and although the earliest of his son-
nets is dated merely 1794, had undoubtedly picked up
Bowles's volume in Bath or Bristol, and had begun to try
Works, Preface.
2 Poetical Works of W. L. Bowles, ed. by Gilfillan, Vol. I. Introduc-
tion by Bowles to the edition of his poems of 1837; Vol. II, Introduction
by the editor. Coleridge Biographia Literaria, ed. by J. Shawcross,
Vol. I, 8, and note.