(1792-1872)

“It will be the height of my ambition,” once wrote Sir John Bowring to a friend, “to do something which may connect my name with the literature of the age.”

[Illustration:  Sir John Bowring]

This desire was accomplished; for the distinguished linguist, scholar, and diplomat of England rendered genuine service to literature by his translations of Slavonic and Oriental verses into the English tongue.  These were more than translations:  they were studies of the national song.  Bowring was one of the first scholars to appreciate the beauty, the importance, and the charm of the traditional ballad and lyric; those faithful records of the joys, sorrows, superstitions, and history of a people.  In the various East-European languages wherein Bowring’s researches bore such valuable fruit,—­embracing Bohemian, Polish, Russian, Hungarian, Servian, and Bulgarian,—­the race-soul of these nations is preserved:  their wild mythology, their bizarre Oriental color, their impassioned thought, their affections and traditions, and often the sorrows and ideals learned during centuries of vain wanderings and heavy oppressions.  In this rich and romantic field, which has been assiduously cultivated since his time, Bowring was a pioneer.

John Bowring, born on October 17th, 1792, came of an old Puritan family, long identified with the woolen trade.  “In the early days,” he tells us, “the Exeter merchants were mostly traveled men with a practical knowledge of other tongues, and the quay at Exeter was crowded with the ships of all nations.”  Thus his imagination was kindled by the visible links to far-away countries, and from intercourse with the emigrants of various nations he acquired the foundation of his brilliant linguistic attainments.

In 1811 he went to London as clerk to a commercial house, which sent him to Spain in 1813, and subsequently to France, Belgium, Holland, Russia, and Sweden.  Immediately on his return to London he published the first of his translations, “Specimens of the Russian Poets” (1820).  In 1822 he published a second volume of Russian verse and a translation of Chamisso’s whimsical tale ‘Peter Schlemihl’; and when in 1824 his friend Jeremy Bentham founded the Westminster Review, Bowring became one of its editors.  He contributed to it numerous essays on political and literary topics, one of which, on the literature of Finland, published in 1827, first brought the poetry of that country into notice.  In 1849 he was sent on a mission to China; in 1854 was made plenipotentiary and knighted, and remained in China during the Taeping insurrection, being made governor of Hong Kong.  In 1859 he resigned the post.