metal; Simon, born 1808, who also signs his bows on the stick near the nut; John Dodd of Richmond, the greatest English bow-maker, who was especially renowned for his violoncello bows, though his violin bows had the defect of being rather short.
The violoncello bow is a little shorter than those used for violin and viola, and the head and nut are deeper.
The principal models of double-bass bows in vogue at the beginning of the 19th century were the Dragonetti, maintaining the arch of the medieval bows, and the Bottesini, shaped and held like the violin bow; the former was held over-hand with the hair inclining towards the bridge, and was adopted by the Paris Conservatoire under Habeneck about 1830; the great artist himself sent over the model from London. Illustrations of both bows are given by Vidal (op. cit. pl. xviii.).
Messrs W. E. Hill & Sons probably possess the finest and most representative collection of bows in the world. (K. S.)
BOWDICH, THOMAS EDWARD (1790–1824), English traveller and author, was born at Bristol in 1790. In 1814, through his uncle, J. Hope-Smith, governor of the British Gold Coast Settlements, he obtained a writership in the service of the African Company of Merchants and was sent to Cape Coast. In 1817 he was sent, with two companions, to Kumasi on a mission to the king of Ashanti, and chiefly through his skilful diplomacy the mission succeeded in its object of securing British control over the coast natives (see Ashanti: History). In 1818 Bowdich returned to England, and in 1819 published an account of his mission and of the study he had made of the barbaric court of Kumasi, entitled Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, &c. (London, 1819). His African collections he presented to the British Museum. Bowdich publicly attacked the management of the African committee, and his strictures were instrumental in leading the British government to assume direct control over the Gold Coast. From 1820 to 1822 Bowdich lived in Paris, studying mathematics and the natural sciences, and was on intimate terms with Cuvier, Humboldt and other savants. During his stay in France he edited several works on Africa, and also wrote scientific works. In 1822, accompanied by his wife, he went to Lisbon, where, from a study of historic MSS., he published An Account of the Discoveries of the Portuguese in . . . Angola and Mozambique (London, 1824). In 1823 Bowdich and his wife, after some months spent in Madeira and Cape Verde Islands, arrived at Bathurst at the mouth of the Gambia, intending to go to Sierra Leone and thence explore the interior. But at Bathurst Bowdich died on the 10th of January 1824. His widow published an account of his last journey, entitled Excursions in Madeira and Porto Santo . . . to which is added . . . A Narrative of the Continuance of the Voyage to its Completion, &c. (London, 1825). Bowdich’s daughter, Mrs Hutchinson Hale, republished in 1873, with an introductory preface, her father’s Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee.
BOWDITCH, NATHANIEL (1773–1838), American mathematician, was born at Salem, Massachusetts. He was bred to his father’s business as a cooper, and afterwards apprenticed to a ship-chandler. His taste for mathematics early developed itself; and he acquired Latin that he might study Newton’s Principia. As clerk (1795) and then as supercargo (1796, 1798, 1799) he made four long voyages; and, being an excellent navigator, he afterwards (1802) commanded a vessel, instructing his crews in lunar and other observations. He edited two editions of Hamilton Moore’s Navigation, and in 1802 published a valuable work, New American Practical Navigator, founded on the earlier treatise by Moore. In 1804 he became president of a Salem insurance company. In the midst of his active career he undertook a translation of the Mécanique céleste of P. S. Laplace, with valuable annotations (vol. i., 1829). He was offered, but declined, the professorship of mathematics and astronomy at Harvard. Subsequently he became president of the Mechanics’ Institute in Boston, and also of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He died at Boston on the 16th of March 1838.
A life of Bowditch was written by his son Nathaniel Ingersoll Bowditch (1805–1861), and was prefixed to the fourth volume (1839) of the translation of Laplace. In 1865 this was elaborated into a separate biography by another son, Henry Ingersoll Bowditch (1808–1892), a famous Boston physician.
BOWDLER, THOMAS (1754–1825), editor of the “family” Shakespeare, younger son of Thomas Bowdler, a gentleman of independent fortune, was born at Ashley, near Bath, on the 11th of July 1754. He studied medicine at the universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh, graduating M.D. in 1776. After four years spent in foreign travel, he settled in London, where he became intimate with Mrs Montague and other learned ladies. In 1800 he left London to live in the Isle of Wight, and later on he removed to South Wales. He was an energetic philanthropist, and carried on John Howard’s work in the prisons and penitentiaries. In 1818 he published The Family Shakespeare “in ten volumes, in which nothing is added to the original text; but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.” Criticisms of this edition appeared in the British Critic of April 1822. Bowdler also expurgated Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (published posthumously, 1826); and he issued a selection from the Old Testament for the use of children. He died at Rhyddings, near Swansea, on the 24th of February 1825.
From Bowdler’s name we have the word to “bowdlerize,” first known to occur in General Perronet Thompson’s Letters of a Representative to his Constituents during the Session of 1836, printed in Thompson’s Exercises, iv. 126. The official interpretation is “to expurgate (a book or writing) by omitting or modifying words or passages considered indelicate or offensive.” Both the word and its derivatives, however, are associated with false squeamishness. In the ridicule poured on the name of Bowdler it is worth noting that Swinburne in “Social Verse” (Studies in Prose and Poetry, 1894, p. 98) said of him that “no man ever did better service to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put him into the hands of intelligent and imaginative children,” and stigmatized the talk about his expurgations as “nauseous and foolish cant.”
BOWDOIN, JAMES (1726–1790), American political leader, was born of French Huguenot descent, in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 7th of August 1726. He graduated at Harvard in 1745, and was a member of the lower house of the general court of Massachusetts in 1753–1756, and from 1757 to 1774 of the Massachusetts council, in which, according to Governor Thomas Hutchinson, he “was without a rival,” and, on the approach of the War of Independence, was “the principal supporter of the opposition to the government.” From August 1775 until the summer of 1777 he was the president of the council, which had then become to a greater extent than formerly an executive as well as a legislative body. In 1779–1780 he was president of the constitutional convention of Massachusetts, also serving as chairman of the committee by which the draft of the constitution was prepared. Immediately afterward he was a member of a commission appointed “to revise the laws in force in the state; to select, abridge, alter and digest them, so as to be accommodated to the present government.” From 1785 to 1787 he was governor of Massachusetts, suppressing with much vigour Shays’ Rebellion, and failing to be re-elected largely because it was believed that he would punish the insurrectionists with more severity than would his competitor, John Hancock. Bowdoin was a member of the state convention which in February 1788 ratified for Massachusetts the Federal Constitution, his son being also a member. He died in Boston on the 6th of November 1790. He took much interest in natural philosophy, and presented various papers before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, of which he was one of the founders and, from 1780 to 1790, the first president. Bowdoin College was named in his honour.
His son, James Bowdoin (1752–1811), was born in Boston on the 22nd of September 1752, graduated at Harvard in 1771, and served, at various times, as a representative, senator and councillor of the state. From 1805 until 1808 he was the minister plenipotentiary of the United States in Spain. He died on Naushon Island, Dukes county, Massachusetts, on the 11th of October 1811. To Bowdoin College he gave land, money and apparatus; and he made the college his residuary legatee, bequeathing to it his collection of paintings and drawings, then considered the finest in the country.
