The third person raised to divine honors by Coleridge was Bowyer, the master of Christ's Hospital, London--a man whose name rises into the nostrils of all who knew him with the gracious odor of a tallow-chandler's melting-house upon melting day, and whose memory is embalmed in the hearty detestation of all his pupils. Coleridge describes this man as a profound critic. Our idea of him is different. We are of opinion that Bowyer was the greatest villain of the eighteenth century. We may be wrong; but we cannot be _far_ wrong. Talk of knouting indeed! which we did at the beginning of this paper in the mere playfulness of our hearts--and which the great master of the knout, Christopher, who visited men's trespasses like the Eumenides, never resorted to but in love for some great idea which had been outraged; why, this man knouted his way through life, from bloody youth up to truculent old age. Grim idol! whose altars reeked with children's blood, and whose dreadful eyes never smiled except as the stern goddess of the Thugs smiles, when the sound of human lamentations inhabits her ears. So much had the monster fed upon this great idea of 'flogging,' and transmuted it into the very nutriment of his heart, that he seems to have conceived the gigantic project of flogging all mankind; nay worse, for Mr. Gillman, on Coleridge's authority, tells us (p. 24) the following anecdote:--'"_Sirrah, I'll flog you_," were words so familiar to him, that on one occasion some _female_ friend of one of the boys,' (who had come on an errand of intercession,) 'still lingering at the door, after having been abruptly told to go, Bowyer exclaimed--"Bring that woman here, and I'll flog her."' To this horrid incarnation of whips and scourges, Coleridge, in his _Biographia Literaria_, ascribes ideas upon criticism and taste, which every man will recognise as the intense peculiarities of Coleridge. Could these notions really have belonged to Bowyer, then how do we know but he wrote _The Ancient Mariner_? Yet, on consideration, no. For even Coleridge admitted that, spite of his fine theorizing upon composition, Mr. Bowyer did not prosper in the practice. Of which he gave us this illustration; and as it is supposed to be the only specimen of the Bowyeriana which now survives in this sublunary world, we are glad to extend its glory. It is the most curious example extant of the melodious in sound:-- ''Twas thou that smooth'd'st the rough-rugg'd bed of pain.'