BOW 
concealment, in the next court of attachment, &c. Crompt. 
Jut if. 201. 
BOW-BENT, aldj. Crooked: 
A fiby 1 old, bow-bent with crooked age, 
That far events, full wifely could prefage. Milton. 
BOW-COMPASS,/! Anindrument for drawingarches 
of very large circles, for which the common compalfes are 
too fmall. It coiilifts of a beam of wood or brafs, with 
three long ferews that govern or bend a lath of wood or 
flee! to any arch. 
BOWK, a fmall town in Devonfliire, diflant iBB miles 
from London, and feven and a half from Crediton. It has 
a market Thurfdays, and a fair in Whitfun-week, and ano¬ 
ther Nov. 22. The court of the duchy of Lancatter is 
commonly kept here. 
.BOW'ELS, f. \boyaux, Fr.] Inteflines ; the veffels and 
organs within the body.—He tmote him therewith, in the 
fifth rib, and (hed out his bowels. 2 Sam. xx. 10.—The in¬ 
ner parts of any thing. — As he faw drops of water didd¬ 
ling from the rock, by following the veins, he has made 
himfelf tvvo'or three fountains in the bowels of the moun¬ 
tain. Addifon. —The feat of pity, or kijidnefs.—Iiis bowels 
did yern upon him. Gcnefs. —Tendernefs; as, bowels of 
compadton.—This word feldom has a dngular, except in 
writers of anatomy. 
BOWTR, f. [from bough or branch, or from to bow or 
bend. ] An arbour; a dteltered place covered with green 
trees, twined and bent. Johnfon. —It feems to dignify, in 
Spenfer, a blow ; a droke; from bourrer,- Fr. to fall upon. 
Concerning the etymology and original defignation of the 
word bower, fome curious remarks occur in Mafon’s Effay 
on Gardening, publidied in 1795 ; and, as it ferves to diew 
the gradations by which the corruption of words lo fre¬ 
quently happens, we diall extract the paflage for the in¬ 
formation of the lexicographical reader.—Mr. Walpole, 
(now earl of Orford,) in a paper on gardening, printed in 
the fourth volume of his' Anecdotes of Painting in Eng¬ 
land, fays, “ We do not precilely know what our ancedors 
meant by a bower-, it was probably an arbour ; fometimes 
it meant the whole frittered inclolure, and in one indance 
it certainly included a labyrinth. Rofamond’s bower was 
indifputably of that kind, though whether compofed of 
walls or hedges we cannot determine.” This lubjecl Mr. 
Mafon takes up, and explains as follows: 
“ Bower in Englidi (according to Mr. Manning’s edition 
of Lye’s dictionary) is exactly the fame with the Saxon 
■bur or bure. In the Saxon authorities there referred to, 
-for Hands for Abraham’s tent, for the facred tabernacle, 
for parlour or chamber, and for bed-chamber. This infor¬ 
mation Mr. Manning very obligingly gave me fome years 
ago. He alfo informed me, that the charadteridic mark 
of the Saxon word was privacy, and that bur .dignified any 
erection for private ufe, whether the whole of a building, 
or only an apartment. I find it ufed alfo for a private room 
in the Chronicon Saxonicum, p.149. In a poem printed 
in Hickes’s Thefaurus, and fuppofed to be written before 
the reign of Henry II. bure is ufed for a buttery, and boures 
for private rooms in an abbey. And Matthew Paris 
tranflates bur into thalamus. When the orthography was 
changed into boure, the vvord ftill retained its Saxon fenfes. 
That midrefsof language queen Elizabeth perfedtly under- 
dood its primitive fignificafion, when die tranllated “ in 
hoc contubernio vita degenda ell,” (Sen. Epif.107.) by “ in 
this rotten bower our life we mud lead.” Bower certainly 
might, confidently with its original import, have been alio 
ufed for an arbour ; but 1 cannot find any authentic and 
decifive indance of Rich ufage, till towards the clofe of 
the fixteenth century. Chamber was always its mod com¬ 
mon meaning, as long as it held a place in our living lan¬ 
guage. Mr. Warton has proved this to have been tlie eafe 
in poetry; and an old vocabulary, fuppofed to have been 
compiled about 1440, explains ■ bowre by thalamus, conclave. 
Alfo in a plain narrative of the entertainment of princefs 
Catherine on her intended marriage to prince Arthur, 1 coi, 
. Vol. III. No. 133. 
we read “Uppon faturdaie becaufe it was raynie, and not 
clcere ne ftable weather, the company of nobles made paf- 
time in their bowers and chambers ;” and again, “ daunced 
in their bowers and chambers all that fame daye.” From 
chamber to refidence the tranfition was eafy. In this latter 
fenfe it is often ufed by Spenfer and Skelton, and once at 
lead even by Chaucer, in like manner as by the elegant 
Dunbar in his golden terge, who (peaks of birds in bloom¬ 
ing thickets, as “ within’ their bouris.” In this way it is 
that Spenfer calls a garden ‘ the bower of blifs.’ But the 
appellation no more proves bower to ftgnify a garden, than 
feat would have fignified a garden, if he had called it the 
feat of blifs. Such exprefiions by degrees brought the 
word to fignify not only arbours (whether natural or artifi¬ 
cial), but even the fhades beneath them ; and feem alfo to 
have occafioned its original meaning, by the .middle of the 
feventeenth century, to be modly forgotten. Of tins we 
have a remarkable indance in Bathurd’s tra'nflation of 
Spenfer’s Shepherd’s Calendar into Latin, where he ren¬ 
ders this line in Augud, 
(Than bed, or bower, both which I fill with cries,) 
Quam leJlus, quamque umbra domus : base irrigo fletu. 
This corrupted ufage, being the only one in vogue, in¬ 
duced Junius to derive bower from bough, and interpret it 
by arbour. And johnfon, notvvithdanding his animadver- 
fions on the errors of J.unius, has in this article at lead 
abfolutely outvied the abfurdity of his predcceffbr. He 
adopts both the erroneous derivation, and the expofition 
by arbour ; and to prove the latter produces three exam-. 
ples. Of thefe, the fird (from Milton) is quite nuga¬ 
tory; the fccond (from Waller) is worfe ; for it would 
make the poet turn heaven into arbours. His third in¬ 
dance is from Pope’s Odyfley : 
Refreih’d they wait them to the bower of date, 
Where, circled by his peers, Atrides fate. 
This bower of fate (produced as an example of arbour) 
happens to be a magnificent room of audience in the pa¬ 
lace of Menelaits. 
“ We know, that the word bower at this day lives only 
in poetry, and that modern bards chiefly ufe it for imbow- 
ering fiade, or a fiady enclofurc. Yet fome of them dill 
apply it occafionally according to its original import. Pope 
does, as we have feen already ; and fo does Prior in his 
Solomon : 
To lead her forth to a didinguLfn’d bower, 
And bid her drefs the bed. 
It is fo ufed, as early as in Drayton’s Miferies of Quees 
Margaret. [Led him through London to the bidiop’s 
bower.) And as late as in Shendone’s Schoolmiltrefs : 
In knightly cadles, or in ladies’ bowers. 
“ Rofamond’s bower is fpoken of by Fabian, who fays, 
‘This houfe after fome writers was named Labyrintluis, 
or Daedalus worke, or howfe wroughte like unto a knot in a 
garden called a maze.’ A bower at this pericrd'was ufually 
but a fmall part of a manfion. Authors nearer to the age of 
Rofamond dyle it only a- chamber. And Mr.Warton fhews, 
that a Rofamond’’s chamber was to be found in many other 
of Henry II.’s palaces. How writers within the two lad 
centuries may have mifreprefented Rofamond’s bower is 
hardly worth enquiring. 
“ That the Bower of Havering was only another name 
for the king’s houfe, is confirmed by traditionary report, 
not yet worn out. When I fil'd refided there in 1770, the 
minider told me of an old man, who could remember 
many chimnies of the old bower Handing. ‘ Havering alto 
Bower’ is the name of this royal demefne in its charter 
from Edward IV. The fame appellation may be traced 
confiderably higher. There are two inftruments figned 
by Edward III. in the fifth year of his reign, dated Ha- 
veryng alte boure. Should it be afked, why the royal feat 
at Havering was fo particularly didinguidied by the name 
of a bower , there are reafons (not improbable) to be given 
4 N for 
