Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/765

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were hanging on the rear. A confused action, known as the battle of Chrystler's Farm, resulted in the loss of General Covington and 319 men, killed or wounded. The British, though decidedly inferior in numbers, after yielding a little, maintained their ground; but meanwhile the passage of the rapid was safely accomplished. The main expedition was soon abandoned, however, owing to a want of co-operation by another body of troops, and much dispute and recrimination resulted from the failure. Boyd was subsequently appointed naval officer for the port of Boston; and in 1816 published a book containing facts and documents relative to the conduct of the war. He died at Boston, October 4, 1830, aged sixty-two.

BOYD, Robert, of Trochrig, a Scotch divine, born in 1578. His father, James Boyd, was the "tulchan" archbishop of Glasgow. He prosecuted his studies for some time at the university of Edinburgh, and afterwards in France. In 1604 he was ordained pastor of the protestant church at Verteuil; and, two years later, was appointed one of the professors at the university of Saumur. He also discharged the duties of the ministerial office in the same town; and, having married a French lady, seemed to have abandoned all intention of returning to his native country. But his reputation for ability and learning attracted the attention of James VI., who conferred on him the principalship of the university of Glasgow. He discharged the duties of this office with great assiduity; and, besides teaching theology, Hebrew, and Syriac alternately, he preached in the church of Govan, the temporalities of the rectory and vicarage of this parish having been annexed to the principalship on this condition. Mr. Boyd, however, refused to countenance King James' attempts to introduce episcopacy into Scotland, and was therefore obliged to resign his office, and retire to his estate in Ayrshire. He was soon after appointed principal of the university of Edinburgh, and one of the ministers of that city. But owing to his refusal to comply with the five articles of Perth, he was compelled to leave the capital, and was ordered by the king to confine himself within the bounds of Carrick in Ayrshire. This restriction was ultimately removed, and Mr. Boyd was appointed minister of Paisley, but his situation there was rendered uncomfortable, through the opposition of the earl of Abercorn's widow, who had lately joined the Romish church. Mr. Boyd died soon after at Edinburgh, 5th January, 1627, in the forty-ninth year of his age. His largest and best known work is his Latin "Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians," which has been highly commended for the elegance of its style. It was not printed until 1652. Another treatise, entitled "Monita de Filii Sui Primogeniti Institutione," was published in 1701. Two of Mr. Boyd's Latin poems appeared in the Deliciæ Poetarum Scotorum; and a laudatory ode on King James was printed in Adamson's Muses' Welcome. His life has been written by Wodrow.—J. T.

BOYD, Zachary, a Scottish divine and writer of verse, who was born towards the close of the sixteenth century. He was descended from the Boyds of Pinkhill, in Ayrshire, and received his education in the university of Glasgow. He subsequently prosecuted his studies at Saumur in France, and in 1611 was appointed a regent in this college. After spending sixteen years in France, he was compelled to leave it in consequence of the persecution of the protestants. On his return to his native l and he was domestic chaplain successively to Sir William Scott of Elie and to the marquis of Hamilton. In 1623 he was appointed minister of the Barony parish, Glasgow, and passed the remainder of his life in this charge. The congregation to which he ministered at that time worshipped in the crypts beneath the cathedral church, so strikingly described by Sir Walter Scott in his novel of Rob Roy. In 1629 was published Mr. Boyd's principal prose work, "The Last Battell of the Soull in Death," a treatise cast in the form of a dialogue, in which Pastour, Sicke Man, Spiritual Friend, Satan, Michael, &c., express their opinions with considerable spirit and dramatic effect. Zachary appears to have been a staunch loyalist at this period, for the first volume of his work is dedicated to Charles I. and his queen; and when that unfortunate monarch visited Scotland in 1633 for the purpose of being crowned, Zachary waited on him the day after the ceremony, and addressed him in a highly eulogistic Latin oration. When the ill-judged attempt of Charles and Laud to impose episcopacy upon the Scotch, led to the formation of a national league in support of the religious rights of the people, Mr. Boyd and the other professors of Glasgow college at first refused to subscribe the covenant, but were afterwards obliged to conform. He continued a faithful adherent of the covenanting party throughout all the changes of that stormy period. When Cromwell visited Glasgow, after the battle of Dunbar, September 3, 1650, the magistrates and ministers quitted the city in a body, but the undaunted Zachary remained at his post, and, according to Baillie, railed on the English sectaries to their very face in the High Church. The passage which he expounded on this occasion was the eighth chapter of Daniel, and it is said that one of Cromwell's officers was so indignant at the statements of the plain-spoken preacher, that he whispered into the ear of the general a request for permission "to pistol the scoundrel." Cromwell replied, "No, no; we will manage him in another way." At the close of the sermon he asked Mr. Boyd to dine with him, and their religious conversation and devotional exercises were protracted till a late hour. Zachary died about the end of the year 1653 or the beginning of 1654, leaving behind him the reputation of a pious, learned man, of strong sense, mingled with considerable humour and of great shrewdness and sagacity, but withal very eccentric. He published during his lifetime no less than nineteen works, chiefly devotional and religious, and left a very large number of treatises in manuscript, apparently prepared for the press. The most celebrated of these are two volumes, entitled "Zion's Flowers, or Christian Poems, for Spiritual Edification," which are usually designated Zachary Boyd's bible. They consist of a collection of poems on Jephtha, David, Goliath, Jonah, and other persons mentioned in scripture history, cast in a dramatic form, and bearing a considerable resemblance to the ancient "mysteries," or sacred dramas of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They form a strange mixture of passages conceived in a fine strain of devotional feeling, with descriptions of the most grotesque and ludicrous character, in the homeliest style of versification. Mr. Boyd also prepared a poetical version of the Book of Psalms for the use of the church, but the version of Rous was preferred by the General Assembly. Mr. Boyd was a liberal benefactor to the university of Glasgow, and to his munificence it is indebted for the present college buildings. In gratitude for the legacy which he bequeathed to his Alma Mater, a bust of Zachary was erected on the gateway within the court of the college, with an appropriate inscription. It is a vulgar error that he made any stipulation as to the publication of any portion of his writings.—J. T.

BOYDELL, John, a public-spirited engraver, born at Dorrington in 1719, and who became lord mayor of London. He was the son of a land surveyor, and followed the chain till the age of twenty, when the sight of Baddeley's Views of English Country Seats set him to learn engraving. He came to London, and was apprenticed to a Mr. Toms, and at the end of six years produced a book of views near London, and afterwards some other topographical works. He now threw his whole energies into reviving the neglected art of engraving, and preventing the necessity of our importing our prints from the continent. To encourage painting he started his illustrated Shakspeare and Shakspeare gallery. The latter he would have left to the nation, but his losses from the French revolution compelled him to obtain an act of parliament to allow him to dispose of it by lottery. In 1774 Boydell became alderman of his ward, and in 1791 lord mayor. He died an old man in 1804, respected and revered by every one.—W. T.

BOYDELL, Josiah, the nephew and successor of the enthusiastic dilettante alderman, John Boydell, who founded the Shakspeare gallery. He was born at Stanton in Shropshire, in 1750. When Boydell was bribing avaricious Reynolds with a retainer of 500 guineas to paint for him Robin Goodfellow, Macbeth and the Witches, and the Death of Cardinal Beaufort, and was projecting a grand illustrated edition of his favourite poet, the young Shropshire artist was sent for to London to learn engraving, and Fuseli, West. Romney, and Hayley joined in the work. While Fuseli executed eight works, of which Hamlet and the Ghost were the most wonderful, Boydell turned out a blank, painted some feeble pictures, became alderman of Cheap, resigned the gown in 1807, and died at Halliford in 1817.—W. T.

* BOYE or BOJE, Caspar Johannes, a Danish poet, born on 27th December, 1791, at Königsberg, where his father was pastor. Whilst a child he removed with his family to Trondjem. As a youth he was for two years a tutor in Norway, after which, until 1810, he studied at the university of Copenhagen. He also gave lessons in Copenhagen, whilst he studied first law,