then theology, during which time he also wrote and published many poems. In 1818 he and some others established the seminary for teachers at Jonstrup, where he found sufficient leisure for his literary pursuits, principally dramatic works, which were acted with considerable applause. Being soon after called to assume the duties of parish priest, he laboured assiduously at a new and improved version of the psalms for the use of the Danish church. In 1835 he was appointed pastor of St. Olaf's in Elsinore; in 1840 he was made knight of Dannebrog, and is now minister of the Garrison church, Copenhagen. In 1818 he married the daughter of Michael Gottlob Birckner. His tragedies are "Svend Grethe;" "Kong Sigurd;" "Dronning Juta of Danmark;" and "Erik den Syvende." He published a number of the psalms translated from the Hebrew, under the title of "The Harp of David," in 1827; and "Spiritual Poems and Songs," 1833-36; and a new collection in 1840. The hymns of Boje are found in every collection, and are remarkable for their spirit of simple, genuine piety. He is well known as the translator of the principal of Sir Walter Scott's romances, and as the editor of Baggessin's Danish works.—M. H.
BOYER, Abel, a French lexicographer and historian, born at Castres in 1664; died at Chelsea in England in 1729. He was obliged to quit his country in consequence of the revocation of the edict of Nantes. His principal works are his grammar and dictionary, the latter of which long enjoyed an extensive popularity.—J. G.
BOYER, Alexis. This celebrated surgeon, the son of a poor tailor of Uzerches, a small town in Limousin, was born in 1757. He was taken from school as soon as he had learned to read and write, and placed in the office of a notary. While in this uncongenial employment he made the acquaintance of a barber-surgeon, who indulged his curiosity in physiological matters, and then of a surgeon, who advised him to go to Paris and study medicine. That advice it would have been easy to follow, if the young Boyer had known whence to derive the means for a prolonged residence in Paris; and as it was, with seventy francs in his pocket, he set out for the great metropolis. By good luck he came into the hands of a barber, who, on the recommendation of his having formerly acquainted himself with the duties of an apprentice, took him into his employment; and not only kept him from starving, but with a rare spirit of generosity, allowed him to indulge his medical tastes by frequenting the halls of dissection and anatomical museums which abounded in the neighbourhood. In these places Boyer made himself useful in various ways to the students with whom his daily visits brought him into contact, and by and by acquired so much skill as an operator, that his young friends were glad to pay him for an occasional lesson in surgery. He now entered into an arrangement with his employer by which he was required to handle the razor only on Sundays and holidays, and the rest of his time allowed to busy himself with his scalpel. At his lodgings in the house of the honest washerwoman, whose daughter he afterwards married, he began to entertain his friends, who, hearing of his success, flocked to him from all quarters; and, what with his gains at the hospitals, and his prizes at the practical schools, seemed at length to have gained the road to fortune. In 1787, after a competitive examination, he was appointed gagnant maitrise at the hospital of la Charité—an institution which was to derive advantage and lustre from his labours almost until the close of his life. The Revolution advanced the fortunes of Boyer beyond expectation—that event deprived him of a prize which the Royal Academy, then abolished, was about to award him; but rewarded him for his disappointment by bringing about his elevation to the post of second surgeon in the hospital. Previously to the year 1793, when in virtue of his having been gagnant maitrise for a period of six years he became master in surgery, he had commenced at la Charité a course of lectures on anatomy, the descriptive parts of which, for clearness and exactitude, were unmatched in the lectures of any other Parisian professor. From this period his reputation and his emoluments increased at a rate which, even his great talents considered, must be thought extraordinary. He was named professor of the practice of medicine, and second surgeon at the Hotel Dieu. In 1797-99, after commencing a course of lectures on external pathology, he published his "Traité d'Anatomie," 4 vols., a resumé of his course on that branch of science derived in great part from the note-books of his students. In 1803 Napoleon named him his first surgeon, and after the campaign of 1806-7, in which Boyer attended him, the emperor gave him the cross of the legion of honour, the title of baron of the empire, and a dotation of 25,000 francs. In 1814 appeared the results of the extensive researches he had undertaken for his course of external pathology in the first volumes of his "Traité des Maladies Chirurgicales." The last volumes of that work were given to the world in 1826. The downfall of his imperial patron in 1814 he bore with the equanimity of a man who needed no patron. In 1817 the new government had taken him into confidence; in 1823 he was named consulting surgeon to Louis XVIII. Two more sovereigns of France were to enjoy the benefit of his professional counsel—Charles X. and Louis Philippe. In 1825, on the death of Deschamps, he reached the highest attainable eminence in his profession, by being named surgeon-in-chief at la Charité, and member of the Institute. The death of his wife in 1832 threw him into a profound melancholy, which, more than his still arduous labours, hastened his end: he survived her only a year, dying November 25, 1833. In his lectures he was methodical, pains-taking, almost mechanical, singularly clear and exact; in his works, which are but his lectures revised, we find the same qualities.—J. S., G.
BOYER, Claude, a French poet and preacher, born at Alby in 1618; died in 1698. Boursault and Chapelain have eulogized his dramatic works; indeed, the latter considers him inferior only to Corneille; but Boileau, Racine, and others, have overwhelmed him with ridicule. Nor was he more happy in his sermons, for, according to Furetière, those compositions had not even attained the fame of being good soporifics for want of patients on whom to try their narcotic influence. He wrote a number of tragedies, pastorals, tragi-comedies, operas, sermons, &c.—J. G.
BOYER, Jean Baptiste Nicolas, a French surgeon, who devoted himself to the treatment of epidemics and epizootics, and left a number of works on that class of diseases, the principal of which are—"Relation Historique de la Peste de Marseilles," 1721, and "Methode à suivre dans le traitement des differentes maladies epidémiques qui regnent le plus ordinairement dans la generalité de Paris," 1761. He was born at Marseilles in 1693. His labours in that city, whither he was sent by the regent from Paris in 1720, during the prevalence of the pest, were rewarded with the title of physician-in-ordinary to the king. Died in 1768.—J. S., G.
BOYER, Jean Pierre, a mulatto, president of the republic of Hayti (St. Domingo), born at Port-au-Prince in 1776. He bore arms in the revolution of the French part of St. Domingo in 1792; distinguished himself in the following year in the struggles of the negroes to rid themselves of the tyranny of the planters; and after a short residence in France, whither he was obliged to fly with Petion and others, on their party succumbing to that of the negroes, held a command in the expedition of Leclerc in 1801. The French forces landed at the Cape, February, 1802; in May, Toussaint Louverture was made prisoner, and the party of the negroes dispersed. In 1804 another insurrection against the French resulted in a declaration of independence; Dessalines was elected chief of the republic of Hayti, and somewhat later, emperor. In 1806, Petion, to whom Boyer was attached, on the death of Dessalines, declared a republic at Port-au-Prince, and commenced war on Cristophe, the successor of Dessalines. Against the emperor of the north Boyer defended successfully the capital of the republic of the south. In 1818, on the death of Petion, he was elected president, and Cristophe being disposed of by violence in 1820, became master both of the empire and the republic. St. Domingo, the capital of the Spanish part of the island, having declared itself an independent republic in 1821, Boyer attacked it next year, and reduced it without difficulty. These successes alarmed the French government, and an effort was made in 1822 to recover St. Domingo, the queen of the Antilles, as it was called at Paris, but without success. Boyer, however, began to undermine his own authority by indulging in occasional acts of tyranny and bloodshed, and by persevering in the ruinous policy of excluding European enterprise from the territories of the republic. In 1825 Charles X. succeeded in compelling the senate of Hayti, secretly summoned for that purpose by the president of the republic, to acknowledge the suzerain rights of the French crown, and to vote an indemnity of 150 millions of francs for losses of the French party since 1792. But when the question of payment came before the Dominican legislature, it was unanimously resolved that as there was no surplus revenue in the hands of the
