Samuel Boyce

For the Irish poet with a similar name, see Samuel Boyse.

Samuel Boyce (died 1775), was an English engraver and poet.

The frontispiece to Boyce's Poems on Several Occasions (1757)

Life

Boyce was originally an engraver, and subsequently worked in the South Sea House. He published one play, entitled The Rover, or Happiness at Last, a dramatic pastoral (1752), which was never performed. In its preface, he claimed that this was due to its length, and not to its lack of merit.[1]

In 1757, he published Poems on Several Occasions, which included an ode entitled Glory, addressed to the Duke of Cumberland, and a heroic poem in two cantos, dedicated to David Garrick, called Paris, or the Force of Beauty. The frontispiece, engraved by Boyce himself, was an allegorical scene depicting "Fortune obstructing the Genius of Poetry in its ascent to the Temples of Learning and Fame".[2]

He was a friend of Christopher Smart, and published a poem in praise of Smart's Song to David in the Public Advertiser in July 1763.[3]

He died 21 March 1775.[4]

Works

Notes

  1. "Poetry". The Monthly Review: 316. 1752. Retrieved 7 June 2011.
  2. "Art.III Poems on Several Occaisions". The Critical review: or, Annals of literature 4: 193–5. 1757. Retrieved 7 June 2011.
  3. Rizzo, Betty and Mahon, Robert, ed. (1991). The Annotated Letters of Christopher Smart. SIU Press. p. 95.
  4. Davenport Adams, W.H. A Book about London: London Streets. London: 1890.
  5. Quoted in Pisani, Michael (2005). Imagining Native America in Music. Yale University Press. pp. 52–3.

References

 "Boyce, Samuel". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.