ENGLISH POETRY 1579-1830: SPENSER AND THE TRADITION

Samuel Boyse

(1708-1749)

WORKS    PROFILE    COMMENTARY   BIOGRAPHIES   REFERENCE   AUTHOR AS CRITIC   navigate

The son of a dissenting minister, Samuel Boyse studied at Dublin and Glasgow before adopting a literary career that took him to Edinburgh and London. He became a regular contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine where his poems appeared under the signatures "Alcaeus" and "Y." Boyse was patronized by Robert Walpole before falling upon desperate times. Although he was variously regarded as dissolute, mad, or both, Boyse's religious verse was admired and his poems were collected, reprinted, and eventually found a place in the collections of British Poets. He died of consumption in disputed circumstances.


TEXT RECORDS:

1737Stanzas occasion'd by reading Mr. Pope's Imitation of Horace, Book IV. Ode I.
1737The Olive: an Ode. In the Stanza of Spenser.
1738Part of Psalm XLII in imitation of the Style of Spencer.
1738The Olive, an Heroick Ode: Preface.
1740An Ode sacred to the Birth of the Marquis of Tavistock.
1740The Character and Speech of Cosroes the Mede: an Improvement of the Squire's Tale of Chaucer.
1741Cambuscan, or the Squire's Tale.
1741The Vision of Patience, an Allegorical Poem.
1743Albion's Triumph. An Ode.
1743To Mr. Urban, on the Conclusion of his Vol. XIII for the Year 1743. Ode.
1748Irene, an Heroic Ode in the Stanza of Spenser.

PUBLICATIONS:

Translations and poems written on several subjects. 1731.
Verses occasioned by seeing the palace and park of Dalkeith. 1732.
Verses sacred to the memory of the Right Honourable Charles Earl of Peterborough and Monmouth. 1735.
The tears of the muses: a poem sacred to the memory of the Right Honourable Anne, late Viscountess of Stormont. 1736.
The olive: an ode occasion'd by the auspicious success of his Majesty's counsels, in the stanza of Spencer. 1737.
The deity: a poem. 1739.
The Canterbury Tales modernized. Boyse and others, 1741.
The praise of peace: a poem in three cantos from the Dutch of Mr. Van Haren. 1742.
Albion's triumph. 1743.
An historical review of the transactions of Europe. 2 vols, 1747.
Impartial history of the late rebellion in 1745. 1748.
A demonstration of the existence of God [trans. Boyse]. 1749.
The tablature of Cebes. Trans. 1750.
The new pantheon: or the fabulous history of the heathen gods. 1753.
Poetical works. 1757, 1773, 1785.