debates themselves. When he was threatened at the beginning of 1729 with arrest by the printers of the votes, whose monopoly they accused him of infringing, he asserted that for thirty years in his 'History of King William,' his 'Annals,' and in his 'Political State,' he had given reports of parliamentary debates without being molested. The threat induced him to discontinue the publication of the debates. He intended to resume the work, but failed to carry out his intention (see Gent. Mag. for November 1856, Autobiography of Sylvanus Urban). He died on 16 Nov. 1729, in a house which he had built for himself at Chelsea.
Besides conducting the periodicals mentioned, Boyer began in 1705 to edit the 'Post-boy,' a thrice-a-week London news-sheet. His connection with it ended in August 1709, through a quarrel with the proprietor, when Boyer started on his own account a 'True Post-boy,' which seems to have been short-lived. A 'Case' which he printed in vindication of his right to use the name of 'Post-boy ' for his new venture gives some curious particulars of the way in which the news-sheets of the time were manufactured. Boyer was also the author of pamphlets, in one of which, 'An Account of the State and Progress of the present Negotiations of Peace,' he attacked Swift, who writes in the 'Journal to Stella' (16 Oct. 1711), after dining with Bolingbroke: 'One Boyer, a French dog, has abused me in a pamphlet, and I have got him up in a messenger's hands. The secretary '—St. John—' promises me to swinge him. … I must make that rogue an example for warning to others.' Boyer was discharged from custody through the intervention, he says, of Harley, to whom he boasts of having rendered services (Annals of Queen Anne, vol. for 1711, pp. 264-5). Though he professed a strict political impartiality in the conduct of his principal periodicals, Boyer was a zealous whig. For this reason doubtless Pope gave him a niche in the 'Dunciad' (book ii. 413), where, under the soporific influence of Dulness, 'Boyer the state, and Law the stage gave o'er'—his crime, according to Pope's explanatory note, being that he was 'a voluminous compiler of annals, political collections, &c.'
Of Boyer's other writings—the list of those of them which are in the library of the British Museum occupies nearly four folio pages of print in its new catalogue—mention may be made of his folio 'History of Queen Anne' (1722, second edition 1735), with maps and plans illustrating Marlborough's campaigns, and 'a regular series of all the medals that were struck to commemorate the great events of this reign;' and the 'Memoirs of the Life and Negotiations of Sir William Temple, Bart., containing the most important occurrences and the most secret springs of affairs in Christendom from the year 1655 to the year 1681; with an account of Sir W. Temple's writings,' published anonymously in 1714, second edition 1715. Boyer's latest production—in composing which he seems to have been assisted by a 'Mr. J. Innes'—was 'Le Grand Théâtre de 1'Honneur,' French and English, 1729, containing a dictionary of heraldic terms and a treatise on heraldry, with engravings of the arms of the sovereign princes and states of Europe. It was published by subscription and dedicated to Frederick, prince of Wales.
[Boyer's Works; obituary notice in vol. xxxviii. of Political State, of which the Memoir in Baker's Biographia Dramatica, 1812, is mainly a reproduction; Haag's La France Protestante, 2nd edition, 1881; Genest's Account of the English Stage, ii. 166-9; Catalogue of the British Museum Library.]
BOYES, JOHN FREDERICK (1811–1879), classical scholar, born 10 Feb. 1811, entered Merchant Taylors' School in the month of October 1819, his father, Benjamin Boyes (a Yorkshireman), being then resident in Charterhouse Square. After a very creditable school career extending over nearly ten years, he went in 1829 as Andrew's civil law exhibitioner to St. John's College, Oxford, having relinquished a scholarship which he had gained in the previous year at Lincoln College. He graduated B.A. in 1833, taking a second class in classics, his papers on history and poetry being of marked excellence. Soon afterwards he was appointed second master of the proprietary school, Walthamstow, and eventually succeeded to the head-mastership, which he filled for many years. He proceeded M.A. in due course. At school, at Oxford (whither he was summoned to act as examiner at responsions in 1842), and among a large circle of discriminating friends, he enjoyed a high reputation for culture and scholarship. 'There was not an English or Latin or Greek poet with whom he was not familiar, and from whom he could not make the most apposite quotations. With the best prose authors in our own and in French, and indeed other continental literature, he was thoroughly acquainted' (Archdeacon Hessey). The fruits of his extensive reading and literary taste are to be seen in his published works, which evince also considerable originality of thought, terseness of expression, and felicity of illustration. The closing years of his life were largely devoted
