Samuel Boyce

BOYCE, Samuel (1729-1775) — London

Engraver, playwright and poet. Engraved Plan of sewers and drains and similar plates for Isaac Ware, ‘A complete body of architecture : adorned with plans and elevations’ 1756. Also engraved plates for Joshua Kirby, ‘The perspective of architecture : a work entirely new; deduced from the principles of Dr. Brook Taylor’ 1761, as well as portraits, illustrations, botanical plates, bookplates, etc.

Baptised at St. George Hanover Square 21 Sep 1729. Apprenticed (Goldsmiths) to John Pine (see BME 2011) 12 Jun 1745, recorded as the son of John Boyce, gentleman, of the parish of St. George Hanover Square. He wrote lyrics for popular songs, e,g. ‘The bashful shepherd’, ‘The maiden’s resolution’, etc., as well as plays like ‘The rover; or, happiness at last; a pastoral drama’ 1752, and poems like ‘Paris; or, the force of beauty’ 1755. Among the subscribers to his ‘Poems on several occasions’ (1757), were David Garrick, Tobias Smollett and Peg Woffington, as well as his fellow engravers William Austin, James Basire 2, Thomas Chambars, George Copland, John Fielding, James Green, Charles Grignion, James McArdell, Thomas Major, James Mason, Richard Prinald, Henry Roberts, Edward Rooker, Gabriel Smith and Richard Yeo; the architects John Gwyn and Isaac Ware; the artists Francis Hayman, Robert and Simonneau Pine (sons of his master, John Pine), Joshua Reynolds, Samuel Scott, Peter Toms (son of William Henry Toms) and Samuel Wale; various well-known booksellers and print-sellers and the copperplate printer Henry Lewis (see BME 2011 for names in bold). The book, for which he engraved a frontispiece after Wale, is larded with references to well-known figures and a valuable guide to contemporary culture and politics. He was imprisoned for debt in the King’s Bench in 1761, and was compelled “to deliver into court upon oath, a schedule of all his estate and effects, for the benefit of his creditors”. He subsequently changed career and obtained a position at South Sea House. He suffered a stroke which hospitalised him, advertising to “his real and disinterested friends” 30 Jan 1775 from St. Luke’s Ward, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, that “a visit will confer a lasting obligation”. He was buried from the poorhouse at St. Anne Soho 16 Mar 1775, remembered simply in the press as “the author of several poetical pieces”.