- James Boyer
Infobox Writer
name = James Boyer
birthdate = 1736
birthplace = London, England
deathdate = 1814
deathplace =London ,England
occupation =Clergyman ,Educator ,
Reverend James Boyer (Born 1736, d. 1814) Clergyman and renown headmaster of
Christ’s Hospital from the years 1778 to 1799.James Boyer was the tyrannical master of Christ’s Hospital during the turbulent years at the end of the 18th century when three of Christ’s Hospital’s three most famous students attended;
Leigh Hunt ,Charles Lamb , andSamuel Taylor Coleridge . Boyer’s personality was immortalized in the writing of all three authors. Hunt made several references to Boyer in his autobiography, Lamb wrote of him in his two famous essays concerning his time at Christ’s Hospital, and Coleridge referred to him his Biographia Literaria.Through the work of these three authors in particular Boyer became infamous for his capricious and unpredictable brutality reminiscent of the dreaded Wackford Squeers in
Nicholas Nickleby . Most famously, Boyer knocked one of Hunt’s teeth out by throwing a heavy copy of Homer at his head from across the room.Lamb wrote this about the arbitrary violence Boyer;
The arbitrary nature of Boyer’ tyranny is illustrated in a story Hunt tells of a boy referred to simply as C__ with whom the master took “every opportunity to be severe with him, nobody knew why.
Despite his tyrannical influence at Christ’s Hospital, Boyer is often credited with much of the achievement of the students at the school during this time there. Coleridge, in particular, praised Boyer’s influence concerning his approach to poetics.
According to Hunt, when Coleridge learned that Boyer was on his death-bed, he said “it was lucky that the cherubim who took him to heaven were nothing but faces and wings, or he would infallibly have flogged them by the way.”
ources
* "Autobiogrphy" by Leigh Hunt, 2 volumes, E.P. Dutton & Company, New York, 1903.
* "Biogrphia Literaria" by Samuel Coleridge, Harper and Brothers, New York, 1884
* "Everybody's Lamb" by Charles Lamb, (A.C. Ward [ed.] )G. Bell & Sons, London, 1933.
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