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Samuel Boyse
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Samuel Boyse : The Deity
'...a small thick volume, bound in black morocco, and comprising four reprinted works of the eighteenth century. Gloomy, funeral poems of an order as wholly out of date as are the cross-bones an druffled cherubim on the gravestones in a country churchyard. The four - and in this order, as I never shall forget - were "The Last Day" of a Dr. Young, "Blair's Grave", "Death" by Bishop Beilby Porteus, and "The Deity" of Samuel Boyse ... How I came to open this solemn volume is explained by the oppressive exclusiveness of our Sundays ... [explains how this reading matter was approved, and how it was taken into the garden] Thither then I escaped with my grave-yard poets, and who shall explain the rapture with which I followed their austere morality?' Later, 'In the "Deity" I took a kind of persistant penitential pleasure.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Samuel Boyse : The Deity
'On the day in question, I was unable to endure the drawing-room meeting to its close, but, clutching my volume of the Funeral Poets, I made a dash for the garden...Then I opened my book for consolation, and read a great block of pompous verse out of "The Deity", in the midst of which exercise, yielding to the softness of the hot and aromatic air, I fell fast asleep.'
