BOYD, ZACHARY, an eminent ,Scottish divine, born before 1590. was educated at Kil marnock, and studied at the universities of GlaSgoW, and &tumor in France. of which latter he was, in 1611, appointed a regent or professor, and is said to have declined the principalship. The persecutions of the Protestants in France caused hint to return to Scotland in 1621. In 1623, he became minister of the Barony parish, Glasgow, and was thrice elected rector of the university of that place. His principal prose work, The Last Becttell of the Soule in Death, published at Edinburgh in 1629, in 2 vols., was reprinted, with a life of the author, by Gabriel Neil, Glasgow, 1831. Ile was author of eighteen other works, chiefly of a religious cast. The third edition of his Psalines of Dared in ifeeter appeared at Glasgow, 1646. He died in 1653 or 1654, leaving numerous MSS., and his library, with a considerable legacy, to the college of Glasgow, over a court gate way of which is his stone bust, whilst his portrait is in the divinity hall of the same university. Among his MSS. is a collection of quaint poems on Scriptural subjects. entitled Zion's Flowers, usually called Zachary Boyd's Bible. As a specimen of his
homely style, the following extract from Jonah's soliloquy within the whale's belly may be quoted here : What house is this, where's neither coal nor candle, Where I nothing but guts of fishes handle ? I and my table are both here within, Where day neere dawned, where sunne did never shine; The like of this on earth man never saw, A living man within a monster's maw, Buried under mountains which are high and steep, Plunged under waters hundreth fathoms deep. Not so was Noah in his house of tree, For through a window he the light did see; Ile sailed above the highest waves—a wonder; I and my boat are all the waters under; Bee in his arko might goe and also come, But I sit still in such a straitened roome As is most uneouthe, head and feet together, Amongsuch grease as would a thousand smother. I find no way now for my shrinking hence But heere to lie, and die for mine offence. Eight prisoners were in Noah's hulk together; Comfortable they were, each ono to other.
In all the earth like unto me is none, Far from all living, I heere lye alone.