catechism. A Sermon of Preparation to the Communion and A Sermon for the Day of the Sacrament (Edinburgh, 1629) and Two Orientall Pearles, Grace and Glory (Edinburgh, 1629) made a small number of Boyd's sermons available in print, but Boyd left over 250 more in manuscript. Boyd also left a substantial quantity of scriptural versifications. Boyd's autograph manuscripts, which are held at Glasgow University Library, include Zions Flowers (or 'Christian Poems for Spiritual Edification'), the didactic set of exercises The English Academie and versified Gospels entitled The Four Evangels. Zions Flowers versifies nineteen biblical narratives from the Old Testament, such as 'Pharaoh's Tyrannie and Death', 'David and Goliath' and 'Destruction of Sodom'. Known collectively as 'Boyd's Bible' – though Boyd never did versify the entire Bible – these poems' critical estimation has never been high: representative is the nineteenth-century writer John Lang's opinion that Boyd 'was not a poet, yet he was something more than a mere doggerel rhymer [....] the commendable features are often marred not merely by rugged verse, but also by hard and unsympathetic thought.' Boyd's versifications are remarkable for the extent to which they contain phrases and imagery appropriated from Josuah Sylvester's translation of Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas' Semaines and Sylvester's other works. Boyd's Deed of Mortification indicated that a portion of the money he donated to Glasgow was to be used for printing his poems; it never was. However, the bibliographer Gabriel Neil did print four poems from Zion's Flowers in 1855, and David Atkinson produced an edition of Boyd's Selected Sermons for the Scottish Text Society in 1989. References 1585 births 1653 deaths 17th-century Scottish writers Academics of the University of Glasgow Alumni of the University of Glasgow People from South Ayrshire Scottish religious writers 17th-century Ministers of the Church of Scotland