Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/322

 Walpole, 'are not to be believed,' He received a commission to paint 'a large plate of the Queen, Prince George, the principal officers and ladies of the court, and Victory, introducing the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene; France and Bavaria prostrate upon the ground, &c., &c.' The size of the plate was to be from 22 to 24 inches high by 10 to 18 inches wide. For this modest fancy Boit obtained an advance of 1,000l. and made extensive preparations for the work. In these, it is said, he wasted between seven and eight hundred pounds. Meanwhile the prince died, and the work was stopped for some time. Boit, however, secured a further advance of 700l. and proceeded. In consequence of the revolution at court he was ordered to displace the Marlboroughs, and to introduce figures of 'Peace and Ormond, instead of Victory and Churchill.' After this nothing prospered with him. Prince Eugene refused to sit, the queen died, Boit incontinently ran into debt. He fled to France, changed his religion, got a pension of 250l. per annum, and was greatly admired. He died suddenly at Paris about Christmas 1726. His principal enamel is one of the imperial family of Austria, preserved at Vienna; it is on gold, and is 18 inches high by 12 inches wide. Another of considerable size represented Queen Anne sitting with Prince George standing by her. Horace Walpole possessed a copy by him of Luca Giordano's 'Venus, Cupid, Satyr, and Nymphs,' and also 'a fine head' of Admiral Churchill. He mentions that Miss Reade, the artist, had a 'very fine head' of Boit's own daughter, enamelled by him from a picture of Dahl.  BOITARD, LOUIS PETER (fl. 1760), engraver and designer, was born in France, and was a pupil of La Farge. His father brought him to England. He made many engravings after Canaletto, Huet, Pannini, and others. One of his best known plates represents the Rotunda at Ranelagh, after Pannini. In 1747 he supplied forty-one large plates for Spence's 'Polymetis,' and he engraved the illustrations to Paltock's 'Peter Wilkins,' 1760, and the 'Scribleraid' of Richard Owen Cambridge, 1751. Besides these he executed many vignettes, minor designs, and portraits, among the last one of 'Elizabeth Canning;' and he is said to have been a humourist and a member of the Artists' Club. His wife was English; and he had a son of the same name and profession, who was perhaps the designer of the large satirical plate entitled 'The Present Age,' 1767, which is to be found in the British Museum print room. The date of his death is unknown, being stated by some authorities as 1758, by others as after 1700.  BOKENHAM or BOKENAM, OSBERN (1383–1447?), poet in the Suffolk dialect, was born, according to his own statement, on 6 Oct. 1393. His birthplace was near 'an old pryory of blake canons,' which may be identified with Bokenham — the modern Old Buckenham — Norfolk, famous at one time for its Augustinian priory. He spent five years in early life at Venice, and was subsequently a frequent pilgrim to Rome and to other parts of Italy. He specially mentions a pilgrimage to Monte Fiasko ('Mownt Flask'). His permanent home was in the Augustinian convent of Stoke Clare, Suffolk, of which he was a professed member. He was a man of wide reading, familiar with Ovid, Cicero, Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate, besides many theological authors. He was intimate with ladies of high rank, and, in accordance with their suggestion, he drew up in English a series of thirteen poems commemorating the lives of twelve holy women and of the 11,000 virgins. With the legends he incorporated much autobiographical detail. Bokenham's work is preserved in the British Museum among the Arundel MSS. (No. 327). Its colophon runs 'Translaytyd into englys be a doctor of dyuinite clepyd Osbern Bokenam [a suffolke man], frere austyn of the conuent of Stokclare [and was doon wrytyn in Cantbryge by hys. . . ffrere Thomas Burgh]. The yere of our lord a thousand foure hundryth seuyn & fourty, etc' Bokenham in the prologue to his first poem — on St. Margaret — which he began on 6 Sept. 1443, states that he wrote at the request of his friend Thomas Burgh of Cambridge, the transcriber of the Arundel MS., and begged him to conceal the authorship. The poem on St. Anne is inscribed to Katherine Denston, wife of John Denston; that on St. Magdalena, begun in 1445, to Isabel Bourchier, countess d'Eu, sister of the Duke of York; that on St. Elizabeth to Elisabeth Vere, countess of Oxford, with all of whom Bokenam was on terms of intimacy. Bokenham's chief authority is the 'Legenda Aurea' of Jacobus a Voragine, archbishop of Genoa, whom he freely quotes as Januense, i.e. Genuensis. For the story of St. Agnes Bokenam depended on Ambrose's version of the