The main drawback to the widespread acceptance of Bayard Taylor’s poetry as a whole is its perpetual diffuseness. His most ambitious productions—his Masque of the Gods (1872), Prince Deukalion (1877), The Picture of St John (1865), Lars (1818), and The Prophet (1874)—are marred by a ceaseless effort to overstrain his power. Lars is the least likely of his longer poems to survive any length of time: it lacks the grandiose eloquence and impressive “adjuncts” of the Masque or Prince Deukalion, while in theme and treatment it is, at most, only sedately agreeable. The Poems of the Orient contains his most genuinely satisfactory poetic writings. But probably long after even the most familiar of the poems just mentioned have ceased to be popular, when even the Views Afoot and Eldorado no longer hold the attention of the numerous public interested in vividly narrated experiences of travel, Bayard Taylor will be remembered by his poetic and excellent translation of Faust. Taylor felt, in all truth, “the torment and the ecstasy of verse”; but, as a critical friend has written of him, “his nature was so ardent, so full-blooded, that slight and common sensations intoxicated him, and he estimated their effect, and his power to transmit it to others, beyond the true value.” He felt life as perhaps only the poetic temperament can experience the beauty of the world; single words thus became for him so charged with poetry that he overlooked the fact that to most people these were, simply in themselves, mere abstract terms—sunshine, sea, spring, morning, night, and so forth. Thus a stanza having absolutely nothing original or striking or even poetic in it would, because born of him, seem to be poetry unadulterate: to his mind, each line, each word, was charged with delightful significance, therefore —so he felt—would be so also to the sympathetic reader. He had, from the earliest period at which he began to compose, a distinct lyrical faculty: so keen indeed was his ear that he became too insistently haunted by the music of others, pre-eminently of Tennyson. But he had often a true and fine note of his „own. His best short poems are “The Metempsychosis of the Pine” and the well-known Bedouin love-song, the latter a stirring lyric that ought assuredly to endure. In his critical essays Bayard Taylor had himself in no inconsiderable degree what he wrote of as “that pure poetic insight which is the vital spirit of criticism.” The most valuable of these prose dissertations are the Studies in German Literature.

TAYLOR, Brook (1685-1731), a distinguished mathematician of Newton’s school, was the son of John Taylor, of Bifrons House, Kent, by Olivia, daughter of Sir Nicholas Tempest, Bart., of Durham, and was born at Edmonton in Middlesex, August 18, 1685. He entered St John’s College, Cambridge, as a fellow-commoner in 1701, and took degrees of LL.B, and LL.D, respectively in 1709 and 1714. Having studied mathematics with applause under Machin and Keill, he obtained in 1708 a remarkable solution of the problem of the “centre of oscillation,” which, however, remaining unpublished until May 1714 (Phil. Trans., vol. xxviii. p. 11), his claim to priority was unjustly disputed by John Bernoulli. Taylor’s Methodus Incrementorum Directa et Inversa (London, 1715) added a new branch to the higher mathematics, now designated the “calculus of finite differences.” Among other ingenious applications, he used it to determine the form of movement of a vibrating string, by him first successfully reduced to mechanical principles. The same work contained (p. 23) the celebrated formula known as “Taylor’s theorem.” It is of extensive use in almost every analytical inquiry; but its full importance remained unrecognized until pointed out in 1772 (Berlin Memoirs) by Lagrange, who later termed it “le principal fondement du calcul différentiel.”

In his essay on Linear Perspective (London, 1715) Taylor set forth the true principles of the art with much originality, and in a more general form than any of his predecessors. The little work suffered, however, from the brevity and obscurity which affected most of his writings, and needed the elucidation bestowed on it in the treatises of Joshua Kirby (1754) and Daniel Fournier (1761).

Taylor was elected a fellow of the Royal Society early in 1712, sat in the same year on the committee for adjudicating the claims of Newton and Leibnitz, and acted as secretary to the society January 13, 1714, to October 21, 1718. During a visit to Paris in 1716 he made acquaintance with Bossuet and the Comte de Caylus, and knit a warm friendship with Bolingbroke, whom he visited at La Source in 1720. From 1715 his studies took a philosophical and religious bent. He corresponded, in that year, with the Comte de Montmort on the subject of Malebranche’s tenets; and unfinished treatises, “On the Jewish Sacrifices” and “On the Lawfulness of Eating Blood,” written on his return from Aix-la-Chapelle in 1719, were afterwards found among his papers. His marriage in 1721 with Miss Brydges of Wallington, Surrey, led to an estrangement from his father, a person of somewhat morose temper, which terminated in 1723 after the death of the lady in giving birth to a son. The ensuing two years were spent by him with his family at Bifrons, and in 1725 he married, with the paternal approbation, Sabetta, daughter of Mr Sawbridge of Olantigh, Kent, who, by a strange fatality, died also in childbed in 1730; in this case, however, the infant, a daughter, survived. Weighed down by repeated sorrows, Taylor’s fragile health gave way; he fell into a decline, died December 29, 1731, at Somerset House, and was buried at St Ann’s, Soho. By his father’s death in 1729 he had inherited the Bifrons estate. Socially as well as intellectually gifted, he possessed a handsome person and engaging manners, and was accomplished to an uncommon degree in music and painting. As a mathematician, he was the only Englishman after Newton and Cotes capable of holding his own with the Bernoullis; but a great part of the effect of his demonstrations was lost through his failure to express his ideas fully and clearly.

A posthumous work entitled Contemplatio Philosophica was printed for private circulation in 1793 by his grandson, Sir William Young, Bart., prefaced by a life of the author, and with an appendix containing letters addressed to him by Bolingbroke, Bossuet, &c. Several short papers by him were published in Phil. Trans., vols, xxvii. to xxxii., including accounts of some interesting experiments in magnetism and capillary attraction. He issued in 1719 an improved version of his work on perspective, with the title New Principles of Linear Perspective, revised by Colson in 1749, and printed again, with portrait and life of the author, in 1811. A French translation appeared in 1753 at Lyons. Taylor gave {Methodus Incrementorum, p. 108) the first satisfactory investigation of astronomical refraction.

See watt, Bibliotheca Britannica ; Hutton, Phil, and Math. Dictionary ; Fût is, Biog. des Musiciens; Th. Thomson, Hist, of the It. Society, p. 302; Grant, Hist. Phys. Astronomy, p. 377; Marie, Hist, des Sciences, vii. p. 231.

TAYLOR, Sir Henry (1800-1886), poet and colonial statesman, was born October 18, 1800, at Bishop-Mid-dleham, in the county of Durham. His ancestors had been small landowners for some generations, and both his studious father, who late in life emerged for a time from a recluse existence to make an efficient secretary to the Poor Law Commission, and his original warm-hearted mother were interesting persons. His mother died while he was yet an infant, and he was chiefly educated'by his father, who, finding him less quick and deeming him less intelligent than his two elder brothers, allowed him to go to sea as a midshipman. Eight months summed up his naval career; it had taken much less to disgust him with it. After obtaining his discharge he was appointed to a clerkship in the storekeeper’s office, and had scarcely entered upon his duties ere he was attacked by typhus fever, which carried off both his brothers, then living with him in London. In three or four years more his office was abolished while he was on duty in the West Indies. On his return he found his father happily married to a lady whose interest and sympathy proved of priceless value to him. Through her he became acquainted with her cousin Isabella Fenwick, the neighbour and intimate friend of Wordsworth, who introduced him to Wordsworth and Southey. Under these influences he lost his early admiration for Byron, whose school, whatever its merits, he at least was in no way calculated to adorn, and his intellectual powers developed rapidly. In October 1822 an article from his pen on Moore’s Irish Melodies appeared in the Quarterly Review. A year later he departed for London to seek his fortune as a man of letters, and met with such rapid success, though not precisely in this capacity, as has but rarely attended an unknown young man. He became editor of the London Magazine, to which he had already contributed, and in January 1824 obtained, through the influence of Sir Henry Holland, an appointment in the Colonial Office, insuring him, not only an ample salary, but considerable influence in this department of public affairs. The general standard of the office was probably at that time low; at all events Taylor was immediately entrusted with the preparation of confidential state papers, and his opinion soon exercised an important influence on the decisions of the secretary of state. He visited Wordsworth and Southey, travelled on the Continent with the latter, and at the same time, mainly through his friend and official colleague, the Hon. Hyde Villiers, became intimate with a very different set, the younger followers of Bentham, without, however, adopting their opinions,—“young men,” he afterwards reminded Stuart Mill, “who every one said would be ruined by their independence, but who ended by obtaining all their hearts’ desires, except one who fell by the way.” The reference is to Hyde Villiers, who died prematurely, and for whose sister, afterwards Lady Theresa Lewis, Taylor was an unsuccessful suitor. He actively promoted the emancipation of the slaves in 1833, and became an intimate ally of Sir James Stephen, then counsel to the Colonial Office, afterwards under-secretary, by whom the Act of Emancipation was principally framed. His first drama, Isaac Comnenus, was published anonymously in 1827. Though highly praised by Southey, it made little impression on the public. Philip van Artevelde, the subject of which had been recommended to him by Southey, was begun in 1828, published in 1834, and, aided by a laudatory criticism from Lockhart’s pen, achieved extraordinary success. Edιviη the Fair (1842) was less warmly received. In the interim he had married (1839) the daughter of his former chief Lord Monteagle, and, in conjunction with Stephen, had taken a leading part in the abolition of negro apprenticeship in the West Indies. The Statesman, a volume of essays suggested by his official position, had been published in 1836, and about the same time he had written in the Quarterly the friendly advertisements of Wordsworth and Southey, subsequently published under the somewhat misleading title of Notes from Books. In 1847 he was offered the under-secretaryship of state, which he declined. Notes from Life and The Eve of the Conquest appeared in this year, and Notes from Books in 1849. An experiment in romantic comedy, The Virgin Widow, afterwards entitled A Sicilian Summer, was published in 1850. “The pleasantest play I had written,” says the author; “and I never could tell why people would not be pleased with it.” His last dramatic work was St Clement’s Eve, published in 1862. In 1869 he was made K.C.M.G. He retired from the Colonial Office in 1872, though continuing to be consulted by Government. His last days were spent at Bournemouth in the enjoyment of universal respect; and the public, to whom he had hitherto been an almost impersonal existence, became familiarized with the extreme picturesqueness of his appearance in old age, as represented in the photographs of his friend Mrs Cameron. He died on March 27, 1886.

Sir Henry Taylor is pre-eminently the statesman among English poets. When he can speak poetically in this character he is impressive, almost great; when he deals with the more prosaic aspects of policy he is dignified and weighty, without being altogether a poet; when his theme is entirely unrelated to the conduct of public affairs or private life he is usually little more than an accomplished man of letters. An exception must be made for the interesting character of Elena in Philip van Artevelde, and for Artevelde’s early love experience, which reproduces and transfigures the writer’s own. The circumstance of Philip van Artevelde being to a great extent the vehicle of his own ideas and feelings explains its great superiority to his other works. It is subjective as well as objective, and to a certain extent lyrical in feeling, though not in form. Though more elaborate than any of his other dramas, it seems to smell less of the lamp. He has thoroughly identified himself with his hero, and the only fault to be found with this noble picture of a consummate leader and statesman is the absence of the shadow required for a tragic portrait. The blame allotted to Artevelde is felt to be merely conventional, and the delineation of uniform excellence becomes monotonous. The hero of Edwin the Fair, Dunstan, the ecclesiastical statesman, the man of two worlds, is less sympathetic to the author and less attractive to the reader. The character is nevertheless a fine psychological study, and the play is full of historical if not of dramatic interest. Isaac Cοmηeηus is more Elizabethan in tone than his other dramas. Comnenus is like a preliminary sketch for Van Artevelde; and the picture of the Byzantine court and people is exceedingly lively. The idea of the revival of romantic comedy in The Virgin Widow is excellent, but the play lacks the humour which might have made it a success. The length of the speeches, even when not set speeches, is a drawback to all these dramas. Taylor’s lyrical work is in general laboriously artificial. It is therefore extraordinary that he should have produced two songs (“Quoth tongue of neither maid nor wife” and “If I had the wings of a dove”) which it would hardly be an exaggeration to call worthy of Shakespeare. His character as an essayist repeats his character as a dramatist. The essays published under the title of The Statesman occupy a peculiar place in literature. They have serious faults, especially the too obvious imitation of Bacon, but they nevertheless are original in their point of view, and their wisdom is the result of a different kind of observation from that which qualifies the bulk of essayists on human life. When writing as one of these Taylor is less removed from the commonplace, though many of his remarks are admirable. As a literary critic he seems unable to get beyond Wordsworth and the select circle of poets admired by the latter. His essays on Wordsworth did much to dispel the conventional prejudices of the day, but will not advance the study of the poet where his greatness is already recognized. His strictures on Byron and Shelley are narrow and not a little presumptuous. Presumption, indeed, the last fault to have been expected in so grave and measured a writer, is one of those of which he most freely accuses himself in the autobiography published a year before his death. It is not otherwise apparent in this highly interesting book, which, sinning a little by the egotism pardonable in a poet and the garrulity natural to a veteran, is in the main a pleasing and faithful picture of an aspiring youth, an active maturity, and a happy and honoured old age.

TAYLOR, Isaac (1787-1865), a voluminous writer on philosophical and theological subjects, was born at Lavenham, Suffolk, in 1787, and was trained by his father to be an artist, but early adopted literature as a profession. From 1824, the year of his marriage, he lived a busy but uneventful life at Ongar, in the parish of Stanford Rivers, Essex, where he died on June 28, 1865.

He early became a contributor to the Eclectic Review, when it was conducted by Robert Hall and John Foster, and in 1822 he published a small volume entitled Elements of Thought. This was followed by a translation of Theophrastus with original etchings, a History of the Transmission of Ancient Books to Modern Times, Memoirs and Correspondence of Jane Taylor (his sister, who died in 1824), and a translation of Herodotus. None of these works attained very great popularity; but in 1829 he published anonymously a work bearing upon the religious and political problems of the day, entitled The Natural History of Enthusiasm, which was eagerly read and speedily ran through eight or nine editions. The success of this publication encouraged him to produce, also anonymously, The Natural History of Fanaticism, Spiritual Despotism, Saturday Evening, and The Physical Theory of Another Life, all of which commanded a large circulation. Among his subsequent works may be mentioned Ancient Christianity, a series of dissertations in reply to the “Tracts for the Times,” a volume entitled The Restoration of Belief, and a course of lectures on The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry.

TAYLOR, Jeremy (1613—1667), was a native of Cambridge, and was baptized on the 15th August 1613. His father, Nathaniel, though a barber, was a man of some education, respected by his townsmen, and lineally descended from Dr Rowland Taylor, Cranmer’s chaplain, who suffered martyrdom under Mary. Jeremy, after passing through the grammar school, was entered at Caius College as a sizar in 1626, eighteen months after Milton had entered Christ’s, and while George Herbert was public orator and Edmund Waller and Thomas Fuller were undergraduates of the university. He was elected a fellow of his college in 1633, but the best evidence of his diligence as a student is the enormous learning of which he showed so easy a command in after years. Accepting the invitation of Risden, a fellow-student, to supply his place for a short time as lecturer in St Paul’s, he at once attracted attention by his remarkable eloquence as well as by his handsome face and youthful appearance. Archbishop Laud, ever on the outlook for men of capacity, sent for Taylor to preach before him at Lambeth, and, discerning that his genius was worth fostering, dismissed him from the overpressure of the metropolis to the quiet of a fellowship in All Souls, Oxford, and at the same time, by making him one of his own chaplains, showed his desire to keep him in permanent connexion with himself. At Oxford Chillingworth was then busy with his great work, the Religion of Protestants, and it is possible that by intercourse with him Taylor’s mind may have been turned towards the liberal movement of his age. After two years in Oxford, in March 1638 he was presented by Juxon, bishop of London, to the rectory of Uppingham, in Rutlandshire. In the autumn of the same year he was appointed to preach in St Marys on the an ni versai y of the Gunpowder Plot, and apparently used the occasion to clear himself of a suspicion, which, however, haunted him through life, of a secret leaning to the Romish communion. This suspicion seems to have arisen chiefly from his intimacy with Christopher Davenport, better known as Francis a Sancta Clara, a learned Franciscan friar who became chaplain to Queen Henrietta; but it may have been strengthened by his known connexion with Laud, as well as by his ascetic habits and ritualistic propensities. More serious consequences followed his attachment to the Royalist cause, when in 1642 the livings of the loyal clergy were sequestered by decree of parliament. The author of Episcopacy Asserted against the Amans and Acephali New and Old, ineffective as that work seems in the light of modern research, could scarcely hope to retain his parish. Along with Fuller, Chillingworth, and others, he found temporary refuge with the king at Oxford. His two little boys must have been cared for by friends, for his wife, Phoebe Langsdale, whom he had married the year after his settlement at Uppingham, had died with her third child in that disastrous year 1642.

During the next fifteen years Taylor’s movements are not easily traced. Sometimes he appears with the king, from whom at his last interview he received, in token of his regard, his watch and some jewels which had ornamented the ebony case in which he kept his Bible. He is supposed to be the Dr Taylor who was taken prisoner with other Royalists while besieging Cardigan castle. In 1646 he is found in partnership with two other deprived clergymen, keeping a school at Newton Hall, in the parish of Llanvihangel. It was while resident here that he attracted the friendship of one of his kindest patrons, Richard Vaughan, earl of Carbery, whose hospitable mansion, Golden Grove, is immortalized in the title of Taylor’s still popular manual of devotion, and whose countess had the greater distinction of being the original of the “Lady” in Milton’s Cornus. It was also while resident in Wales that Taylor married his second wife, Joanna Bridges, w ho was generally understood to be a natural daughter of Charles I., and who owned a good estate, though probably impoverished by Parliamentarian exactions, at Mandinam, in Carmarthenshire. From time to time he appears in London in the company of his friend Evelyn, at whose table he met such men as Boyle, Berkeley, and Wilkins. Thrice he was imprisoned: in 1653-4 for a well-intended but injudicious preface to his Golden Grove ; again in Chepstow castle, from May to October 1655, on what charge does not appear; and a third time in the Tower in 1657-8, on account of the indiscretion of his publisher, Royston, who had adorned his “Collection of Offices” with a print representing Christ in the attitude of prayer. This unsettled life, with its interruptions, harassments, andψrivations, would seem rather to have stimulated than to have stinted the productiveness of his genius. In 1647 appeared his most important work, The Liberty of Prophesying, and in the following year the complete edition of his Apology for Authorized and Set Forms of Liturgy against the Pretence of the Spirit, as well as his Life of Christ, or the Great Exemplar, a book which at once won a popularity it still in large measure retains. Then followed in rapid succession the Twenty-seven Sermons, “for the summer half-year,” and the Twenty-five “for the winter half-year,” Holy Living, Holy Dying, a controversial treatise on the Real Presence, the Golden Grove, and the Unum Necessarium, which by its Pelagianism gave great offence. During these years he was also busy with his Ductor Dubitantium (published in 1660), which he intended to be the standard manual of casuistry and ethics for the Christian people.

In 1658 settlement was at length reached through the kind offices of the earl of Carbery, who obtained for Taylor a lectureship in Lisburn. At first he declined a post in which the duty was to be shared with a Presbyterian, or, as he expressed it, “where a Presbyterian and myself shall be like Castor and Pollux, the one up and the other down,” and to which also a very meagre salary was attached. He was, however, induced to take it, and found, near his patron’s mansion on Lough Neagh, so congenial a retirement that even after he was raised to a bishopric he continued to make it his home. At the Restoration, instead of being recalled to England, as he probably expected and certainly desired, he was appointed to the see of Down and Connor, to which was shortly added the small and adjacent diocese of Dromore. He was also made a member of the Irish privy council and vice-chancellor of the university of Dublin. None of these honours were sinecures. Of the university he writes, “I found all things in a perfect disorder . . . . a heap of men and boys, but no body of a college, no one member, either fellow or scholar, having any legal title to his place, but thrust in by tyranny or chance.” Accordingly he set himself vigorously to the task of framing and enforcing regulations for the admission and conduct of members of the university, and also of establishing lectureships. His episcopal labours were still more arduous/ There were, at the date of the Restoration, about seventy Presbyterian ministers in the north of Ireland, and most of these were from the west of Scotland, and were imbued with the dislike of Episcopacy which distinguished the Covenanting party. No wonder that Taylor, writing to the duke of Ormonde shortly after his consecration, should have said, “I perceive myself thrown into a place of torment.” His letters perhaps somewhat exaggerate the danger in which he lived, but there is no doubt that his authority w as resisted and his overtures rejected. His writings also were ransacked for matter of accusation against him, “a committee of Scotch spiders being appointed to see if they can gather or make poison out of them.” Here, then, was Taylor’s opportunity for exemplifying the wise toleration he had in other days inculcated. These Presbyterians had, like himself, suffered under Cromwell for their loyalty, and might have been expected to evoke his sympathy; but the new bishop had nothing to offer them but the bare alternative—submission to episcopal ordination and jurisdiction or deprivation. Consequently, in his first visitation, he declared thirty-six churches vacant; and of these forcible possession was taken by his orders. At the same time many of the gentry were won by his undoubted sincerity and devotedness as well as by his eloquence. With the Romanist element of the population he was less successful. Ignorant of the English language, and firmly attached to their ancestral forms of worship, they were yet compelled to attend a service they considered profane, conducted in a language they could not understand. As Heber says, “No part of the administration of Ireland by the English crown has been more extraordinary and more unfortunate than the system pursued for the introduction of the Reformed religion.” At the instance of the Irish bishops Taylor undertook his last great work, the Dissuasive from Popery (in two parts, 1664 and 1667), but, as he himself seemed partly conscious, he might have more effectually gained his end by adopting the methods of Ussher and Bedell, and inducing his clergy to acquire the Irish tongue.

Nor were domestic sorrows awanting in these later years.

Ια 1661 he buried, at Lisburn, Edward, the only surviving son of his second marriage. His oldest son, an officer in the army, was killed in a duel; and his second son, Charles, intended for the church, left Trinity College and became companion and secretary to the duke of Buckingham, at whose house he died. The day after his son’s funeral Taylor sickened, and, after a ten days’ illness, he died at Lisburn on the 13th August 1667, in the fifty-fifth year of his life and the seventh of his episcopate.

Taylor’s fame has been maintained by the popularity of his sermons and devotional writings rather than by his influence as a theologian or his importance as an ecclesiastic. His mind was neither scientific nor speculative, and he was attracted rather to questions of casuistry than to the deeper problems of pure theology. His wide reading and capacious memory enabled him to carry in his mind the materials of a sound historical theology, but these materials were unsifted by criticism. His immense learning served him rather as a storehouse of illustrations, or as an armoury out of which he could choose the fittest weapon for discomfiting an opponent, than as a quarry furnishing him with material for building up a completely designed and enduring edifice of systematized truth. Indeed, he had very limited faith in the human mind as an instrument of truth. “Theology,” he says, “is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge.” His great plea for toleration is based on the impossibility of erecting theology into a demonstrable science. “It is impossible all should be of one mind. And what is impossible to be done is not necessary it should be done.” Differences of opinion there must be; but “heresy is not an error of the understanding but an error of the will.” His aim in life was practical; his interests were in men rather than in ideas, and his sympathies were evoked rather by the experiences of individuals than by great movements. Of a decidedly poetic temperament, fervid and mobile in feeling, and of a prolific fancy, he had also the sense and wit that come of varied contact with men. All his gifts were made available for influencing other men by his easy command of a style rarely matched in dignity and colour. With all the majesty and stately elaboration and musical rhythm of Milton’s finest prose, Taylor’s style is relieved and brightened by an astonishing variety of felicitous illustrations, ranging from the most homely and terse to the most dignified and elaborate. His sermons especially abound in quotations and allusions, which have the air of spontaneously suggesting themselves, but which must sometimes have baffled his hearers. This seeming pedantry is, however, atoned for by the clear practical aim of his sermons, the noble ideal he keeps before his hearers, and the skill with which he handles spiritual experience and urges incentives to virtue. But, through all his gorgeous eloquence and genial interest in human nature, there breaks from time to time some dead and laboured irrelevancy, the growth of his training in scholastic dialectics; for “like some other writers of the 17th century he seems almost to have two minds,—one tender, sweet, luxuriant to excess, the other hard, subtle, formal, prone to definition and logomachy.”

The first collected edition of his works was published by Bishop Heber (with a life) in 1822, reissued after careful revision by Charles Page Eden, 1852-61. (Μ. D. )

TAYLOR, John (1580-1654), commonly called “The Water Poet,” was born at Gloucester in August 1580. Of his parentage and early boyhood very little is known, and that little is mainly to be gleaned from various scattered personal allusions in the numerous short writings of this prolific wit and rhymster. After fulfilling his apprenticeship to a waterman, he seems to have served (1596) in the fleet under the earl of Essex, and to have been present at the naval attack upon Cadiz. On his return to England he took up the trade of Thames waterman, and for a time at any rate was a collector of the dues exacted by the lieutenant of the Tower on all wines destined for London. The title of “Water Poet,” which he owes to his occupation on the river, is a misnomer. Taylor was no poet, though he could string rhymes together with facility; his wit, which was vigorous and vulgar, found best expression in rollicking prose. He shows a broad sense of rough fun, occasionally of humour; but for the most part his comicalities would now meet with scanty appreciation. He had a very good opinion of himself, his writings, and his importance; and it was he himself who set forth that he was the “king’s water poet” and the “queen’s waterman.” His literary performances can most easily and most satisfactorily be studied in the handsome quarto, containing all his productions, edited by Mr C. Hindley, and published in 1872. His “works,” sixty-three in number, first appeared in one large volume—now a rarity sought after by collectors—in 1630. He delighted in eccentric freaks, calculated in narration to astound both the sober countryfolk and the somewhat sceptical Londoners. Thus, with a companion as feather-brained as himself, he once started on a voyage from London to Queensborough in a paper boat, with two stockfish tied to two canes for oars; before the journey’s end was reached the frail boat collapsed, as might have been expected, though a qualified success finally met Taylor’s efforts. The spirit of the bargee was in him, and he delighted in rough give-and-take; a rude lampoon was one of his favourite verbal weapons. Thus Thomas Coryat, the author of Crudities, having excited the literary waterman’s ridicule, was rewarded with a ludicrous dedication in the production entitled Taylods Travels in Germanie·, again, the “water poet” indulged in abusive satire to his heart’s content in an “effusion” which he called A Kicksey-Winsey, or a Lerry Come-Twang— a literary castigation which he inflicted upon those subscribers to a certain “work” of his who omitted to substantiate their promises. This production was entitled The Penniless Pilgrimage, or the Moneyless Perambulation of John Taylor, and consisted of an account of its author’s pedestrian tour from London to Edinburgh; and to this work some sixteen hundred persons are said to have promised their support. Another wagering venture was a journey to Prague, where he is said to have been received and entertained by the queen of Bohemia in 1620. Two years later Taylor made “a very merry, wherry ferry voyage, or Yorke for my money,” and in the ensuing year another water-journey, which he subsequently described in prose and verse as A Hew Discovery by Sea with a Wherry from London to Salisbury. At the outbreak of the Civil War Taylor forsook the river and retired to Oxford, where he tempted fortune by keeping a publichouse. His sympathies were wholly with the Royalists, —the Roysterists, as he called them once; and, when the town surrendered, the “water poet” returned to London and kept a public-house under the sign of The Crown, in Phoenix Alley, Long Acre. He incurred some odium from his loyal observance of the king’s death in the placement above his door of the sign of The Mourning Crown, and he was forced to take the latter down. With characteristic readiness he substituted for it his own portrait, with some doggerel lines underneath. It was here that in December 1654 he died, and in the neighbouring churchyard of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields his remains were laid.

At the most, Taylor can only be called an amusing and vulgarly clever pamphleteer; he wrote nothing worthy of remembrance save by the historian of the period in which he lived, by the antiquary, and by the enthusiastic student of the many straggling little byways of literature.

TAYLOR, Tom (1817-1880), dramatist and art critic, was born at Sunderland in 1817. After attending school there, and studying for two sessions at Glasgow university, he in 1837 entered Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow. Subsequently he held for two years the professorship of English literature at University College, London. He was called to the bar (Middle Temple) in November 1845, and went on the northern circuit until, in 1850, he became assistant secretary of the Board of Health. On the reconstruction of the board in 1854 he was made secretary, and on its abolition his services were transferred to the Local Government Act Office, a department of the Home Office created by the Sanitary Act of 1866. In his very early years Tom Taylor showed a predilection for the drama, and was in the habit of performing dramatic pieces along with a number of children in a loft over a brewer’s stable. His first dramatic composition was a rhymed fairy tale or extravaganza, written in conjunction with Albert Smith and Charles Kenny, and performed in 1846. From this time he wrote for the stage continuously till the close of his life, his dramatic compositions or adaptations numbering in all over 100, amongst the best known of which are Still Water Runs Deep, Victims, the Contested Election, the Overland Route, the Ticket of Leave Han, Anne Boleyn, and Joan of Arc. He may perhaps be regarded as the first dramatist of his time, so far as general appreciation goes; and, if his chief concern was the construction of a popular acting play, his dramas possess at the same time considerable literary excellence, while the characters are clearly and consistently drawn, and the dialogue is natural, yet nervous and pointed. In his blank verse historical dramas, such as Anne Boleyn and Joan of Arc, he was not so successful. Taylor was also a very frequent contributor to the light magazine literature of the day. In 1872 he withdrew from public life, and, on the death of Shirley Brooks in 1873, he became editor of Punch. He occasionally appeared with success in amateur theatricals, more especially in the character of Adam in As You Like It and of Jasper in A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing. He had some talent for painting, and for many years was art critic to the Times. He died at Lavender Sweep, Wandsworth, 12th July 1880.

Apart from the drama, his chief contributions to literature are his biographies of painters, viz., Autobiography of B. R. Haydon (1853); Autobiography and Correspondence of C. R. Leslie, R.A. (1859); and Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1865), which had been left iu a very incomplete state by Mr Leslie. His Historical Dramas appeared in one volume in 1877. He also edited, with a memorial preface, Pen Sketches from a Vanished Hand, selected from Papers of the late Mortimer Collins.

TAYLOR, Zachary (1784-1850), president of the United States, was born in Orange county, Virginia, November 24, 1784. He entered the army as lieutenant in 1808, and rose to the rank of major in the war with Great Britain which followed. At the outbreak of the Mexican War he was in command of the American forces in Louisiana and Texas, and was directed to make the advance into the disputed territory which brought on the war. Beating the Mexicans in two battles, he followed them into Mexico, and there defeated Santa Anna in the crowning battle of his campaign, Buena Vista (1847). Dissatisfied with his treatment by the administration, he resigned and returned to the United States, where the Whig party nominated him and elected him president (1848). The struggle over the question of the admission of slavery to the territory taken from Mexico occupied his term of office, and he died at Washington, July 9, 1850.