35 



TAYLOR, JOHN. 



TAYLOR, SIR ROBERT. 



36 



comes very near to the much-decried theories of the Jesuits. There 

 was indeed a vein of subtlety in Taylor's understanding which was 

 not always without influence on his candour." ('Introduction to the 

 Literature of Europe,' chap, iv., vol. iv.) 



Bishop Heber has also remarked on some of Taylor's positions to 

 the same effect ; instancing his admission that private evil may be 

 done by public men and for the public necessity; his justification on 

 moral grounds of the supposed fraud of the children of Israel in 

 borrowing jewels of the Egyptians without any intention of restoring 

 them. " In the first chapter of the third book, which treats of human 

 laws and their obligations, a case occurs in illustration of Rule iv., 

 that ' a law founded on a false presumption does not bind the con- 

 science,' in which the Romish canonists seem to have given a more 

 just decision than Taylor: Biretti, a Venetian gentleman, pretends a 

 desire to marry Julia Medici, the daughter of a neighbour, with a 

 purpose to seduce and desert her. A contract is made ; but before its 

 execution he gains his end, and leaving her, marries another. The 

 canonists declare the former contract, followed by congress, to be a 

 marriage, and that he is bound to return to Julia. ' No,' says Taylor, 

 ' if he did not lie with her, affectu maritali, he was extremely impious 

 and unjust; but he made uo marriage, for without mutual consent 

 marriages are not made.'" To these illustrations, adduced by Heber, 

 may be added another, referred to elsewhere (Rule xi. 484) : he main- 

 tains the right of using arguments and authorities in controversy 

 which we do not believe to be valid ; a rule of which he appears to 

 have taken advantage, for " in the ' Defence of Episcopacy,' published 

 in 1642, he maintains the authenticity of the first fifty of the apostolic 

 canons, all of which, in the ' Liberty of Prophesying,' a very few years 

 afterwards, he indiscriminately rejects." (Hallam.) 



On devotional subjects the character of Taylor's mind fitted him to 

 write with most success. In these we find his most glowing language, 

 his aptest illustrations; and "whether he describes the duties, or 

 dangers, or hopes of man, or the mercy, power, and justice of the 

 Most High; whether he exhorts or instructs his brethren, or offers up 

 his supplications in their behalf to the common Father of all, his 

 conceptions and his expressions belong to the loftiest and most sacred 

 description of poetry, of which they only want what they cannot be 

 said to need, the name and the metrical arrangement." (Heber, 'Life 

 and Works of Jeremy Taylor,' 15 vols., 1820-22.) 



TAYLOR, JOHN, best known by the title, which he seems to have 

 given to himself, of THE WATER-POET (' The King's Majesty's Water- 

 Poet'), was born in the city of Gloucester in the year 1580. His 

 education was limited ; ^ for ho himself informs us that he was 

 ' gravelled ' in his ' Accidence,' and could get no farther. He came to 

 London, and was bound apprentice to a waterman an occupation 

 from which he derived his title of ' Water-Poet," and which afforded 

 him the means of subsistence during a great part of his life. He had 

 however for fifteen or sixteen years some situation in the Tower of 

 London ; and he afterwards kept a public-house in Phoenix-alley, Long 

 Acre. Being an enthusiastic royalist, when Charles I. was beheaded 

 he hung up the sign of the Mourning Crown, which however he was 

 compelled to take down ; and he then supplied its place by a portrait 

 of himself, with the following couplet under it : 



" There's many a king's head hang'd up for a sign, 

 And many a saint's head too : then why not mine 1 " 



Taylor was not satisfied with the distinction which his literary pro- 

 ductions procured for him ; he was fond of fixing public .attention by 

 other extraordinary performances. He once undertook to sail from 

 London to Rochester in a boat made of paper ; but the water found 

 its way into his boat before he reached his destination, and he had 

 some difficulty to get safe ashore. A journey which he performed by 

 land is described in one of his tracts, entitled ' The Pennyless 

 Pilgrimage, or the Moneyless Perambulation of John Taylor, alias the 

 King's Majesty's Water-Poet ; how he travelled on foot from London 

 to Edinburgh in Scotland, not carrying any money to or fro, neither 

 begging, borrowing, or asking meat, drink, or lodging.' He left "the 

 Bell Inn that's extra Aldersgate " on the 14th of July 1618. He was 

 attended by a servant witii a horse, and they had a small stock of pro- 

 visions and provender, which more than once relieved them when the 

 occasional inhospitality which they met with had reduced them to the 

 extremity of hunger. His course was through St. Albans, Stony 

 Stratford, Coventry, Lichfield, Newcastle*-under-Lyne, Manchester, 

 Preston, Lancaster, Penritb, Carlisle, Edinburgh, Dunferrnline, Stir- 

 ling, Perth ; and being then in the Highlands, he had an opportunity 

 of seeing, at ' the Brae o'Mar,' one of those great deer-hunts which 

 were then frequent in that part of Scotland, and of which he gives in 

 his pamphlet an entertaining and picturesque description. The whole 

 journey till his return to London occupied about three months. But 

 a sort of voyage which he afterwards performed was apparently not 

 less difficult. He published, as usual, an account of it himself 'John 

 Taylor's last Voyage and Adventure,' performed from the 20th of July 

 last, 1641, to the 10th of September following; in which time he 

 passed with a sculler's boat from the citie of London to the cities and 

 townes of Oxford, Gloucester, Shrewsbury, Bristol, Bathe, Monmouth, 

 and Hereford.' From this title it might be supposed that he went all 

 the way by water, a feat which, seeing the courses of the rivers, and 

 the want of canals in those days, was aa obvious impossibility ; but 



the fact is, that when a river ceased to be navigable, or ran in a wrong 

 direction, he shipped his boat and himself in a wain or waggon, and 

 voyaged overland till he came to another river which suited his pur- 

 pose : still a great part of the voyage was performed by water, and 

 thus, to use his own words, "in lesse than twenty days' labour, I'-JOO 

 miles were passed to and fro, in most hard, difficult, and many 

 dangerous passages." 



Taylor died in 1654, in his seventy-fifth year, and was buried in the 

 churchyard of Coveut Garden, Lou'lon. 



His publications, which amount to upwards of eighty, are some in 

 prose, some in verse, and many both in prose and verse. As literary 

 productions they are of little or no value the verse mere doggrel, 

 and the prose such as might be expected from a writer not without 

 observation, but of no great power of mind, and almost entirely 

 uneducated. Still they are by no means without their value. Nearly 

 all of them being short occasional productions arising out of the 

 circumstances in which he was placed, they -afford many curious 

 descriptions, as well as interesting glimpses of the opinions and 

 manners and general state of society of the times in which he lived. 

 Sir Egertou Brydges, in his ' Censura Litteraria,' has given a full list of 

 Taylor's writings, and a tolerably copious one is also given in Watt's 

 ' Bibliotheca Britannica.' 



(Baker's Biographia Dram'.itica, by Reed and Jones, in which work 

 he has obtained a place in consequence of having written a pageant, 

 'Triumphs of Fame and Honour,' 4to, 1634.) 



TAYLOR, JOHN, LL.D., was born about the year 1703, at Shrews- 

 bury, where his father, according to some writer?, was a poor 

 shoemaker, or, according to others, a barber. He received his < urly 

 education at the grammar-school of his native place, and afterwards 

 went to Cambridge, where he entered St. John's College, of which lie 

 became a fellow in 1730. The great reputation which he soon acquired 

 as one of the best Greek scholars in the university, procured him the 

 office of librarian of the university library, which he however after- 

 wards exchanged for that of registrar of the university. His first 

 work of -importance was his edition of the Greek orator Lysias, under 

 the title ' Lysice Orationes et fragmeuta, Grace et Latine : ad fidem 

 codicum MSS. recensuit, notis criticis, iuto'rpretatione, cseteroque 

 apparatu necessario donavit Joannes Taylor,' London 4to, 1739. The 

 year after he edited at Cambridge an octavo edition of the same orator 

 for the use of students, with short notes and a useful index of the 

 language. The study of the Attic orators led him to the study of the 

 Attic law, of which he probably possessed a better knowledge than 

 any man of his age. He was also fond of the study of the Roman 

 and English law, and he resolved to devote himself to the lugal pro- 

 fession. In 1741 he was admitted an advocate in Doctor's Commons, 

 and the year after he took his degree of doctor of laws. On this 

 occasion he published a Latin dissertation, ' Commentarius ad Legacn 

 Decemviralem de Inope Debitors in partes dissecando,' which is a very 

 unsatisfactory explanation of this difficult subject. Soon after this he 

 published an edition of two Greek orations, ' Orationes duae, una 

 Demosthenis contra Midiam, altera Lycurgi contra Leocratem, Grace 

 et Latine,' with notes and emendations, Cambridge, 8vo, 1743, and in 

 the same year he published the ' Marmor Sandvicence, cum Commen- 

 tario et Notis,' Cambridge, 4to, 1743. This volume also contains a 

 useful dissertation on this celebrated inscription, which had been 

 brought from Athens to London by Lord Sandwich in 1739. In 1744 

 Dr. Taylor was made chancellor of Lincoln ; and some years later he 

 took holy orders, though without abandoning the study of the law 

 and of the ancient writers. He was now successively made archdeacon 

 of Buckingham and rector of Lawford in Essex, to which, in 1757, 

 was added the lucrative placa of canon residentiary of St. Paul's. In 

 1755 he published at London, in 4to, his '' Elements of Civil Law,' a 

 second edition of which appeared in 1769. Dr. Taylor undertook this 

 work at the suggestion of Lord Carteret, who had intrusted him with 

 the education of his grandsons, whom he wished to be instructed in 

 the principles and history of the civil law. The work displays great 

 learning and knowledge of the subject, but it is not well adapted for 

 the use of beginners; an abridgment of it appeared in 1773, in 

 London, under the title ' A Summary of the Roman Law.' During 

 the last period of his life, Dr. Taylor had made extensive preparations 

 for a new edition of the Greek orators. One volume (which is the 

 third) appeared in 1748 at Cambridge, but his death on the 4th of 

 April 1756, prevented the author himself from completing the work, 

 though all the materials were ready for press. The second volume 

 appeared after his death, in 1757. The work bears the title, 'Demos- 

 thenis, -(Eschinis, Diuarchi, et Demadii Orationes : Grace et Latino, 

 cum notis edidit J. Taylor.' The notes, which were published at a 

 later time, are incorporated in Reiske's 'Apparatus Criticus' to 

 Demosthenes. In a critical point of view the edition of Taylor is not 

 of any great worth, and its chief value consists in his nates in illustra- 

 tion of the history of the orations and the Attic law. Dr. Taylor is 

 said to have been a most amiable and disinterested man : he had con- 

 siderable taste for poetry, and some specimens of his muse are printed 

 in the ' Gentleman's Magazine,' and in Nichols's 'Select Collaction of 

 Poems.' 



(Aikin and Johnston, General Biography, vol ix. p. 337, &c.; Reiske, 

 Prafatio ad Demosthenem, p. 42, &c.) 



TAYLOR, SIR ROBERT, born in 1714, was the son of a London 



