939 



TAYLOR, THOMAS. 



TAYLOR, TOM. 



compelled him to relinquish bid plan, and to accept a junior clerkship 

 in Messrs. Lubbock's banking-house. While in this employment he 

 devoted his spare hours to the study of Plato and Aristotle and their 

 commentators. At this time, and to the end of his life, Mr. Taylor 

 always devoted nt leatst six hours of every day to study, and when not 

 engaged* in business they were generally the first six. Poverty, and 

 the difficulties attending it, were no obstacles to him, and he always 

 hoped to emerge from the obscurity they placed him in. He first 

 attracted public notice by an attempt to discover the secret of the 

 perpetual lamp, upon which he gave a lecture and exhibited his experi- 

 ments at the Freemason's Tavern. Though it was a failure, it was 

 marked by some ingenuity and great and curious research ; it made 

 him some valuable acquaintances, who encouraged him in another 

 undertaking, which was to deliver a course of lectures on the Platonic 

 philosophy. Introducing himself by such means, he was enabled to 

 procure pupils, to whom he taught the languages and mathematics, 

 having also been appointed to the office of assistant- secretary to the 

 Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, 

 which he held for several years : he of course gave up and was glad to 

 be emancipated from the less interesting labours of the banking-house. 

 It was iu this situation that he made a more extensive acquaintance 

 among learned and scientific men of all professions, and among men of 

 various ranks who are promoters of arts and sciences, than usually 

 falls to the lot of an obscure individual : but he made something more 

 than mere acquaintance; he acquired many friends who were able and 

 willing to assist him- in all his undertakings, and with whose help he 

 finally accomplished all that he had in view, which was to translate 

 the works of all the untranslated ancient Greek philosophers. It was 

 an arduous task for one man, and apparently a hopeless one, seeing 

 that Sydenham, with the advantage of a more regular education, 

 being a graduate of Oxford, and a known and acknowledged scholar, 

 had not only failed in his desire to impart knowledge to his less 

 learned countrymen by means of translations, but had been suffered to 

 perish in the attempt for want of patronage, "to the sorrow and 

 shame (as his biographer says) of every friend of literature : " yet 

 Sydenham was a good man, highly respected, and had many friends, 

 or believed he had : he must have been a recluse, for the circum- 

 stances of his death seem to have caused surprise. Mr. Taylor was 

 fond of society, and always in it : there was no appearance of 

 abstraction, about him ; and a stranger would not have suspected him 

 of being studious : he was always ready to join in conversation with 

 any one who happened to be near him, and upon any subject ; there 

 were few subjects upon which he had not read, and he could always 

 amuse or instruct if required. " Being gifted with a very extraordi- 

 nary memory, he not only retained the immense store of knowledge 

 he had amassed, but he could bring it all into use at his will : " he was 

 deeply read in things that many like to hear of, though they are no 

 longer studied, sorcery, witchcraft, alchemy, &c., and bis fund of 

 anecdote was quite inexhaustible : all this, joined to simple and unob- 

 trusive manners, and irreproachable conduct, made him not only an 

 agreeable companion to many, but to some he became almost a neces- 

 sary one. Men whose occupations had prevented their reading, 

 though they were desirous of knowledge, were particularly delighted 

 with the company of Mr. Taylor, and such were his great supporters. 

 It was by making friends chiefly that Mr. Taylor, who was as poor as 

 Sydenham, contrived to print works that must have cost more than 

 10,000., that were not of the most saleable description, and that upon 

 the whole produced no pecuniary profit. The Duke of Norfolk 

 printed Plato, and from some unaccountable whim locked up nearly 

 the whole edition in his house, where it remained till long after his 

 decease, but he was attached to Mr. Taylor, and frequently made him 

 his companion at Arundel. Mr. Meredith, a wealthy tradesman retired 

 from business, was a man possessed of sound mental faculties, with no 

 aversion to exercise them. Having read Plato he wished also to read 

 Aristotle in an English translation, and Mr. Taylor was ready to help 

 him to it upon no other condition than his undertaking to print it, 

 which he did ; and though he made a losing speculation of it, by print- 

 ing too few copies, he was so well satisfied with Mr. Taylor's exertions, 

 that he not only assisted him iu bringing out some of his minor 

 publications, but settled a pension of 100^. a year upon him, which he 

 enjoyed till his death : such munificence and friendship in a man who 

 had earned his money, and knew the value of it, is truly honourable. 

 Mr. Meredith, though not versed in the ancient languages, obtained a 

 great knowledge of ancient literature; he was a man who thought for 

 himself, and came to just conclusions upon most subjects. Among 

 Mr. Taylor's minor works some will be found dedicated to persons 

 who printed them upon similar terms, and in a few cases gave him the 

 benefit of the whole edition. He never exacted payment for his 

 labour, except in one or two cases with the booksellers, and then he 

 had little enough. But with such means he got over all his diffi- 

 culties, and he had some, for he was twice married, and had several 

 children; his income altogether was about 2001. a year. There are 

 some persons who are not at all pleased with Mr. Taylor's attempt to 

 revive certain ancient opinions ; they neither wished to see pome of 

 tin; works he has translated, nor his remarks upon them in English; 

 but they are the very persons who brought the writers into notice by 

 constantly referring to them, and speaking of them in terms that are 

 neither liberal nor entirely merited. These writers were the sup- 



porters of ancient opinions and establishments, the failure of most of 

 which is now complete and past recovery ; there can therefore bo 

 little to object to in their writings, and there is much that is good and 

 worth preserving. For these reasons they found translators in every 

 civilised country but England. It seems then that our profi:- 

 scholars have not done their duty to the public : it' they had given us 

 good translations with their own annotations, the labours of Mr. 

 Taylor would not have been called for, and any remarks he mi 

 have made elsewhere would have had little weight, and have bem 

 overlooked. There are important works yet untranslated, and there : 

 many translations which are disgraceful to the literary character of 

 our country : it would be well then that our scholars should look to 

 these matters, and see that things which must and will be done ; 

 well done. 



Mr. Taylor during the last forty years of his life, resided in a small 

 house at Walworth, leading a life of perfect uniformity, and dividing 

 his time between his labours and his attentions to his friends and 

 family. He died on the 1st of November 1835, of a very painful 

 disease in the bladder, which he bore with extraordinary fortitude 

 and without complaining. He was an Academician by profession and 

 a Stoic in practice ; a sincere friend and a delightful companion. His 

 works and translations are : 1, 'The Elements of a New Method of 

 Reasoning in Geometry," 4to, 1780, a juvenile performance lost or sup- 

 pressed ; 2, a Paraphrase of part of Ocellus in the ' European Magazine,' 

 1782 ; a translation of the whole work in Svo, 1S31 ; 3, ' The Hymns 

 of Orpheus,' 12mo, 1787; second edition, 1824, augmented; 4, ' Plo- 

 tinus on the Beautiful,' 12mo, 1787 ; 5, ' A Dissertation on the 

 Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries,' Svo, no date ; 6, ' The Rights of 

 Brutes,' 12mo, 1792, in ridicule of Paine's 'Rights of Man;' 7, 'Sallust 

 on the Gods and the World,' Svo, 1793 ; 8, ' The Phsedrus of Plato,' 

 4to, 1792 ; 9, ' The Cratylus, Phaedon, Parmenide?, and Timseus,' Svo, 

 1793; 10, 'Proclus ou Euclid,' 2 vols. 4to, 1792, 11, -'Two Orations 

 of the Emperor Julian to the Sovereign Sun and to the Mother of the 

 Gods,' 8vo, 1793; 12, 'Pausanias' Description of Greece,' 3 vols. Svo, 

 1794 : for this translation, made in such haste that Mr. Taylor nearly 

 lost the use of his right hand from continued exertion, he received 

 181. The work was in such demand that it sold for a high price, and 

 a second edition was printed in 1824 without consulting the translator, 

 who heard of it accidentally when it was too late to correct it ; a 

 slight compensation was made to him, and he added some uotea : thi.s 

 is au illustration of the remarks already made ; a work like this 

 should not have been left to a necessitous writer. 13. Five books of 

 Plotinus, ' On Felicity ; on the Nature and Origin of Evil ; on Provi- 

 dence ; on Nature, Contemplation, and the One ; on the Descent of 

 tho Soul,' Svo, 1794; 14, 'Cupid and Psyche,' from Apuleius, Svo, 

 1795; 15, ' Metaphysics of Aristotle,' 4to, 1801; 16, Hederic's 'Greek 

 Lexicon,' edited, 4to, 1803 ; 17, ' The Dissertations of Maximus 

 Tyrius,' 2 vols. 12mo, 1804 ; 18, ' An Answer to Dr. Gillies' Supple- 

 ment to his New Analysis of the Works of Aristotle,' Svo, 1S04; 



19, ' The Works of Plato,' 5 vols. 4to, 1804, including reprints of the 

 parts previously translated, and many commentaries taken from manu- 

 scripts, some of which have since been printed in the original language ; 



20, ' The Py thagoric Sentences of Demophilus ; ' these are printed 

 with Mr. Bridgeman's translations, Svo, 1804; 21, 'Miscellanies in 

 Prose and Verse,' 12mo, 1805, 2nd ed. 1820; 22, 'Collectanea,' Svo, 

 1806 ; 23, ' The Emperor Julian's Arguments taken from Cyril, with 

 Extracts from his other Works relative to the Christians,' Svo, 1809; 



24, ' The Works of Aristotle,' 9 vol?. 4to, 1S12, with copious extracts 

 from the ancient commentators, to which are added a dissertation ou . 

 the philosophy of Aristotle, and a treatise on tho elements of the true 

 arithmetic of infinites, both of which had appeared in a separate form ; 



25, ' The Six Books of Proclus on the Theology of Plato,' 2 volf . 4to, 

 1816; 26, 'Theoretic Arithmetic,' Svo, 1816, containing what had 

 been written on this subject by Theon of Smyrna, Nicomachus, lam- 

 blicus, and Boethius, with remarks on amicable and other numbers, 

 and a specimen of the manner in which the Pythagoreans philoso- 

 phised about numbers; 27, 'Select Works of Plotiuu?,' Svo, 1817; 

 28, ' Life of Pythagoras by lamblicus,' Svo, 181S ; 29, ' lamblicus on 

 tho Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldaeans, and Assyrians,' Svo 1821 ; 

 30, ' The Commentaries of Proclus oa the Timoeus of Plato,' 2 vols. 

 4to, 1820; 31, 'Political Pythagoric Fragmeuts and Ethical Frag- 

 ments of Hierocles,' Svo, 1822; 32, ' The Metamorphoses and Philo- 

 sophical Works of Apuleius,' Svo, 1822, translated gratuitously at the 

 request of a friend, but purchased by a publisher for 100/. : Mr. Taylor 

 had a few copies for his benefit ; 33, ' Select Works of Porphyry,' Svo, 

 1823 (some essays are added) ; 35, 'All the Fragments that remain of 

 the Lost Writings of Proclus,' Svo, 1825; 36, 'Arguments of Celsus 

 relative to the Christians, taken from Origen, with Extracts from other 

 Writers,' 12mo, 1S30; 37, 'Proclus on Providence and Evil,' Svo, 

 1833; 38, 'Plotinus on Suicide, with Extracts from Olympiodorus, 

 and two books on Truly Existing Being, &c., with Notes from Por- 

 phyry and Proclus,' Svo, 1834. Besides these, there are many papers 

 written by Mr. Taylor in the 'Classical Journal' aud other periodicals, 

 amongst which may be specified a complete and valuable collection of 

 the Chaldtean oracles, republished by Mr. Cory. 



* TAYLOR, TOM, was born in 1817, at Sunderland. He was brought 

 up at the Grange school of that town, one of those institutions iu 

 which a classical education is not confined to the sons of the rich, 



