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to the study of the Attic law, of which he probably pos- 

 sessed 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 legal profession. 

 In 1741 he was admitted an advocate in Doctors' Com- 

 mons, and the year after he took his degree of doctor of 

 laws. On this occasion he published a Latin dissertation, 

 ' Commentarius ad Legem Decemviralem de Inope Debi- 

 torc 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, Graece et LatineV with notes and emen- 

 dations, Cambridge, 1743, 8vo., and in the same year he 

 published the 'Manner Sandvicence, cum Commentario et 

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

 a useful dissertation on this celebrated inscription, which 

 had been brought from Athens to London by Lord Sand- 

 wich 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 

 1lu> antient writers. He was now successively made arch- 

 deacon of Buckingham and rector of Lawford in Essex, 

 to which, in 1757, was added the lucrative place of canon 

 residentiary of St. Paul's. In 1755 he published at Lon- 

 don, in 4to"., his ' Elements of Civil Law,' a second edition 

 of which appeared in 1709. 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 bcgin- 

 ners; an abridgement 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 Cam- 

 bridge, but his death on the 4th of April, 1750, 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, 'Demosthenis, ^schinis, Dinarchi, et Demadis Ora- 

 tiones : Greece 1 et Latintf, cum notis edidit J. Taylor.' 

 The notes, which were published at a later time, are incor- 

 porated in Reiske's ' Apparatus C'riticus' to Demosthenes. 

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

 any !jreat worth, and its chief value consists in his notes 

 in illustration of the history of the orations and the Attic 

 law. Dr. Taylor is said to have been a most amiable and dis- 

 interested man : he had considerable taste for poetry, and 

 some specimens of his muse are printed in the ' G'entle- 

 man's Magazine,' and in Nichols's ' Select Collection of 

 Poems.' 



(Aikin and Johnston's General Biography, vol. ix., 

 p. 337, &c. ; Reiske, Pracfatio ad Demosthenem, p. 42, 

 sec.) 



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

 a London stone-mason, who was more prosperous than 

 prudent, for he affected a style of living very unusual at 

 that period among persons engaged in business : he kept 

 his carriage, and also his country-house in Essex. To- 

 wards his sou, on the contrary, he appears to have been 

 far from liberal, as he bestowed on him only a common 

 school education, and then placed him under Sir Henry 

 Cheere, a sculptor, whose chief work of note is the statue 

 of Col. Codrington, in the library of All Souls, Oxford. 

 On quitting Cheere, he was furnished by his father with 

 just sufficient money to proceed to Rome, where he was 

 obliged to live with the utmost frugality. His studies in 

 Italy were however of no long continuance, for he was 

 soon summoned home by the intelligence of his father 

 being dangerously ill ; upon which he hurried back to 

 and with as much expedition as the state of the Con- 

 tinent would then permit, and was obliged to disguise 

 himself as a Franciscan friar. On reaching home, he found 

 that his lather was dead, and that he had left nothing. 

 Thus thrown entirely upon his own resources and ability, 

 all that remained for him was to set up business as a 

 statuary, and he first brought himself into notice by Corn- 

 wall's monument. His principal other works in sculpture are 

 t'l monument, near the north door of Westminster 

 Abbey, the fiifme of Britannia at the Bank of England, and 

 the bas-relief in the pediment of the Mansion-house, Lon- 



don. After this he abandoned sculpture for architecture, 

 and one of his earliest productions in his new profession 

 was the mansion erected by him for Mr. Gower, near the 

 South Sea House. In 1756-58 he was employed in the 

 alterations of old London Bridge in conjunction with Dance, 

 and thenceforth upon a number of buildings both public and 

 private ; yet very few among which display much architec- 

 tural taste, and least of all any of that richness in decora- 

 tion and detail which might have been expected from one 

 who had been brought up and had practised as a sculptor. 

 The wings added by him to the Bank of England (after- 

 wards swept away oy his successor Soane) were at the 

 time termed 'magnificent,' but then it could only be by com- 

 parison with the older building by Sampson, to which they 

 were attached. This design itself was only borrowed from 

 one of Bramante's [BRAMANTE], and was upon so small a 

 scale as to look insignificant in such a situation. The 

 'Stone Buildings' at Lincoln's Inn are such a mere architec- 

 tural blank, that the columns, instead of diminishing the 

 poverty of its character, serve only to render it the more 

 apparent. There is however some architectural character 

 displayed in that which is called the ' Six Clerks' Office,' 

 situated between the other building and Chancery Lane. 

 The villa which he built for Sir Charles Asgill at Rich- 

 mond is at least unexceptionable in taste, though it 

 hardly deserves the admiration it has obtained. Among 

 his other works, Lord Grimston's seat at Gorhambury is 

 one of the best. If not very great, he was eminently suc- 

 cessful, in his profession, and obtained several lucrative 

 appointments and surveyorships to the Admiralty, Found- 

 ling Hospital, Greenwich Hospital, and the Bank of Eng- 

 land, for which he was well qualified, being a man of most 

 business-like habits, and of most extraordinary diligence 

 and assiduity. He was rarely in bed after' four in the 

 morning; was most abstemious in his diet, and drank no 

 wine. Whether in consequence of taking warning from his 

 father's example or not, he seems in almost all respects to 

 have been the very reverse of him in his mode of living ; 

 and it is not surprising that his economy, together with 

 the appointments which he held, should have enabled him 

 to realize a fortune of 180,000/., though, as he himself 

 used to say, he began the world with hardly eighteen 

 pence. He died at his own house in Spring Gardens, 

 September 27, 1788, and was buried in St. Martin's church. 

 He gave the whole of his property to his only son, the 

 latr Michael Angelo Taylor, M.P., with the exception of 

 a sum to the university of Oxford, to accumulate for a 

 certain term of years and then to be applied to found an in- 

 stitute for the study of modern languages. This bequest 

 having been incorporated with a similar one by Dr. Ran- 

 dolph for a picture and statue gallery, a building was 

 begun in 1H41, under the name of the ' Taylor and 'Ran- 

 dolph Institute,' from the designs of C. R. Cockerell, Esq., 

 professor of architecture at the Royal Academy. Taylor 

 was knighted when sheriff of London in 1783. 



(Gentleman's Magazine; Cresy's Milizia ; Dallaway's 

 Art a in England; Companion to Almanac, 1842.) 



TAYLOR, THOMAS, was born in London on the 15th 

 May, 1758 : his parents were respectable in their calling, 

 but not wealthy. At a very early age he was sent to St. 

 Paul's school, and after remaining there about three years 

 he was placed under the care of a relation who held a 

 situation in the dockyard at Sheerness, with whom he 

 resided several years. During this time he applied himself 

 assiduously to the study of mathematics, and also obtained 

 some knowledge of chemistry : he next became a pupil of 

 the Rev. Mr. Worthington, a dissenting minister who pos- 

 sessed considerable classical acquirements, ultimately in 

 tending to complete his studies at Aberdeen with a view to 

 the ministry. But a premature marriage and pecuniary 

 difficulties compelled him to relinquish this 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 com- 

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

 Taylor always devoted at least six hours of every day to 

 study, and when not engaged in business they were 

 generally the first six. Poverty, and the difficulties at- 

 tending 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 lec- 

 ture and exhibited his experiments at tho Freemasons' 



