TAYLOR TCHAD. 



539 



on Holy Living and Dying; and his Ductor Dubi- 

 tantium, or Rule of Conscience. Of these the two 

 former are peculiarly admired for fervour of devo- 

 tional feeling, beauty of imagery, and illustrative 

 and copious impressiveness of eloquence. A new 

 edition of his works, with a life, by the late bishop 

 Heber, was published in 1822 (15 volumes). 



TAYLOR, JOHN, usually called the water poet, 

 from his being a waterman, was born in Gloucester, 

 about 1580. He was taken young to London, and 

 apprenticed to a waterman. He was at the taking 

 of Cadiz, under the earl of Essex, in 1596, and 

 afterwards visited Germany and Scotland. At 

 home he was many years collector for the lieu- 

 tenant of the Tower of London, of his fees of the 

 wines from all the ships which brought them up 

 the Thames. When the civil wars broke out, he 

 retired to Oxford, where he kept a common victual- 

 ling house, and wrote pasquinades upon the Round- 

 heads. He afterwards kept a public house at 

 Westminster. He died in 1654, aged seventy-four. 

 His works are published under the title of " All 

 the Works of John Taylor, the Water Poet, being 

 Sixty and Three in Number, collected into One 

 Volume by the Author, with sundry new Addi- 

 tions, corrected, revised, and newly imprinted" 

 (1630, folio). These pieces are not destitute of 

 natural humour, and of the jingling wit which pre- 

 vailed so much during the reign of James I. 



TAYLOR, JOHN, LL.D., a distinguished scholar 

 and critic, the son of a barber of Shrewsbury, re- 

 ceived the rudiments of education at the grammar- 

 school of his native town, and was entered of St 

 John's college, Cambridge, of which he became a 

 fellow in 1730. In 1732, he was appointed libra- 

 rian of the university, which office he soon after 

 quitted for that of registrar. He published an 

 edition of Lysias in 1739, and in 1742 became a 

 member of doctors' commons. Two years after- 

 wards he was made chancellor of Lincoln ; and in 

 1751, entering into orders, was presented to the 

 living of Lawford, in Essex. He published, in 

 1755, Elements of Civil Law (4to., reprinted in 

 1769). He died in 1766, after having just com- 

 pleted an edition of Demosthenes, in two vols., 

 8vo. Besides the works already mentioned, he 

 was author of an explanation of the Marmor Sand- 

 vicense, and an edition of Two Orations of Demos- 

 thenes and Lycurgus. 



TAYLOR, THOMAS, well known by the title 

 of the Platonist, was born in London, of obscure 

 parents, in 1758, and, at the age of nine years, 

 was placed at St Paul's school, it being intended 

 to educate him as a dissenting minister. Disgusted, 

 however, with the manner in which the dead lan- 

 guages are taught, he prevailed on his father to 

 relinquish this plan. He was then only twelve 

 years old ; yet he became deeply enamoured of a 

 Miss Morton, who afterwards gave him her hand. 

 While at home, Ward's Young Mathematician's 

 Guide inspired him with a love of mathematics, 

 and, though his father was adverse to the study, 

 the youth soon contrived to become a proficient in 

 his favourite science. This he accomplished by 

 sacrificing to it a part of the hours of rest ; and 

 that he might procure a light without being dis- 

 covered, he concealed a tinder-box under his pillow. 

 When he was fifteen, he was placed under an 

 uncle, at Sheerness, who was an officer of the 

 ,'lock-yard a situation irksome in its nature, and 

 rendered more so by the tyranny of his uncle. 

 After enduring it for three years, he became pupil 



to a dissenting preacher, with the view of entering 

 into the church. At this period he also renewed 

 his acquaintance with Miss Morton, to whom he 

 was secretly married. Their secret was, however, 

 betrayed, and they were thrown upon the world, 

 with scarcely sufficient resources to prevent them 

 from starving. At length Mr Taylor obtained 

 employment as usher to a school at Paddington, 

 which, as it kept him absent from his wife, he 

 exchanged for that of a clerk in a banking-house, 

 in the city. Still his pecuniary means were so 

 limited, that in the course of the day he could not 

 obtain a proper quantity of food, and he often fell 

 senseless on the floor when he reached his home. 

 At length, his circumstances were somewhat 

 amended. His studies were still continued with 

 unabated ardour, and, as the banking-house ab- 

 sorbed the whole of his days, he was obliged to 

 devote to them several hours of the night. Having 

 made himself master of the works of Aristotle, he 

 passed on to those of Plato, and the commentators 

 on Plato's philosophical writings. After he had 

 been nearly six years in the banking-house, the 

 failure of his health, and the nature of his occupa- 

 tion, determined him to procure some more eligible 

 mode of living. An attempt to construct a per- 

 petual lamp made him advantageously known to 

 several eminent persons, who enabled him to 

 emancipate himself from the drudgery of the 

 banking house. The munificence of a private in- 

 dividual, Mr William Meredith, now put it in his 

 power to publish a translation of the works of 

 Plato, and the Platonic commentators. Mr Taylor 

 also laboured for the booksellers ; but the remun- 

 eration which he received from them was inade- 

 quate to his toil. For his translation of Pausanias 

 he was paid only sixty pounds! If we contemplate 

 the numerous obstacles which have opposed his 

 progress, it is impossible not to admire the steady 

 perseverance with which he has pursued his course ; 

 and it is little to the credit of England, that a 

 man of such powers of mind, and such extensive 

 learning, should so long have been left to struggle 

 through the world with no other patronage than 

 that of a few private individuals. Among his 

 translations from the Greek are Plotinus on the 

 Beautiful (12mo.); Proclus on Euclid, and Ele- 

 ments of Theology ; Five Books of Plotinus ; 

 Pausanias's Description of Greece, with Notes (3 

 vols., 8vo., 1794) ; Aristotle's Metaphysics, with 

 Notes ; the Dissertations of Maximus Tyrius (2 

 vols., 12mo.); the Works of Plato (5 vols., 4to., 

 1804) ; the Works of Aristotle, with Elucidations 

 from the best Greek Commentators (9 vols., 4to.); 

 the Six Books of Proclus on the Theology of Plato, 

 to which a Seventh Book is added by the trans- 

 lator ; Jamblichus's Life of Pythagoras, or Pyth- 

 agoric Life, accompanied by Fragments of th<> 

 Ethical Writings of certain Pythagoreans, and a 

 new Collection of Pythagoric Sentences; the Com- 

 mentaries of Proclus on the Timaeus; Jambliehus 

 on the Mysteries, &c. (8vo.). Among his original 

 works are a Dissertation on the Eleusinian and 

 Bacchic Mysteries; a Complete Collection of all 

 the existing Chaldaean Oracles ; the Elements of 

 the true Arithmetic of Infinites; Miscellanies in 

 Prose and Verse, with a great number of treatises 

 accompanying his translations, and of articles in 

 the Classical Journal. 



TCHAD; a lake in the interior of Africa, in 

 the western part of Nigritia (q. v.), discovered by 

 major Denham, in 1822. (See Clapptrlon.) It 



