33a 
JOHN TAYLOR, THE WATER POET. 
(erman,” and wore the badge of the royal arms. While a waterman, he 
very naturally had a great hatred to coaches ; and besides writing a satire 
against themi, he fancied that the watemen were starving for want of em- 
ploymentj and presented a petition to James I- which was referred to 
certain commissioners, of whom Sir Francis Bacon was one, to obtain 
prohibition of all playhouses except those on the bank-side, that the 
greater part of the inhabitants of London, who were desirous of seeing 
plays, might be compelled to go by water. Taylor himself is said to have 
undertaken to support this singular petition, and was prepared to op- 
pose before the commissioners the arguments of the players, but the 
commission was dissolved before it came to a hearing. 
'When the rebellion commenced in 1642, Taylor left London, and 
retired to Oxford, where he was much noticed and esteemed for his 
facetious turn. He kept a common victualling house there, and wrote 
pasquinades against the round-heads ; by which he thought, and Wood 
too seems to think, that he did great service to the royal cause. After 
the garrison at Oxford had surrendered, he retired to Westminster, 
' kept a public-house in Phoenix-alley, near Longacre, and continued 
constant in his loyalty to the king, afler whose death, he set up a 
sign over his door, of a mourning crown ; but that proving offensive, 
he pulled it down, and hung up his own picture with these verses 
under it : 
“ There’s many a head stands for a sign. 
Then, gentle reader, why not mine 
And on the other side, 
“ Though I deserve not, 1 desire 
The laurel wreath^ the poet’s hire.” 
He died in 1654, aged Seventy-four, as Wood was informed by his 
nephew, a painter of Oxford, who gave his portrait to the picture gal- 
lery there in 1655. This nephew’s own portrait, also by himself, is on 
the staircase. His works were published under the title of “ All the 
Workes of John Taylor the Water Poet, being sixty and three in num- 
ber, and collected into one volume by the author, with sundry new 
additions: corrected, revised, and newly imprinted.’' 1630, folio.” 
These pieces, which are not destitute of natural humour, abound with 
low jingling wit, which pleased and prevailed in the reign of James 1. 
though it too often bordered upon bombast and nonsense. He was 
countenanced by a few persons of rank and ingenuity, but was the 
darling and admiration of numbers of the rabble. He was himself 
the father of some cant words, and he has adopted others, which wer^ 
only in the mouths of the lowest vulgar. From the date of this 
volume it is evident that it does not contain those “ pasquins” and 
satires which Wood says he wrote at Oxford, and which perhaps it 
might have been unsafe to avow or republish, as he did not survive 
the times of the usurpation. Five articles, however, whose titles may 
be seen in the ** Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica,” were published between 
1637 and 1641. One of them is the life of Old Parr, printed in 1635, 
when Parr is said to have been living, at the age of 152, 
