also in the Ganges, guardship at Portsmouth. In 1787 he went into the service of the East India Company, in which he seems to have remained six years, with the exception of a couple of months during the Spanish armament in the autumn of 1790, when he was a midshipman of the Defence with the Hon, George Murray [see Penrose, Sir Charles Vinicombe]. In October 1973 he joined the Duke, then carrying Murray’s broad pennant, was with him again in the Glory in the Channel, and in the Resolution on the coast of North America. After serving again on the home station he was promoted to lieutenant of the Cleopatra frigate on the North America station, in which he returned to England a few months later. Through 1797 the Cleopatra was employed in active and successful cruising; and in November 1797 Tait was moved to the Venerable, his uncle’s flagship, in the North Sea. In January 1799 he was appointed to the command of the Jane (hired lugger) for service in the North Sea, where, during the next twenty months, he captured no less than fifty-six French and Dutch vessels, and, for the protection thus given to North British trade, was voted the freedom of Dundee, and was specially recommended to the admiralty by the magistrates and town council; as a consequence of this recommendation he was promoted to the rank of commander on 29 April 1802. Through 1803–4 he commanded the Volcano bomb, attached to the squadron in the Downs, under the orders of Lord Keith; and early in 1805 was sent out to the East Indies, were he was appointed acting captain of the Grampus of 50 guns. He was confirmed in the rank on 5 Sept. 1806, and in the following year was sent to the Cape of Good Hope, whence he returned to England, with convoy, in July 1809. In 1815 he went out to the West Indies in the command of the Junon; was moved into the Pique in 1816, and was invalided in 1817. He had no further service, but was promoted to the rank of rear-admiral on 23 Nov. 1841, and died on 7 Aug. 1845.
[Service-book in the Public Record Office; O’Byrne’s Nav. Biogr. Dict.]
TAIT, WILLIAM (1793–1864), publisher, son of James Tait, builder in Edinburgh, was born there on 11 May 1793. After a short attendance at Edinburgh University, he was articled to a writer to the signet, but abandoned law and with his brother Charles Bertram, opened a bookseller’s shop in Edinburgh, and shortly afterwards commenced publishing. His chief publications were Brown’s ‘Philosophy of the Human Mind;’ Carlyle’s ‘German Romance;’ the collected edition of Bentham’s works, and Tytler’s ‘History of Scotland.’ His chief enterprise as a publisher, however, was ‘Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine,’ which appeared in April 1832, and was issued monthly until December 1846. It was a literary and political magazine, its radical politics being its special feature, and giving it a considerable influence in Scotland, where it had for some time a larger circulation than any of its competitors. Its popularity was considerably enhanced when in 1834 it was reduced in price from half a crown to one shilling. At first Tait was editor, but from 1834, when his magazine incorporated ‘Johnstone’s,’ he had the literary co-operation of Mrs. Christian Isobel Johnstone [q. v.], and his list of contributors included De Quincey, Leigh Hunt, Miss Martineau, John Stuart Mill, and the politicians like Cobden and Bright, who agreed with the opinions of the magazine.
Tait took a keen personal interest in both literature and politics, and was well-known figure in the social life of Edinburgh. In 1833 he was elected to the first reformed town council there, and in the same year was sent to gaol for four days (10 Aug.) for refusing to pay church rates, which were then raising stong opposition in radical circles. His shop was a meeting-ground for most of the Edinburgh notables, and Sir Walter Scott and Thomas Carlyle just missed being introduced to each other while there together by chance. According to De Quincey, Tait was ‘a patrician gentleman of potential aspect and distinctively conservative build.’
He retired from business in 1848, and bought the estate of Prior Bank, near Melrose, where he died on 4 Oct. 1864.
[Information supplied by his nephew, Mr. A. W. Black; Bertram’s Some Memories of Books, Authors, and Events; Burgon's Memoir of P. F. Tytler; Masson’s Edinburgh Sketches; Scotsman, 5 Oct. 1864.]
TALBOT, CATHERINE (1721–1770), author, born in May 1721, was the posthumous and only child of Edward Talbot, second son of William Talbot (1659?–1730) [q. v.], bishop of Durham, and his wife Mary (d. 1784), daughter of George Martyn, prebendary of Lincoln. Miss Talbot's uncle, Charles Talbot [q. v.], another son of the bishop, was lord chancellor. Her father, Edward, who was elected fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, and appointed archdeacon of Berkshire in 1717, died on 9 Dec. 1720. At the time of his death Catherine Benson, sister of Martin Benson [q. v.], bishop of Gloucester, was residing at his house, and on her marriage to
