his life and the seventh of his episcopate, and was buried in the cathedral of Dromore.
Taylor's fame has been maintained by the popularity of his sermons and devotional writings rather than by his influence as a theologian or his importance as an ecclesiastic. His mind was neither scientific nor speculative, and he was attracted rather to questions of casuistry than to the problems of pure theology. His wide reading and capacious memory enabled him to carry in his mind the materials of a sound historical theology, but these materials were unsifted by criticism. His immense learning served him rather as a storehouse of illustrations, or as an armoury out of which he could choose the fittest weapon for discomfiting on opponent, than as a quarry furnishing him with material for building up a completely designed and enduring edifice of systematized truth. Indeed, he had very limited faith in the human mind as an instrument of truth. “Theology,” he says, “is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge.” His great plea for toleration is based on the impossibility of erecting theology into a demonstrable science. “It is impossible all should be of one mind. And what is impossible to be done is not necessary it should be done.” Differences of opinion there must be; but “heresy is not an error of the understanding but an error of the will.” He would submit all minor questions to the reason of the individual member, but he set certain limits to toleration, excluding “whatsoever is against the foundation of faith, or contrary to good life and the laws of obedience, or destructive to human society, and the public and just interests of bodies politic.” Peace, he thought, might be made “if men would not call all opinions by the name of religion, and superstructures by the name of fundamental articles.” Of the propositions of sectarian theologians he said that confidence was the first, and the second, and the third part. Of a genuine poetic temperament, fervid and mobile in feeling, and of a prolific fancy, he had also the sense and wit that come of varied contact with men. All his gifts were made available for influencing other men by his easy command of a style rarely matched in dignity and colour. With all the majesty and stately elaboration and musical rhythm of Milton's finest prose, Taylor's style is relieved and brightened by an astonishing variety of felicitous illustrations, ranging from the most homely and terse to the most dignified and elaborate. His sermons especially abound in quotations and allusions, which have the air of spontaneously suggesting themselves, but which must sometimes have baffled his hearers. This seeming pedantry is, however, atoned for by the clear practical aim of his sermons, the noble ideal he keeps before his hearers, and the skill with which he handles spiritual experience and urges incentives to virtue.
The whole works of . . . Jeremy Taylor with a life of the author and a critical examination of his writings was published by Bishop Reginald Heber in 1822, reissued after careful revision by Charles Page Eden (1847-54). His most popular works, The Liberty of Prophesying, Holy Living, and Holy Dying have been often reprinted. The Poems and Verse-translations of Jeremy Taylor were edited by Dr. A. B. Grosart in vol. i. of the Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies Library (1870). The first biographer of Jeremy Taylor was his friend and successor, George Rust, who preached a funeral sermon (in 1668) which remains a valuable document. His life has been written by John Wheeldon (1793), H. K. Bonney (1815), T. S. Hughes (1831), R. H. Willmott (1847), George L. Duyckinck (New York, 1860). The chief authority is still Eden's revision of Bishop Heber's memoir, which includes much valuable correspondence. See also E. W. Gosse's Jeremy Taylor (1904) in the English Men of Letters series. A bibliography of works dealing with the subject is included in the article by the Rev. Alexander Gordon in the Dictionary of National Biography. S. T. Coleridge was a diligent student and a warm admirer of Jeremy Taylor, whom he regarded as one of the great masters of English style. A series of comments by Coleridge are collected in his Literary Remains (1838, vol. iii. pp. 203-390).
TAYLOR, JOHN (1580-1653), English pamphleteer, commonly called the " Water-Poet," was born at Gloucester on
the 24th of August 1580. After fulfilling his apprenticeship
to a waterman, he served (1596) in Essex's fleet, and was present
at Flores in 1597 and at the siege of Cadiz. On his return to
England he became a Thames waterman, and was at one time
collector of the perquisites exacted by the lieutenant of the
Tower. He was an expert in the art of self-advertisement,
and achieved notoriety by a series of eccentric journeys. With
a companion as feather-brained as himself he journeyed from
London to Quecnborough in a paper boat, with two stockfish
tied to canes for oars. The Pennyles Pilgrimage, or the Moneylesse Perambulation of John Taylor . . . how he travailed on
foot from London to Edenborough in Scotland . . . 1618, contains
the account of a journey perhaps suggested by Ben Jonson's
celebrated undertaking, though Taylor emphatically denies any
intention of burlesque. He went as far as Aberdeen. At
Leith he met Jonson, who good-naturedly gave him twenty-
two shillings to drink his health in England. Other travels
undertaken for a wager were a journey to Prague, where he is
said to have been entertained (1620) by the queen of Bohemia,
and those described respectively in A very merry, wherry ferry
voyage, or Yorke for my money, and A New Discovery by sea
with a Wherry from London to Salisbury (1623). At the outbreak of the civil war Taylor began to keep a public-house at
Oxford, but when his friends the Royalists were obliged to
surrender the city he returned to London, where he set up a
similar business at the sign of " The Crown " in Phoenix Alley,
Long Acre. At the time of the king's execution he changed
his sign to the Mourning Crown, but the authorities objected,
and he substituted his own portrait. He was buried in the
churchyard of St Martin's-in-the-Fields on the 5th of December
1653 Taylor gave himself the title of " the king's water-poet and
the queen's water-man." He was no poet, though he could
string rhymes together on occasion. His gifts lay in a coarse,
rough and ready wit, a talent for narrative, and a considerable
command of repartee, which made him a dangerous enemy.
Thomas Coryate, the author of the Crudities, was one of his
favourite butts, and he roused Taylor's special anger because
he persuaded the authorities to have burnt one of Taylor's
pamphlets directed against him. This was Laugh and be Fat
(1615?), a parody of the Odcombian Banquet.
Sixty-three of Taylor's "works" appeared in one volume in 1630. This was reprinted by the Spenser Society in 1868-9, being followed by other tracts not included in the collection (1870-8). Some of his more amusing productions were edited (1872) by Charles Hindley as The Works of John Taylor. They provide some very entertaining reading, but in spite of the legend on one of his title-pages, "Lastly that (which is Rare in a Travailer) all is true," it is permissible to exercise some mental reservations in accepting his statements. Mr Hindley edited other tracts of Taylor's in his Miscellanea Antigua Anglicana (1873).
TAYLOR, JOHN (1704-1766), English classical scholar, was born at Shrewsbury on the 22nd of June 1704. His father was a barber, and, by the generosity of one of his customers, the son, having received his early education at the grammar school of his native town, was sent to St John's College, Cambridge. In'1732 he was appointed librarian, in 1734 registrar of the university. Somewhat late in life he took orders, became rector of Lawford in Essex in 1751, and canon of St Paul's in 1757. He died in London on the 4th of April 1766. Taylor is best known for his editions of some of the Greek orators, chiefly valuable for the notes on Attic law, e.g. Lysias (1739); Demosthenes Contra Leptinem (1741) and Contra Midiam (1743, with Lycurgus Contra Leocratem), intended as specimens of a proposed edition, in five volumes, of the orations of Demos- thenes, Aeschines, Dinarchus and Demades, of which only vols. ii. and iii. were published. Taylor also published (under the title of Marmor Sandvicense) a commentary on the inscription on an ancient marble brought from Greece by Lord Sandwich, containing particulars of the receipts and expenditure of the Athenian magistrates appointed to celebrate the festival of Apollo at Delos in 374 B.C. His Elements of Civil Law (17SS) also deserves notice. It was severely attacked by Warburton in his Divine Legation, professedly owing to a difference of opinion in regard to the persecution of the early Christians, in reality because Taylor had spoken disparagingly of his scholarship.
