Henry Taylor

“ Sir Henry Taylor is pre-eminently the statesman among English poets. When he can speak poetically in this character he is impressive, almost great; when he deals with the more prosaic aspects of policy he is dignified and weighty, without being altogether a poet when his theme is entirely unrelated to the conduct of public affairs or private life he is usually little more than an accomplished man of letters. ”

“ James Medland Taylor, architect, born 1834; Rosa; Henry Taylor, architect and author, born in 1837; Catherine; Jessie, who married Thomas Wilson; and Euphemia—all born at Stanford Rivers.
Though he joined the Anglican communion at an early stage in his career, Taylor always remained on the best terms with his old friends among the dissenters. Some regarded him as the greatest English lay theologian since Coleridge, and many with greater justice as the successor in the vale of Ongar to associations of piety and lofty religious idealism such as hallowed Bemerton or Olney. ”

“ He apprenticed his son to Sir Henry Cheere [q. v.] the sculptor, and sent him to study at Rome. Returning to England on receiving the news of his father's death, Taylor found himself penniless; but he had good friends in the Godfrey family of Woodford, Essex, who enabled him to make a start as a sculptor. The monuments to Cornwall and Guest at Westminster Abbey (1743–6) and the figure of Britannia in the centre of the principal façade of the old Bank of England are his work. ”

“ Nathaniel Taylor, who died in 1702, was latterly so infirm that he used to crawl into the pulpit upon his knees. "He was a man," says Matthew Henry, "of great wit, worth, and courage;" and Doddridge compared his writings to those of South for wit and strength. Tong succeeded Taylor at Salters' Hall in 1702. He wrote the notes on the Hebrews and Revelations for Matthew Henry's "Commentary," and left memoirs of Henry, and of Shower, of the Old Jewry. The writer of his funeral sermon called him "the prince of preachers." ”

“ And when she reached the avenue a policeman with a yellow emblematic wheel embroidered on his sleeve held up his hand and stopped the traffic of the Devil's Own city to let Great Taylor pass.
And so, like a female Colossus, she strode slowly across the city, her head tilted, her eyes looking up from the cavernous streets—up beyond the lofty roofs of houses, her voice becoming fainter and fainter: "Rags ... old iron ... bottles and ra-ags ..." until the God of those who fall fighting in the battle of life reached down and, drawing the sword, threw away the scabbard. ”

“ TAYLOR, JOHN (d. 1534) , master of the rolls, was the eldest of three sons born at one birth in a humble cottage at Barton in the parish of Tatenhill, Staffordshire. Wood (Fasti, i. 62) says that the father was a tailor, and that the children were shown as a curiosity to Henry VII, who directed that care should be taken of them, and undertook the expense of their education. It is, however, probable that Taylor was born some years before 1485, when Henry VII came to the throne. ”

“ Grit's widow was "Great" Taylor, whose inadequate first name was Nell—a young, immaculate creature whose body was splendid even if her vision and spirit were small. She never had understood Grit.
Returning from the long, wearisome ride, she climbed the circular iron staircase—up through parallels of garlic-scented tenement gloom—to her three-room flat, neat as a pin; but not even then did she give way to tears. Tears! No man could make Great Taylor weep!
However, drawing the pins from her straw hat, dyed black for the occasion, she admitted, "It ain't right." ”

“ Great Taylor sank into a broken armchair, her huge calloused hands rested in her lap, wrists crossed, palms turned upward, fingers stiffly curled. "I know who you are," she mumbled, leaning forward and peering through the half-light. "What do you want?"
"You hung out a sign...."
"You ain't the man I expected."
"No?" He rocked up on his toes and made a gesture that indicated the piles of junk. "You're done."
"I'm done," assented Great Taylor. "I ain't going to lay a hand on the cart again. Ten years...."
"Uhm. You have a right to the things that other women have. But...." ”

“ And he would remain silent, drooping there, wrists crossed in his lap, palms turned upward, fingers curled, until supper had been placed before him on the table. "Fingers bent like claws," muttered Great Taylor, "and doing nothing while I set the table."
Sometimes he would eat enormously, which irritated Nell; sometimes he would eat nothing except bread and molasses, which irritated Nell even more. "A good molasses jug," he would say; "got it for a dime. Once I set a price I'm a stone wall; never give in." ”

“ He glanced around the dingy warehouse. "Is this all you have for your ten years?"
Great Taylor made no reply.
"It isn't much," said the man.
"It's something," said Great Taylor.
"Not enough to live on."
"Not enough to live on," she echoed. "But I can't go on working. I can't go on alone. The cart's too heavy to push alone. I'm done." She drooped there.
"I think we can arrange something." For a moment the man was silent, his queer eyes moving over her body. "I had something in mind when I entered—something aside from junk. I could make a place for you. I'll do better than that. ”

“ She hurriedly shoved her cart around a corner into a less-congested thoroughfare and there a mammoth gilded clock at the edge of the sidewalk confronted her. The long hand moved with a sardonic jerk and indicated the hour—the hour of her appointment. But Great Taylor turned her eyes away. "Pushing a junk-cart ain't so easy," she said, and for a moment she stood there huddled over the handle; then, taking a long, deep breath, like Grit used to do, she straightened herself and sang out, clear and loud, above the noises of the cavernous street: "Rags ... old iron ... ”

“ I had no sooner told this tale, but Sir Henry Witherington did acknowledge himself to be the man that I had given the loaf unto two and twenty years before, where I found the proverb true, that men have more privilege than mountains in meeting. ”

“ Taylor.—One of the greatest names in the annals of the English Church and of English literature is that of Jeremy Taylor. He was the son of a barber, and was born at Cambridge in 1613. A remarkably clever youth, he was educated at Cambridge, and soon owed his preferment to his talents, eloquence, and learning. An adherent of the king, he was appointed chaplain in the royal army, and was several times imprisoned. When the king's cause went down, and during the protectorate of Cromwell, he retired to Wales, where he kept a school, and was also chaplain to the Earl of Carberry. ”

“ Great welcome I had showed me all my stay at Edinburgh, by many worthy gentlemen, namely, old Master George Todrigg, Master Henry Livingston, Master James Henderson, Master John Maxwell, and a number of others, who suffered me to want no wine or good cheer, as may be imagined. ”

“ This goodly hall was built by King James the fourth, that married King Henry the Eight's sister, and after was slain at Flodden field; but it surpasses all the halls for dwelling houses that ever I saw, for length, breadth, height and strength of building, the castle is built upon a rock very lofty, and much beyond Edinburgh Castle in state and magnificence, and not much inferior to it in strength, the rooms of it are lofty, with carved works on the ceilings, the doors of each room being so high, that a man may ride upright on horseback into any chamber or lodging. ”

“ Just needs soldering." "What?" stammered Nell. "Fifty cents," shouted the woman in the window. And something prompted Great Taylor to reply, "Give you a dime."
"Quarter," insisted the woman. "Dime ... Ten cents," repeated Great Taylor, somewhat red in the face. "Once I set a price I'm a ..." But the woman's head had disappeared and her whole angular person soon slid out through the doorway. Entirely befogged, Great Taylor fumbled in her patent-leather bag with its worsted fruit, discovered two nickels, and placed the leaky boiler beside the rusty scales on the junk-cart. ”

“ I am an ardent advocate for the liberty of the press; but I think all will agree with me that as the press have undoubted power, they should be careful how that power is used in giving currency to personal attacks and exparte statements ”

“ His philology is helpless word-play. The attraction of his discourses was in his jocose manner; they exhibit no real humour, but his taunts are smart. His drollery, though of a low type, is never impure.
Released from gaol in 1833, Taylor retired from public view. He married an elderly lady of property; the marriage was a happy one, but it exposed Taylor to an action for breach of promise on the part of Miss Richards, to whom a jury awarded 250l. To escape paying this, Taylor removed to France, practising as a surgeon at Tours, where he died in September 1844. ”

“ Comparisons have been drawn between the meetings of our Institution, and those of a similar character, which it is asserted not only pay their own expenses, but yield a surplus for charity; but it must be borne in mind that our meetings are very superior to any of the same class, and that we have to pay for the hire of halls, for hirage of pianos, and occasionally for artistes, while the majority of other Readings have their rooms and pianos lent to them; these items, though not very great, materially increase the expenditure ”

“ When we think of his birth, training, and surroundings—the child of the plantation and the graduate of the forecastle—and contrast this with his peculiar powers, his strange career, and above all in rarity his wonderful world-wide mission, it is not too much to say that Father Taylor is without a parallel in American history. “An impulsive, untrained, and erratic genius;” there was a fixed purpose and a continuity of effort, such as is seen in few lives. If extravagant in speech and inconsistent in views, his intensity, vividness, and realism, make all sound like plain common-sense. ”

“ Alexander M. Shields was born in Knoxville. East Tennessee. April 28, 1865. He has been an egg collector and student of bird-life for over twenty years, and is, as will be seen, not quite old enough to be a great grandfather. He was always an ardent naturalist and spent all his idle moments in early boyhood in reading all available books on natural history. ”

“ The disturbed state of the continent being unfavourable to the prospects of their trade, he persuaded his father to retire on the fortune already made. The firm was dissolved in 1791; his father employed part of his capital in underwriting, not very successfully. Resisting his father's wish to put him into a London bank, Taylor gave himself henceforth to literature. He had already completed the three poetic translations which secured the recognition of his power to present German poetry in an English dress. ”

“ Conductor in the Bloomsbury County Court; and that “we beg further to state that though Mr. Taylor was requested by Lord Lichfield on the 3rd inst., (March) , to furnish a statement of his receipts and expenditure, he has not, up to the present time, thought fit to comply with the invitation.” Whether in issuing this circular Mr. C. J. Ribton Turner has been authorised to use the names appended to it, I cannot say; but this I can truly affirm,—that the said circular is a tissue of misrepresentations. In the first place, I was never requested by Lord Lichfield to furnish any account whatever. ”

“ His ‘Tales of Yore,’ 1810, 3 vols. 8vo (anon.) , was a collection of prose translations from French and German, begun in 1807. In May 1811 the stoppage of his father's London agent involved a loss of 200l. a year from an income already curtailed through American losses. A competence remained, but Taylor felt keenly the social consequences of a reduced style of living. ”

“ In 1753 he was instituted to the rectory of Ovington, Hampshire, resigning Wheatfield. In 1755 he was instituted to the rectory of Crawley, Hampshire, which he held with Portsmouth, resigning Ovington. Like his father, he was noted as a wit and a writer of humorous epigram. His graceful verses on wedlock, ‘Paradise Regain'd,’ are in Dodsley's ‘Collection’ (1758, vi. 126) .
Taylor was among the last of the Anglican divines of the Clarkean school; but he outran his master, openly espousing the Apollinarian heresy. ”

“ A subscription list is opened for the purpose of liquidating the debts of the Institution. Those who desire to testify their appreciation of our labours, will kindly send their subscriptions to our esteemed friend Edmond Beales, Esq., 4, Stone Buildings, Lincoln’s Inn, W.C., who has kindly consented to receive subscriptions, and to see that they are applied to the liquidation of our debts. ”

“ Shields' home is now in San Francisco, and although he occupies an important position as Pacific Coast Manager of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, he is still enabled to devote some time, although much less than formerly, to scientific matters. He is an enthusiastic sportsman as well as naturalist, and one of the phenomenal wing shots of California. ”

“ I think it a disgrace that any journal having the Flag of Freedom hanging over its head, should insert petty, and of course anonymous attacks at the instance of any one who advertises largely in their columns ”

“ Being now practically convinced that although these meetings could not be a financial success, they would accomplish their object and be very acceptable to the working classes—knowing that there were many noblemen p. 5and gentlemen who would willingly assist such a good and really charitable cause, I appealed to many I knew to be interested in the welfare and progress of the working man, and had the pleasure of receiving many affirmative and encouraging replies. ”