Turvy’s Wonderful Magic Lantern; or, The World Turned Upside Down (1810), and Original Hymns for Sunday School (1812). In 1813 Ann married a Congregational minister, the Rev. Josiah Gilbert, and Jane went to live at Ilfracombe with her brother Isaac. In 1816 Jane returned to Ongar, where the family had been settled for some years, and died there on the 13th of April 1824. Mrs Gilbert died at Nottingham on the 20th of December 1866. Both sisters wrote after their separation, but none of their later works had the same vogue. Jane showed more wit and vivacity than her sister, notably in the Contributions of Q. Q. (2 vols., 1824), and in Display, a Tale for Young People (1815); but, though she was generally supposed to be the chief writer of the two, some of the most famous pieces in their joint works, such as “I thank the goodness and the grace,” “Meddlesome Matty,” “The Notorious Glutton,” &c., are by Ann.
The best edition of the Poetical Works of the sisters is that of 1877. There is an excellent edition (1903) of the Original Poems and Others, by Ann and Jane Taylor and Adelaide O'Keeffe, edited by E. V. Lucas, with illustrations by F. D. Bedford.
Abundant information about Ann and Jane Taylor is to be found in: Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs Gilbert (2 vols., 1874), edited by her son Josiah Gilbert; Isaac Taylor, Memoirs . . . of Jane Taylor (2 vols., 1825), and the collection by the same editor entitled The Family Pen: Memorials . . . of the Taylor Family of Ongar, vol. ii. (1867).
TAYLOR, BAYARD (1825–1878), American author, was born at Kennett Square in Chester county, Pennsylvania, on the
11th of January 1825. The son of a well-to-do farmer, he
received his early instruction in an academy at West Chester,
and later at Unionville. At the age of seventeen he was
apprenticed to a printer in West Chester. A little volume,
published at Philadelphia in 1844 under the title Ximena, or the Battle of the Sierra Morena, and other Poems, brought its author
a little cash; and indirectly it did him better service as the
means of his introduction to The New York Tribune. With the
money thus obtained, and with an advance made to him on
account of some journalistic work to be done in Europe, “J. B.
Taylor” (as he had up to this time signed himself, though he
bore no other Christian name than Bayard) set sail for the East.
The young poet spent a happy time in roaming through certain
districts of England, France, Germany and Italy; that he
was a born traveller is evident from the fact that this pedestrian
tour of almost two years cost him only £100. The graphic
accounts which he sent from Europe to The New York Tribune,
The Saturday Evening Post, and The United States Gazette were
so highly appreciated that on Taylor’s return to America he
was advised to throw his articles into book form. In 1846,
accordingly, appeared his Views Afoot, or Europe seen with
Knapsack and Staff (2 vols., New York). This pleasant book
had considerable popularity, and its author now found himself
a recognized man of letters; moreover, Horace Greeley, then
editor of the Tribune, placed Taylor on the Tribune staff (1848)
thus securing him a certain if a moderate income. His next
journey, made when the gold-fever was at its height, was to
California, as correspondent for the Tribune; from this
expedition he returned by way of Mexico, and, seeing his
opportunity, published (2 vols., New York, 1850) a highly successful
book of travels, entitled El Dorado; or, Adventures in the Path
of Empire. Ten thousand copies were said to have been sold
in America, and thirty thousand in Great Britain, within a
fortnight from the date of issue. Bayard Taylor always
considered himself native to the East, and it was with great delight
that in 1851 he found himself on the banks of the Nile. He
ascended as far as 12° 30′ N., and stored his memory with
countless sights and delights, to many of which he afterwards
gave expression in metrical form. From England, towards
the end of 1852, he sailed for Calcutta, proceeding thence to
China, where he joined the expedition of Commodore Perry
to Japan. The results of these journeys (besides his poetical
memorials) were A Journey to Central Africa; or, Life and
Landscapes from Egypt to the Negro Kingdoms of the White Nile
(New York, 1854); The Lands of the Saracen; or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain (1854); and A Visit to India, China and Japan in the Year 1853 (1855). On his
return (December 20, 1853) from these various journeyings he
entered, with marked success, upon the career of a public
lecturer, delivering addresses in every town of importance
from Maine to Wisconsin. After two years' experience of this
lucrative profession, he again started on his travels, on this
occasion for northern Europe, his special object being the
study of Swedish life, language and literature. The most
noteworthy result was the long narrative poem Lars, but his
“Swedish Letters ” to the Tribune were also republished,
under the title Northern Travel: Summer and Winter Pictures
(London, 1857). His first wife, May Agnew, died (1850) within a
year of her marriage, and in October 1857 he married Maria
Hansen, the daughter of Peter Hansen, the German astronomer.
The ensuing winter was spent in Greece. In 1859 Taylor once more
traversed the whole extent of the western American gold region,
the primary cause of the journey lying in an invitation to
lecture at San Francisco. About three years later he entered
the diplomatic service as secretary of legation at St Petersburg,
and the following year (1863) became chargé d'affaires at the
Russian capital. In 1864 he returned to the United States
and resumed his active literary labours, and it was at this
period that Hannah Thurston (New York, 1863), the first of his
four novels, was published. This book had a moderate success,
but neither in it nor in its successors did Bayard Taylor betray
any special talent as a novelist. In 1874 he, went to Iceland, to
report for the Tribune the one thousandth anniversary of the first
settlement there. In June 1878 he was accredited United States
minister at Berlin. Notwithstanding the resistless passion for
travel which had always possessed him, Bayard Taylor was (when
not actually en route) sedentary in his habits, especially in the
later years of his life. His death occurred on the 19th of
December, only a few months after his arrival in Berlin.
Taylor’s most ambitious productions in poetry—his Masque of the Gods (Boston, 1872), Prince Deukalion; a lyrical drama (Boston, 1878), The Picture of St John (Boston, 1866), Lars; a Pastoral of Norway (Boston, 1873), and The Prophet; a tragedy (Boston, 1874) are marred by a ceaseless effort to overstrain his power. But he will be remembered by his poetic and excellent translation of Faust (2 vols., Boston, 1870-71) in the original metres. Taylor felt, in all truth, “the torment and the ecstasy of verse”; but, as a critical friend has written of him, “his nature was so ardent, so full-blooded, that slight and common sensations intoxicated him, and he estimated their effect, and his power to transmit it to others, beyond the true value.” He had, from the earliest period at which he began to compose, a distinct lyrical faculty: so keen indeed was his ear that he became too insistently haunted by the music of others, pre-eminently of Tennyson. But he had often a true and fine note of his own. His best short poems are “The Metempsychosis of the Pine” and the well-known Bedouin love-song. In his critical essays Bayard Taylor had himself in no inconsiderable degree what he wrote of as “that pure poetic insight which is the vital spirit of criticism.” The most valuable of these prose dissertations are the Studies in German Literature (New York, 1879). Collected editions of his Poetical Works and his Dramatic Works were published at Boston in 1888; his Life and Letters (Boston, 2 vols., 1884) were edited by his wife and Horace E. Scudder.
See also Albert H. Smyth, Bayard Taylor (Boston, 1896), in the “American Men of Letters” series; and W. D. Howells’s Literary Friends and Acquaintances (1900).
TAYLOR, BROOK (1685–1731), English mathematician, was the son of John Taylor, of Bifrons House, Kent, by Olivia, daughter of Sir Nicholas Tempest, Bart., of Durham, and was born at Edmonton in Middlesex on the 18th of August 1685. He entered St John’s College, Cambridge, as a fellow-commoner in 1701, and took degrees of LL.B. and LL.D. respectively in 1709 and 1714. Having studied mathematics under John Machin and John Keill, he obtained in 1708 a remarkable solution of the problem of the “centre of oscillation,” which, however, remaining unpublished until May 1714 (Phil. Trans., vol. xxviii. p. 11), his claim to priority was unjustly disputed by John Bernoulli. Taylor’s Methodus Incrementorum Directa et Inversa (London, 1715) added a new branch to the higher mathematics, now designated the “calculus of finite differences.” Among other ingenious applications, he used it to determine
