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Thomas Taylor, Platonist of the Romantic Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Frank B. Evans III
Frank B. Evans III*
Affiliation:
Tulane University
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Extract

A careful student of the Romantic poets will soon or late encounter the name of Thomas Taylor, whose chief claim to importance is that he was an extraordinarily diligent scholar and the first translator into English of all Plato's works. An inquirer will find brief and not always accurate accounts of this man in several encyclopedias; he will discover that certain nineteenth-century antiquarians wrote a number of sketches of Taylor in which fact is liberally sprinkled with fiction; and finally, he will come upon half a dozen more recent articles of a scholarly nature, including an almost complete bibliography of Taylor's books, three papers suggesting rather doubtful parallels between some passages of these and certain poems of Blake and Wordsworth, one which reprints from manuscript sources a few of Taylor's own poems, and another which endeavors unsuccessfully to demonstrate an acquaintance between Taylor and Shelley. Taylor's various translations and original works have also been cited occasionally in studies such as Professor Lowes's The Road to Xanadu. But with all this array of scholarship, imposing when it is called forth by a man so obscure as Thomas Taylor, there is still no comprehensive or accurate account of the man himself and his work. He is important, however, as the most energetic exponent of Platonism in England between the Cambridge Platonists and Benjamin Jowett, this at a time when Platonism once more became significant in literature after the eighteenth-century dismissal of Plato. Yet before we have a study of Taylor's Platonism in its relation to that of the Romantic poets, we should have a reasonably trustworthy biography of the man. For although it will not be found that Thomas Taylor was a person of hitherto unrecognized and startling importance for the student of literature, it is certain that he was known to such people as James Boswell, Thomas Holcroft, Thomas Love Peacock, Mary Wollstonecraft, probably William Blake, and quite possibly Shelley; that his books were read by Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and Emerson in America; and that he was a conspicuous figure in the intellectual world of England during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Since the available accounts of him are incomplete and contradictory, he deserves the services of a biographer who will simply collect and set forth the facts.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , December 1940 , pp. 1060 - 1079
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1940

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References

1 R. Balch, Thomas Taylor the Platonist 1758–1835; List of Original Works and Translations compiled for use in the Newberry Library (Chicago, 1917). F. E. Pierce, “Wordsworth and Thomas Taylor,” PQ, vii (1928), 60–64; “Blake and Thomas Taylor,” PMLA, xliii (1928), 1121–41; “Taylor, Aristotle, and Blake,” PQ, ix (1930), 363–370. F. P. Johnson, “Neo-Platonic Hymns by Thomas Taylor,” PQ, viii (1929), 145–156. J. A. Notopoulos, “Shelley and Thomas Taylor,” PULA, li (1936), 502–517. The last-named article, it should be mentioned, repeats on pages 509–510, without documentation, a passage from “The Survival of Paganism,” Fraset's Magazine, xii (1875), 643–644.

2 Gentleman's Magazine, v, New Series (1836), 91–92. This obituary is reprinted from the Athenœum, viii (1835), 874–875, where this attribution does not appear. The obituary itself is assigned by Edward Peacock, “Thomas Taylor, the Platonist,” The Antiquary, xviii (1888), 1–5, to Taylor's “friend, the late Mr. John Inglis”; but although Peacock knew a great deal about Taylor, the writer of the obituary did not.

3 The important documents relating to Taylor will be mentioned in the following notes. For the most complete bibliographies, see Balch, op. cit., or F. B. Evans, “A Bibliography of Thomas Taylor,” The Background of the Romantic Revival of Platonism (unpublished Princeton dissertation, 1938).

4 J. J. Welsh, A Brief Notice of Mr. Thomas Taylor (London, 1831), reprinted in Philobiblion, ii (1863), 151–158.

5 R. B. Gardiner, The Admission Registers of St. Paul's School from 1748 to 1876 (London 1884), p. 137.

6 Public Characters of 1798 (London: 1798), p. 69. Unless otherwise documented, all statements of facts and quotations are taken from this work, pp. 69–87, without further specific citation. It is not known who edited or published the series of Public Characters, which extended over about ten years.

7 Gardiner, op. cit., p. 137.

8 Welsh, op. cit., 151. I know of no evidence for the statement of J. M. Rigg, DNB, s.v. “Thomas Taylor,” that at St. Paul's the boy “suffered more by the cane than he profited by the classics.”

9 Gentleman's Magazine, loc. cit., 91. Worthington was a notable Arian divine, who lectured and preached at Salter's Hall from 1774 to his death in 1813.

10 J. C. Rust. N&Q, 2d series, iii (1857), 35, asserts on what is apparently the authority of personal information that this position was “a junior clerkship in Messrs. Lubbock's banking-house.”

11 “T.N.,” N&Q, 7th series, ix (1890), 194. “T.N.” found in the parish registers of St. Mary's records of the baptism of the following children, “presumably” those of Thomas Taylor and Mary Morton: George Barrow, July 28, 1779; John Buller, May 30, 1781; William Grainger, June 20, 1783; Thomas, May 16, 1785; Mary Meredith, November 2, 1787; and of the burial, on August 9, 1810, of Susanna. “T.N.” also gives the inscription on a tombstone in the churchyard, which by 1890 had been made a recreation ground: “Sacred / to the Memory of / Mary Taylor, Wife of / Thos Taylor of Walworth / who departed this Life / April 1st 1809 Aged 52 / Also of Susanna Taylor.” The rest of the inscription was buried. The absence of Susanna's name from the baptismal records may indicate that she was the first child, born before Taylor moved to Walworth. Mrs. Taylor was “in a state of pregnancy” while at Camberwell, according to Public Characters, and it is not improbable that the marriage took place as early as 1777.

12 I have been unable to examine this rare book. See the Monthly Review, lxiv (1781), 72, for a scornful notice of it.

13 Of Bodies (London, 1669), p. 439. The passage is quoted in Public Characters, slightly inexactly.

14 William Godwin, Memoirs and Posthumous Works of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Dublin, 1798), pp. 12–20. Godwin hints, p. 14, that Mary may have followed out in 1777 her “idea of quitting her parental roof”; it is therefore possible that this connection between her and Taylor began earlier than I have indicated in the text.

15 At Michaelmas, 1787, Mary took “a house in George-street, on the Surry side of Black Friar's Bridge,” where she remained until September, 1791; ibid., pp. 38, 55.

16 A. Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake, ed. W. G. Robertson (London, 1907), pp. 44 ff. F. E. Pierce (see note 1) has suggested some fifty parallels of thought and imagery between Blake's poems and some of Taylor's books. Many of these parallels presuppose that Blake saw Taylor's work before publication, or talked with him. Pierce suggests that the two men met through their mutual acquaintance with Flaxman; but he evidently did not know the specific circumstance, Taylor's lectures on Plato, which was more likely than a mere mutual acquaintance to bring them together.

17 Private Papers of James Boswell, ed. Geoffrey Scott (Mount Vernon, N. Y., 1928–34), xvi, 111. Boswell “wearied and went away soon.” Cf. ibid., xvi, 172, on February 27, 1786: “Taylor the Grecian joined us after dinner.” Public Characters mentions an occasion at Langton's when Dr. Charles Burney was present.

18 According to Public Characters, Meredith was interested in Plato through having read the translations by Floyer Sydenham (cf. note 31). The amount of Meredith's annuity is given in the Athenaeum, viii (1835), 875. in an obituary of Taylor.

19 Monthly Review, lxxix (1788), 133–144; ibid., lxxxi (1789), 324.

20 On March 30, 1787, Boswell, op. cit., xvii, 21, recorded: “For an hour before dinner I read Taylor's Preface to his translation of Orpheus. It fanned my mind to perceive him quite absorbed in the wildness of Ancient Metaphysicks.” Both Mystical Initiations and Concerning the Beautiful were reissued in 1792, the first under a new title, The Hymns of Orpheus.

21 Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. P. Toynbee (Oxford, 1903–05), xiv, 238.

22 Analytical Review, xvii (1793), 176.

23 The Mystical Initiations (London, 1787), p. 226.

24 Ibid., pp. 226–227.

25 The Life of Thomas Holcroft, ed. Elbridge Colby (London, 1925), ii, 194–195. J. J. Welsh, op. cit., describes Taylor, however, as kindly, gracious, and an “acute observer of men and manners.”

26 See Porson's remarks in the Morning Chronicle, 1794, quoted by J. S. Watson, The Life of Richard Porson (London, 1861), p. 204.—When the British Critic, v (1795), 1–11, exposed the inferior scholarship of his translation of Pausanias, Taylor replied in an appendix to The Fable of Cupid and Psyche and thereafter kept up a running battle with his critics. For other comment on his merits, see J. Barthelémy-St. Hilaire, Victor Cousin, sa Vie et sa Correspondance (Paris, 1895), iii, 245, and R. J., “Note-Book of a Literary Idler No. 1,” Blackwood's Magazine, xvii (1825), 736–744. Opinions more favorable than these appear in Lebensnachrichten über Barthold Georg Niebuhr (n.p., 1838), i, 239–240, and in Knight's Penny Cyclopedia (London, 1842), xxiv, 134.

27 Walpole, op. cit., xiv, 238.

28 The Pursuits of Literature, Part iii (London, 1797), pp. 7–8.

29 Vaurien, or Sketches of the Times (London, 1797). Cf. Curiosities of Literature (London 1834), i, 311–317.

30 Works of Walter Savage Landor, ed. T. E. Welby (London, 1927–36), iii, 221: “Taylor the Platonist had resolved on sacrificing a bull to Jupiter: foolish enough: more foolish to select for the place of sacrifice a little back-parlor-floor. The bull whisked his tail in the worshipper's face, inculcating the immediate necessity of a fresh ablution, and burst away through the window.” Another reference to the same story may be found in the Saturday Review, xiv (1862), 27.

31 Floyer Sydenham's translations of the Ion (1759), Greater Hippias (1759), Lesser Hippias (1761), Banquet (1761), Meno (1769), Rivals and First Alcibiades (1773), Philebus (1779–80), and Second Alcibiades (n.d.), all published at London; and Hary [sic] Spens, The Republic (Glasgow, 1763). For Taylor's use of these see The Works of Plato (London, 1804), i, cvi–cvii.

32 Howard (cf. DNB) was made president of the Royal Society of Arts on March 22, 1794. In April, 1798, Taylor was elected assistant secretary, a position which he resigned in November, 1805, for reasons of health. Cf. Sir H. Wood, A History of the Royal Society of Arts (London: 1913). pp. 339–340.

33 J. C. Rust, N&Q, 2d series, iii (1857), 35; Biographie Universelle (Paris, 1843–58), xli, 100; Nouvelle Biographie Générale (Paris, 1865), xliv, 942–943; Encyclopedia Americana (New York, 1937), xxvi, 302.

34 Edinburgh Review, xiv (1809), 187.

35 W. T. Lowndes, The Bibliographer's Manual, ed. H. G. Bohn (London, 1858–64), iv, 1877. Cf. O. M. Sanford, “Works of Thomas Taylor the Platonist,” Book-Lore, ii (1885), 176: “This edition lay for 44 years entombed at Arundel Castle.” But The Works of Plato was regularly announced as published between October 25, 1803, and January 20, 1804, in the Edinburgh Review, iii (1804), 505. Cf. also The London Catalogue of Books (London, 1822), p. 134.

36 J. A. Notopoulos, op. cit., 504, calls this edition “the standard and most popular translation of the day” ! It is cited also by F. E. Pierce.

37 By W. Horneman, Gentleman's Magazine, xiii, New Series (1840), 480.

38 Edinburgh Review, xiv (1809), 188.

39 Ibid., 189–190.

40 Ibid., 201.

41 Ibid., 191–192.

42 A traditional interpretation based on Cicero, Academica, i, xii, where it is said that in Plato “nihil adfirmatur et in utramque partem multa disseruntur, de omnibus quaeritur, nihil certi dicitur.”

43 Edinburgh Review, loc. cit., 199–200.

44 Ibid., 190.

45 Athenaeum, viii (1835), 874–875—Taylor's first wife had died in 1809 (cf. note 10), but he had married again; for the Gentleman's Magazine, xciii (1823), 571, records among the deaths on April 25, 1823, “In the 30th year of her age, the wife of Thomas Taylor, the Platonist.”

46 D. Hipwell, N&Q, 7th series, ix (1890), 194, gives the extract from the parish register: “P. 96. Burials in the Parish of Saint Mary Newington, in the County of Surrey—in the Year 1835. Name: Thomas Taylor. Abode: Manor Place. When Buried: Novr 6th. Age: 78 Years. By whom the Ceremony was Performed: J. G. Webster Offg Min. No. 764.”

47 The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Centenary edition (Cambridge, Mass., 1903–04), viii, 50. For Emerson's high opinion, cf. A. F., “Mr. Emerson in the Lecture Room,” Atlantic Monthly, li (1883), 818–832. Taylor's influence in America deserves a special study.

48 Emerson, op. cit., v, 295

49 Ibid., v, 400.

50 In the notes to the first edition of Thalaba; cf. W. Haller, The Early Life of Robert Southey (New York, 1917), p. 336.

51 The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, ed. R. F. Prothero (London, 1898–1901), v, 574.

52 “Sale Catalogue of the Library at Rydal Mount,” Transactions of the Wordsworth Society, vi (1881), 197–257, item 147.

53 The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. R. Ingpen (London, 1915), ii, 548.

54 Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, ed. J. W. Wärter (London, 1856), I, 192.

55 Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. E. H. Coleridge (Boston, 1895), I, 181.

56 Memorials of Coleorton, ed. W. Knight (New York, 1887), ii, 107.

57 J. L. Lowes, The Road to Xanadu (Boston, 1927), pp. 231–232, has briefly noticed Coleridge's knowledge of Taylor; cf. also p. 236 and pp. 393–394.

58 “Sale Catalogue,” op. cit., item 408.

59 “Wordsworth and Thomas Taylor,” PQ, vii (1928), 60–64.

60 T. J. Hogg, Life of Shelley (London, 1858), I, 192.

61 Ibid. W. E. Peck's note, Shelley, his Life and Work (Boston, 1927), I, 75, is badly confused about the translations of Plato which Hogg mentions. Peck finds in the list Taylor's “Dialogues of Plato,” which is meaningless. J. A. Notopoulos, op. cit., 504, says that Hogg's statement “definitely” informs us that Shelley had The Works of Plato. Hogg himself is inconsistent; he says, I, 103, “our knowledge of Plato was derived solely from Dacier's translation of a few of the dialogues, and from an English version of that French translation.”

62 R. H. Hill, The Shelley Correspondence in the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1926), p. 47.

63 See The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. R. Ingpen (London, 1915), I, xxxv–xxxvi, for Shelley's relations with Howard.

64 Printed in A. Kozul, Shelley's Prose in the Bodleian Manuscripts (London, 1910), pp. 124–125, and in The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. R. Ingpen and W. E. Peck (London, 1926–30), vii, 151.

65 The Arguments, etc., pp. vi–vii.

66 Part viii, ll. 211–212.

67 D. L. Clark, “The Date and Source of Shelley's A Vindication of Natural Diet,” SP, xxxvi (1939), 70–76.

68 Biographical Anecdotes of the Founders of the French Republic, attributed to John Adolphus, 2d ed. (London, 1799), i, 172. Some bibliographies make Taylor the author of Animals and Vegetables (London, 1786); Balch, op. cit., rightly rejects this book.

69 Works of Shelley, i, 161.

70 The London Magazine and Theatrical Inquisitor, iv (July, 1821), 31–35, reprinted by N. I. White, The Unextinguished Hearth (Durham, N. C., 1938), pp. 263–269. The same article was reprinted from The Medical Adviser of December 6, 1823, by a writer in Book-Lore, iii (1886), 121–132, and from the London Liberal of 1823 by A. Kozul, La Jeunesse de Shelley (Paris, 1910), pp. 419–127.

71 White, op. cit., p. 266.

72 Notopoulos, op. cit., 515.

73 Works of Thomas Love Peacock, ed. H. F. B. Brett-Smith and C. E. Jones (London, 1934), i, xcvii–viii. Cf. also i, clxxiv.

74 Ibid., ii, 65.

75 Ibid., ii, 67.