TAYLOR
TAYLOR
in London, and led a very active and useful
life. She edited Buckle s works (1872),
and Mill s Autobiography (1873) and Essays
on Religion (1874). In 1876, and again in
1879 and 1882, she was elected to the
London School Board. Miss Taylor was
conspicuous as a friend of the poor children
of London. She worked for the abolition
of school-fees and the provision of free
food and boots for the children of the
poorer workers, and exposed many scandals
in industrial schools. At her own expense
she provided dinners and boots for a large
number of children. She worked also for
land nationalization and the enfranchise
ment of women. In 1885 she offered her
self at North Camberwell as a Parlia
mentary candidate, but her nomination
paper was rejected. The later years of
her life were spent at Avignon. D. Jan.
29, 1907.
TAYLOR, Robert, writer. B. Aug. 18, 1784. Ed. Edmonton. He was articled as pupil to a surgeon, walked the hospitals, and was admitted a member of the College of Surgeons in 1807. Taylor entered upon a phase of great piety. After brilliant studies at Cambridge, he was ordained priest in 1813 and appointed curate at Midhurst. Five years later a parishioner induced him to read Rationalist literature, which destroyed his beliefs. He resigned, and advertised in the Times for employ ment, bluntly stating his reasons. At his mother s piteous demand he burned his Deistic literature and returned to the ministry ; but his preaching was Deistic, and he was expelled. He went to teach in Ireland, and began to attack the Church. Returning to London in 1824, he petitioned the House of Commons to permit him to lecture on natural religion, and he founded a " Christian Evidence Society." In 1826 he opened a Deistic chapel, and for one of his sermons he was sentenced to a year in gaol ; in 1831, again, he was convicted of blasphemy, and sentenced to two years in prison and a fine of 200. Taylor used to " preach " in episcopal garments, and called
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himself a Christian. He was a friend of
Richard Carlile, and wrote in the Lion.
But his system was pure Deism. He took
up the solar-myth theory of Christianity,
and elaborated it with considerable (but
not very reliable) learning in his Syntagma
of the Evidences of the Christian Religion
(1828) and The Diegesis (1829). D. June 5,
1844.
TAYLOR, Thomas, Hellenist. B. May 15, 1758. Ed. St. Paul s School and Sheerness. At Sheerness Taylor read Bolingbroke and Hume, and left the school " a complete sceptic " ( Diet. Nat. Biog.). He served for a time in a London school, then entered Lubbock s bank. In his leisure he made a thorough study of Greek philosophy, and became a high authority on the Neo-Platonists. Mary Wollstonecraft lived for a time at his house. He was chosen assistant secretary to the Society of Arts in 1798, but resigned in 1806 in order to devote himself entirely to study. Taylor professed a kind of Polytheism of the Neo-Platonist type. He translated from the Greek a large number of works of Plotinus, Proclus, Plato, Aristotle, lam- blichus, Julian, and Porphyry altogether about fifty volumes and gave expression to his own similar views in A New System of Religion (1791) and Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (1805). D. Nov. 1, 1835.
TAYLOR, William, writer. B. Nov. 7, 1765. Ed. privately. His father, a Nor wich manufacturer, sent him to travel abroad for three years, and he then entered the business. For a time he belonged to a revolutionary society at Norwich, but when the period of repression set in he abandoned politics and joined a " Specu lative Society " for the discussion of philo sophy. His firm was dissolved in 1791, and Taylor, who was already fairly well known for his translations from the Ger man, devoted himself entirely to study and letters. He obtained a high repute as a literary critic, and was familiarly known as " Taylor of Norwich." His chief 784
