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Thomas Taylor's Biography
by
G. E. Bentley, Jr.
In the last thirty years there has been a surprising amount of speculation about the influence of the enthusiastic Platonist Thomas Taylor upon most of the major poets of the Romantic Movement.[1] There is great difficulty in establishing these claims, because, although Taylor was notorious as "the English Pagan," his life and friendships are shrouded in considerable
Adelphi, Society of Arts
Octr: 7th 1798
Dear Sir
A volume will be published next month entitled "Public Characters of the Year 98". In this volume I am to make my appearance: and as the Editor requested me for this purpose to give him some memoirs of my stormy life, I have drawn up as accurate an Account of myself as memory would permit; thinking it was better to be my own executioner, than to be murdered by any editor, or hierling Author in Great Britain. In the course of these memoirs, I have taken care to inform the world, that it was principally owing to you, that I was enabled to emerge from the obscurity & servility of a Bankers Clerk; & have mentioned you as well known, by the publication of several ingenious
I remain
Yours sincerely
Thomas Taylor
[4]
Scholars interested in the career of Thomas Taylor may therefore accept as absolutely authoritative the essay in Public Characters of 1798.
Notes
See especially F.B. Evans, "Thomas Taylor, Platonist of the Romantic Period," PMLA, LV (1940), 1060-1079; J.A. Notopoulos, "Shelley and Thomas Taylor," PMLA, LI (1936), 502-517 and The Platonism of Shelley, 1949; F.E. Pierce, "Blake and Thomas Taylor," PMLA, XLIII (1928), 1121-1141; "Taylor, Aristotle and Blake," PQ, IX (1930), 363-370; and "Wordsworth and Thomas Taylor," PQ, VII (1928), 60-64; F.F. Johnson, "Neo-Platonic Hymns by Thomas Taylor," PQ, VIII (1929), 145-156; G.M. Harper, "The Source of Blake's 'Ah! Sun-flower'," MLR, XLVIII (1953), 139-142; "The Neo-Platonic Concept of Time in Blake's Prophetic Books," PMLA, LXIX (1954), 142-155; "Thomas Taylor and Blake's Drama of Persephone," PQ, XXXIV (1955), 378-394; and "Symbolic Meaning in Blake's 'Nine Years'," MLN, LXXII (1957), 18-19; B. Blackstone, The Consecrated Urn (about Keats), 1959. There are also half a dozen unpublished dissertations.
Cf. "Blake's Engravings and his Friendship with Flaxman," SB, XII (1959). According to the rate books in Westminster Public Library, Buckingham Palace Road, London, Flaxman lived in a small house at 24 Wardour Street in 1783-84 when the lectures were given in his house. George Cumberland was the first man to praise Blake in print, in a previously unnoticed review of the Royal Academy exhibition in the Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, May 27th 1780. It seems likely that Blake's method of printing his illuminated books was derived from Cumberland's article on a "New Mode of Printing," A New Review, IV (October 1784), 318-319. Paradoxically, on January 22nd 1809 Cumberland referred to this as "Blakes Method" (B.M. MSS., 36,501 f.360).
Quoted from a microfilm of the manuscript in the collections of The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Though Taylor does not appear in the list of friends to whom Cumberland sent copies of his Thoughts on Outline (B.M. MSS., 36,518, f.60), he evidently sent him a copy as a result of the above letter, for on October 16th 1798 Taylor thanked him for it (B.M. MSS., 36,498, f.246), though he did not mention the plates by Blake. Taylor may have told the publisher of the Public Characters, Richard Phillips, of what he had done, for Phillips wrote asking Cumberland to use his great knowledge of public figures to correct the volume (B.M. MSS., 36,498, f.267). A little later (February 6th 1799), Cumberland's cousin Richard wrote saying that he too had written an autobiographical essay for the Public Characters (B.M. MSS., 36,498, f. 278).
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