Works
Three early poetic translations from German brought him to notice. Georg Herzfeld wrongly assigned to him the political song, ‘The Trumpet of Liberty,’ first published in the Norfolk Chronicle on 16 July 1791, having been sung on 14 July at a dinner commemorating the fall of the Bastille; Edward Taylor claimed it for his father, John Taylor, of the unrelated Norwich family. William Taylor's name was made by his translation of Gottfried August Bürger's Lenore into English ballad metre. This was written in 1790, and bore the title Lenora; sent it to his friend Benzler from Detmold (then in Wernigerode); a previous version had been made in 1782 by Henry James Pye, but was not published till 1795, and was unknown to Taylor. The translation, circulated in manuscript, was made the foundation of a ballad (1791) by John Aikin, and was read by Anna Barbauld in 1794 at a literary gathering in the house of Dugald Stewart in Edinburgh. Stewart's brother-in-law, George Cranstoun (Lord Corehouse) gave his recollection of it to Walter Scott, who produced his own version (1796) of the poem, entitled William and Helen. The announcement of the almost simultaneous publication of Scott's version and three others had led Taylor to publish his in the Monthly Magazine in March 1796; he then published it separately as Ellenore, revised with some input from the version by William Robert Spencer.
To 1790 belong also his translations of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Nathan the Wise and Goethe's Iphigenia in Tauris. The former was first published in 1805. The Iphigenia was submitted to Benzler before September 1790, but was not printed till 1793 (for private distribution); and published 1794. In 1795 Taylor sent a copy to Goethe, through Benzler. A volume of Christoph Martin Wieland's ‘Dialogues of the Gods,’ 1795, contained four dialogues; five more dialogues were included in his ‘Historic Survey’ (1828–30).
Taylor's career as a prolific literary critic began in April 1793 with an article in the Monthly Review on his friend Frank Sayers's Disquisitions. To this review (with a break, 1800–1809) he contributed till 1824; to the Monthly Magazine from its start till 1824; to the Annual Review from 1802 to 1807; to the Critical Review, 1803–4 and 1809; to the Athenæum, 1807–8, making a total of 1754 articles. He wrote also for the Cambridge Intelligencer, conducted by Benjamin Flower, from 20 July 1793 to 18 June 1803, and was concerned in two short-lived Norwich magazines, the Cabinet (October 1794–5), issued in conjunction with Sayers, and the Iris (5 February 1803–29 January 1804), to which Robert Southey was a contributor. To the Foreign Quarterly (1827) he contributed one article. His friends teased him on the peculiarities of his diction, which James Mackintosh styled the Taylorian language: he coined words such as ‘transversion,’ ‘body-spirit,’ and ‘Sternholdianism. Some of his terms, ruled out by the editor of the Monthly Review as ‘not English,’ have since become accepted—for instance, ‘rehabilitated.’ He forecast steam navigation (1804); advised the formation of colonies in Africa (1805); and projected the Panama Canal (1824).
Taylor suggested to Southey the publication of an annual collection of verse, on the plan of the Almanach des Muses, and contributed to both volumes of this Annual Anthology (1799–1800), using the signatures ‘Ryalto’ (an anagram) and ‘R. O.’ To the second volume he contributed specimens of English hexameters, which he had first attempted in the Monthly Magazine, 1796. As editor of A Voyage to the Demerary (1807) by Henry Bolingbroke, he expressed himself in favour of a regulated slave trade.
His family financial affairs were not prospering, and he wrote more for money. His ‘Tales of Yore,’ 1810, 3 vols. (anon.), was a collection of prose translations from French and German, begun in 1807. On the basis of his magazine articles he issued his ‘English Synonyms Described,’ 1813, a work from which his old schoolfellow George Crabb borrowed much (1824) without specific acknowledgment; it was reissued in 1850 and subsequently; a German translation appeared in 1851. In 1823 he edited the works of his friend Sayers, prefixing an elaborate biography.
His major work, the ‘Historic Survey of German Poetry,’ 1828–30, 3 vols., was behind the times. It is a patchwork of previous articles and translations, with digressions. His last publication was a ‘Memoir,’ 1831, of Philip Meadows Martineau, a Norwich surgeon, written in conjunction with F. Elwes.
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