Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/496

 published ’The Alphabet' (2 vols.; 2nd edit. 1899). He was one of the first to apply the principle of selection — in this case he called it the Law of Least Effort — to the evolution of written symbols, a discovery which led a critic to call him 'the Darwin of philology.' His scientific reputation rests mainly on this book, which, though now partially superseded by subsequent researches, remains a scholarly and exhaustive inquiry, set forth in admirably lucid English.

His studies of the alphabet led Taylor to the problem of the Runes, and his conclusion that they were derived from Greek sources he embodied in a separate volume, 'Greeks and Goths' (1879). In 1889 he wrote 'The Origin of the Aryans' for the 'Contemporary Science' series. It assailed the hitherto accepted theory of Max Müller as to a Central Asian cradle of the Aryans, and maintained that kinship of race cannot be postulated from kinship of speech. A French translation was published at Paris in 1895. Taylor took a prominent part in the Domesday celebration of 1886, and contributed three essays to the memorial volume (1888). Notes for a revised and enlarged version of 'Words and Places,' which his health disabled him from completing, appeared as an alphabetically arranged handbook of historical geography — 'Names and their Histories' (1896; 2nd edit. 1897). He wrote many articles for the new edition of 'Chambers's Encyclopædia,' and was a frequent contributor to the 'Academy,' the 'Athenæum,' and 'Notes and Queries.' In 1879 the University of Edinburgh conferred on him the honorary degree of LL.D., and in 1885 he was made doctor of letters by his own University of Cambridge.

Taylor's versatile interests embraced the practice of photography and the study of botany, entomology, geology, and archæology. He was an original member of the Alpine Club, joining in 1858; he retired in 1891. He died on 18 Oct. 1901 at Settrington, Yorkshire, and was buried there. He married, on 31 July 1865, Georgiana Anne, daughter of Henry Cockayne Cust, canon of Windsor. His only child, Elizabeth Eleanor, married in 1903 Mr. Ernest Davies.

 TAYLOR, JOHN EDWARD (1830–1905), art collector and newspaper proprietor, second son of John Edward Taylor [q. v.], founder of the 'Manchester Guardian,' was born at Woodland Terrace, Higher Broughton, on 2 Feb. 1830. He received a desultory education under Dr. Beard, the unitarian minister, at Higher Broughton, Dr. Heldermayer at Worksop, and Daniel Davies at Whitby, and at the University College School, London. In 1848-9 he went through some journalistic routine at Manchester and was for some months a student at the university of Bonn. He entered the Inner Temple on 25 Jan. 1850, and was called to the bar on 6 June 1853 (, Men at the Bar, p. 459). His father's death in 1844, and that of his elder brother, Russell Scott Taylor, B.A., a young man of great promise, on 16 Sept. 1848, left him sole proprietor of the 'Manchester Guardian,' which in 1855 he transformed from a bi-weekly to a daily, and which he reduced in price from two-pence to one penny. In the interval he made an effort — at first unsuccessful — to obtain independent reports of parliamentary proceedings, the provincial press being then and for some years afterwards entirely dependent on the often inadequate and inaccurate reports supplied by news agencies. After an agitation which lasted some years, and in which Taylor took a very prominent part, the Press Association was started in 1868 and obtained a footing in the gallery of the House of Commons (, Then and Now, pp. 11-12, 129, 132).

In 1868 he acquired the 'Manchester Evening News,' which had been started by Mitchell Henry [q. v. Suppl. II]; in 1874 he was, with Peter Rylands, an unsuccessful candidate in the liberal interest for S.E. Lancashire. An early supporter of Owens College, he was appointed one of its trustees in 1864, and a life governor in 1874. From 1854 till death he was a trustee of Manchester College, a unitarian college, which had been transferred to London in 1853, and thence to Oxford in 1889. He became a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society on 22 Jan. 1856. An ardent educationalist, he helped to found in 1863 the Manchester Education Aid Society. He advocated temperance and free trade, and was deeply interested in the British and Foreign Bible Society. A liberal contributor to party funds, he refused a baronetcy offered him by Lord Rosebery in 1895. At the time of his death he was head of the firm of Taylor, Garnett & Co., newspaper proprietors, senior partner of W. Evans & Co., proprietors of the 'Manchester Evening News,' and a director