Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/438

, Thomas Dekker, and other men of genius took kindly notice of him. Both court and city seem to have been highly diverted by the boisterous insolence with which Taylor persistently assailed [q. v.] in his earlier pasquinades. In the ‘Sculler,’ 1612, Coryate was so ‘nipt, galled, and bitten,’ that he vowed revenge. To make ‘amends,’ as he said, Taylor next issued a little pamphlet bearing the innocent-sounding title of ‘Laugh and be Fat,’ 1613, but in reality a clever burlesque of the ‘Odcombian Banquet.’ This attack was more than Coryate could bear. He therefore moved the ‘superiour powers’ with such effect that Taylor's skit was ordered to be burnt. In these writings, both on Coryate and others, Taylor denied that he intended either harm or injury; and his ‘Farewell’ to Coryate appended to his ‘Praise of Hemp-seed,’ 1620, is not destitute of good feeling.

In 1613 Taylor was commissioned to arrange the details of the water pageant on the Thames at the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth (Remembrancia, ed. Overall, p. 411), by whom he was afterwards kindly entertained in Bohemia. He also composed the triumphs at the grand water procession of Lord-mayor Parkhurst in 1634 (, Watermen's Company, i. 225), and the pageant with which Lord-mayor Gurney welcomed Charles I on his return from Scotland in 1641 (, Biogr. Chron. of Engl. Drama, ii. 260). Taylor visited the continent in 1616, and gave the result of his wanderings in a volume published the following year with a ludicrous dedication to ‘Sir’ Thomas Coryate, of whose ‘Crudities’ it is a travesty. In 1618 he undertook to travel on foot from London to Edinburgh without taking a penny in his pocket, nor ‘begging, borrowing, or asking meat, drink, or lodging.’ He went, however, far beyond Edinburgh, penetrating even to the wilds of Braemar, and there he became the guest of the Earl of Mar at a hunting encampment among the hills (Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. pp. xxii, 533). The sport inspired him with two sonnets. On his return to Leith he met Ben Jonson, who, although suspecting that Taylor's intention might be to turn his own expedition into ridicule, gave him a piece of gold ‘of two-and-twenty shillings’ wherewith to drink his health in England (, Drummond of Hawthornden, pp. 88–91). Having previously obtained sixteen hundred names for his account of this tour, which he called ‘The Pennyles Pilgrimage’ (1618), Taylor felt justified in having forty-five hundred copies printed; but more than half the subscribers refused to pay on the ground that Taylor had not observed the conditions of the journey. Thereupon Taylor lashed the ‘defaulters’ to his heart's content in a diverting satire called ‘A Kicksey Winsey’ (1619). Another of his eccentric freaks was to start one Saturday evening along with a vintner on a voyage from London to Queenborough in Kent, in a brown-paper boat with two stockfish tied to two canes for oars; before he and his companion had covered three miles the paper bottom fell to pieces; though they ultimately reached their destination on Monday morning more dead than alive. Shortly after this Taylor fulfilled a wagering journey to Bohemia (1620), and at Prague enjoyed the queen's bounty; he also had her youngest son, Prince Rupert, in his arms, and brought away the infant's shoes as a memento of his visit. In 1622 another whimsical journey from London to York was undertaken by him. On his way thither by sea, being forced by stress of weather to land at Cromer in Norfolk, he and his four companions were mistaken for pirates and put under custody, while guards were set over their wherry. In 1623 he made a somewhat similar voyage to Salisbury, which he describes as the worst or the best for ‘toyle, travail, and danger’ he had yet made. Many other such journeys were made to various parts, each one resulting in a booklet with an odd title.

In 1625, the plague being epidemic in London, Taylor sought safety at Oxford, and was there allowed a lodging in Oriel College. He employed this period of enforced leisure in study. Upon the outbreak of the civil war in 1642, he again retired to Oxford, ‘where,’ says Wood, ‘he was much esteemed by the court and poor remnant of scholars for his facetious company.’ Here he kept a public-house and tried to serve the royal cause by penning lampoons against the parliamentarians. The king made him a yeoman of the guard.

When Oxford surrendered in June 1645, Taylor returned to London and took the Crown (now the Ship), a public-house in Phœnix Alley (rechristened Hanover Court), Long Acre. After the king's execution he converted his sign into the Mourning Crown, but that being esteemed ‘malignant’ he hung up his own portrait for the Poet's Head in its stead, with this inscription:

On the other side: