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Rh born of him, seem to be poetry unadulterate: to his mind, each line, each word, was charged with delightful significance, therefore—so he felt—would be so also to the sympathetic reader. He had, from the earliest period at which he began to compose, a distinct lyrical faculty: so keen indeed was his ear that he became too insistently haunted by the music of others, pre-eminently of Tennyson. But he had often a true and fine note of his own. His best short poems are "The Metempsychosis of the Pine" and the well-known Bedouin love-song, the latter a stirring lyric that ought assuredly to endure. In his critical essays Bayard Taylor had himself in no inconsiderable degree what he wrote of as "that pure poetic insight which is the vital spirit of criticism." The most valuable of these prose dissertations are the Studies in German Literature.

 TAYLOR, (1685–1731), a distinguished mathematician of Newton's school, was the son of John Taylor, of Bifrons House, Kent, by Olivia, daughter of Sir Nicholas Tempest, Bart., of Durham, and was born at Edmonton in Middlesex, August 18, 1685. He entered St John's College, Cambridge, as a fellow-commoner in 1701, and took degrees of LL.B. and LL.D. respectively in 1709 and 1714. Having studied mathematics with applause under Machin and Keill, he obtained in 1708 a remarkable solution of the problem of the "centre of oscillation," which, however, remaining unpublished until May 1714 (Phil. Trans., vol. xxviii. p. 11), his claim to priority was unjustly disputed by John Bernoulli. Taylor's Methodus Increimentorum Directa et Inversa (London, 1715) added a new branch to the higher mathematics, now designated the "calculus of finite difierences." Among other ingenious applications, he used it to determine the form of movement of a vibrating string, by him first successfully reduced to mechanical principles. The same work contained (p. 23) the celebrated formula known as "Taylor's theorem." It is of extensive use in almost every analytical inquiry; but its full importance remained unrecognized until pointed out in 1772 (Berlin Memoirs) by Lagrange, who later termed it "le principal fondement du calcul differéntial"

In his essay on Linear Perspective (London, 1715) Taylor set forth the true principles of the art with much originality, and in a more general form than any of his predecessors. The little work suffered, however, from the brevity and obscurity which affected most of his writings, and needed the elucidation bestowed on it in the treatises of Joshua Kirby (1754) and Daniel Fournier (1761).

Taylor was elected a fellow of the Royal Society early in 1712, sat in the same year on the committee for adjudicating the claims of Newton and Leibnitz, and acted as secretary to the society January 13, 1714, to October 21, 1718. During a visit to Paris in 1716 he made acquaintance with Bossuet and the Comte de Caylus, and knit a warm friendship with Bolingbroke, whom he visited at La Source in 1720. From 1715 his studies took a philosophical and religious bent. He corresponded, in that year, with the Comte de Montmort on the subject of Malebranche's tenets; and unfinished treatises, "On the Jewish Sacrifices" and "On the Lawfulness of Eating Blood," written on his return from Aix-la-Chapelle in 1719, were afterwards found among his papers. His marriage in 1721 with Miss Brydges of Wallington, Surrey, led to an estrangement from his father, a person of somewhat morose temper, which terminated in 1723 after the death of the lady in giving birth to a son. The ensuing two years were spent by him with his family at Bifrons, and in 1725 he married, with the paternal approbation, Sabetta, daughter of Mr Sawbridge of Olantigh, Kent, who, by a strange fatality, died also in childbed in 1730; in this case, however, the infant, a daughter, survived. Weighed down by repeated sorrows, Taylor's fragile health gave way; he fell into a decline, died December 29, 1731, at Somerset House, and was buried at St Ann's, Soho. By his father's death in 1729 he had inherited the Bifrons estate. Socially as well as intellectually gifted, he possessed a handsome person and engaging manners, and was accomplished to an uncommon degree in music and painting. As a mathematician, he was the only Englishman after Newton and Cotes capable of holding his own with the Bernoullis; but a great part of the effect of his demonstrations was lost through his failure to express his ideas fully and clearly.

A posthumous work entitled Contemplatio Philosophica was printed for private circulation in 1793 by his grandson, Sir William Young, Bart., prefaced by a life of the author, and with an appendix containing letters addressed to him by Bolingbroke, Bossuet, &c. Several short papers by him were published in ''Phil. Trans.'' vols. xxvii. to xxxii., including accounts of some interesting experiments in magnetism and capillary attraction. He issued in 1719 an improved version of his work on perspective, with the title New Principles of Linear Perspective, revised by Colson in 1749, and printed again, with portrait and life of the author, in 1811. A French translation appeared in 1753 at Lyons. Taylor gave (Methodus Incrementorum, p. 108) the first satisfactory investigation of astronomical refraction.}}

See Watt, Bibliotheca Britannica; Hutton, ''Phil. and Math. Dictionary: Fétis, Biog. des Musiciens''; Th. Thomson, ''Hist. of the R. Society, p. 302; Grant, Hist. Phys. Astronomy, p. 377; Marie, Hist. des Sciences'', vii. p. 231.}}

 TAYLOR, (1800–1886), poet and colonial statesman, was born October 18, 1800, at Bishop-Middleham, in the county of Durham. His ancestors had been small landowners for some generations, and both his studious father, who late in life emerged for a time from a recluse existence to make an efficient secretary to the Poor Law Commission, and his original warm-hearted mother were interesting persons. His mother died while he was yet an infant, and he was chiefly educated by his father, who, finding him less quick and deeming him less intelligent than his two elder brothers, allowed him to go to sea as a midshipman. Eight months summed up his naval career; it had taken much less to disgust him with it. After obtaining his discharge he was appointed to a clerkship in the storekeeper's office, and had scarcely entered upon his duties ere he was attacked by typhus fever, which carried off both his brothers, then living with him in London. In three or four years more his office was abolished while he was on duty in the West Indies. On his return he found his father happily married to a lady whose interest and sympathy proved of priceless value to him. Through her he became acquainted with her cousin Isabella Fenwick, the neighbour and intimate friend of Wordsworth, who introduced him to Wordsworth and Southey. Under these influences he lost his early admiration for Byron, whose school, whatever its merits, he at least was in no way calculated to adorn, and his intellectual powers developed rapidly. In October 1822 an article from his pen on Moore's Irish Melodies appeared in the Quarterly Review. A year later he departed for London to seek his fortune as a man of letters, and met with such rapid success, though not precisely in this capacity, as has but rarely attended an unknown young man. He became editor of the London Magazine, to which he had already contributed, and in January 1824 obtained, through the influence of Sir Henry Holland, an appointment in the Colonial Office, insuring him, not only an ample salary, but considerable influence in this department of public affairs. The general standard of the office was probably at that time low; at all events Taylor was immediately entrusted with the preparation of confidential state papers, and his opinion soon exercised an important influence on the decisions of the secretary of state. He visited Wordsworth and Southey, travelled on the Continent with the latter, and at the same time, mainly through his friend and official colleague, the Hon. Hyde Villiers, became intimate with a very different set, the younger followers of Bentham, without, however, adopting their opinions,—"young men," he afterwards reminded