JEREMY TAYLOR: THE POET OF THE PULPIT. OUR readers are already acquainted with that dear old man— so devout, so sprightly, so warm-hearted-who offered up his life in the midst of his parishioners at Hadleigh, a martyr of the English Reformation.* The intermediate history of his family is unknown; but in 1613 there was living in Cambridge, a barber, (and according to the usage of the times, he would practise as a surgeon also) who claimed to be the martyr's descendant; and in that year Nathaniel Taylor's third son, Jeremiah, was born. Along with more shining attributes, he was destined to re-exhibit much of the meekness, devotion, and tender affection of his illustrious ancestor. "Reasonably learned," as his father was, and pursuing his vocation in a chief haunt of the Muses, it was not difficult for him to obtain for his son a classical education: and accordingly in 1633, and when he was still under twenty-one years of age, we find the name of Jeremy Taylor among the Fellows of Caius College. At the same early age he was ordained, and having been invited by a friend to London to take his place as lecturer at St Paul's, his beautiful countenance and his eloquent discourse, enhanced by his extremely youthful appearance, made a great impression on the audience. His fame reached Lambeth, and he was commanded to preach before the Primate. discernment which recognised the great powers of Chillingworth, and which perceived in Hales qualities worthy of preferment, notwithstanding his rationalism and anti-romanism, * See "Christian Classics," vol. i. p. 113. The same at once detected the genius and the rich promise of the young and precocious preacher. At the earliest opportunity Laud procured for him a fellowship in All Souls', Oxford, and in 1637 he presented him to the rectory of Uppingham in Rutlandshire. Here he married his first wife, Phoebe Langsdale, whom he lost after a union of less than four years, and here he was appointed chaplain to King Charles I. The living of Uppingham being sequestered on account of the incumbent's loyalty, Taylor followed the royal army, and was taken prisoner at the siege of Cardigan Castle in 1644. Soon after he married a natural daughter of the king, Joanna Bridges,—a lady who possessed some property in Carmarthenshire, but which in those disordered days probably did not yield its wonted revenue: as for some time we find that, like Milton, Taylor was obliged to maintain himself as a schoolmaster. But better things awaited him. His noble neighbour, Lord Carbery, opened to him the gates of his mansion, and in the splendid seclusion of Golden Grove, he composed his "Life of Christ," his "Holy Living," and his "Holy Dying," and the greater part of his sermons. These were among his happiest days. "He was surrounded by affectionate friends, who loved and honoured him; the griping fangs of penury were loosened. Rich houses or jewels, Tyrian silks and Persian carpets, he neither possessed nor coveted. But he had entered into the temporal promise of his Lord. Numberless are the passages written about this period, in which his hopeful gratitude breaks into praises of God's providence, and exhortations to believe that He, who feeds the young ravens when they call upon Him, will also nourish every poor and trusting disciple." * In 1654, under the name of "The Golden Grove," he published a devotional manual. It contained some severe reflec * Willmott's " Bishop Jeremy Taylor," p. 134. IMPRISONMENT.-PROMOTION.-DEATH. 291 tions on those who had despoiled the churches, and silenced the liturgy; and for these expressions the author was arrested and thrown into prison. But this imprisonment obtained for him the friendship of John Evelyn; and when other sources of supply were cut off, the main reliance of the unbeneficed student was a pension allowed to him by this good old English gentleman. For a short time it would appear that Taylor preached to a congregation in London; but in the summer of 1658 he accepted an invitation from Lord Conway to accompany him to his mansion at Portmore, in Ireland, and conduct a lecture in the town of Lisburn. This migration introduced him to the sister isle, and the land of his adoption was soon to become the scene of his elevation. On the restoration of Charles II., he was nominated to the bishopric of Down and Connor, to which Dromore was added in April 1661. He was also chosen Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dublin. Such honours were never better earned, but they were not long enjoyed. As a devoted son of the Church of England, the good bishop must have rejoiced in the opportunity or serving her in his high office; but there were many things to weigh down the head which wore this mitre. Several of his children had died young, but two sons grew up. Of these the one entered the army, and fell in a duel with a brother officer belonging to the same regiment. The other was intended for the Church, but the seductions of the Court of Charles II. proved too strong for his feeble principles. He became secretary to the Duke of Buckingham, and copied too faithfully the profligacy and follies of his patron. The result was a consumption, of which he lay dying, when his sorrow-stricken father was seized by a fever, and after an illness of ten days, "the English Chrysostom," "the Shakspere of Theology," as he has often been styled by his affec tionate admirers, expired at Lisburn, on the 13th of August 1667. The merits and defects of Taylor have been thus summed up by the historian of European literature: "An imagination essentially poetical, and sparing none of the decorations which, by critical rules, are deemed almost peculiar to verse; a warm tone of piety, sweetness, and charity; an accumulation of circumstantial accessories whenever he reasons, or persuades, or describes; an erudition pouring itself forth in quotation, till his sermons become in some places almost a garland of flowers from all other writers, and especially from those of classical antiquity, never before so redundantly scattered from the pulpit,-distinguish Taylor from his contemporaries by their degree, as they do from most of his successors by their kind. But they are not without considerable faults. ... The eloquence of Taylor is great, but it is not eloquence of the highest class; it is far too Asiatic-too much in the style of the declaimers of the fourth century, by the study of whom he had probably vitiated his taste; his learning is ill-placed, and his arguments often as much so; not to mention that he has the common defect of alleging nugatory proofs; his vehemence loses its effect by the circuity of his pleonastic language; his sentences are of endless length, and hence not only altogether unmusical, but not always reducible to gram With the estimate of the venerable critic we substantially agree; although, were we re-writing it, we might perhaps give larger proportions to our praise, as well as a warmer tone, and from the assertion that his sentences are "altogether unmusical" we must entirely dissent. Taylor's greatest faults were theological. His denial of the doctrine of original sin, his rare and remote allusions to the central truth of the Christian system, his overweening rever *Hallam's "Literature of Europe," part iii., chap. 2. VENERATION FOR ANTIQUITY. 293 ence for Romish saints and the later fathers,* and a certain legal strain which pervades his writings, give them a complexion very different from the New Testament Epistles, and the writings of our early Reformers. The truth would seem to be, that fancy and the love of the beautiful were the ruling faculties in Taylor's mind, and that they exerted an influence greater than he himself was aware on his somewhat eclectic theology. To such a mind all antiquity possessed a peculiar fascination. With their noble imagery and exquisite diction, the Greek and Roman classics were irresistible; and the piety of cloistered monks and mediæval fathers had a charm which he failed to recognise in his Puritan contemporaries. To his gentle spirit, all violence was offensive; and in his living time the controversies to which the Reformation gave rise were still waged with noisy vehemence. True, some of the schoolmen and fathers had been as boisterous in their day as any of the Reformers and their followers; but the lapse of centuries had thrown over their asperities a softening veil; and, like many amongst ourselves who read with zest old tales of Rhine or Border warfare, but who would turn away from a street brawl disgusted, Taylor could appeal with fond and submissive reverence to the words of Gregory the Great and ecclesiastical ruffians of a similar type, whilst in all his works there occurs no "Taylor's was a great and lovely mind; yet how much and injuriously was it perverted by his being a follower of Laud, and by his intensely Popish feelings of Church authority! He never speaks with the slightest symptom of affection or respect of Luther, Calvin, or any other of the great Reformers, at least, not in any of his learned works; but he saints every trumpery monk or friar, down to the very latest canonizations by the modern popes. I fear you will think me harsh when I say that I believe Taylor was, perhaps unconsciously, half a Socinian in heart. Such a strange inconsistency would not be impossible; the Romish Church has produced many such devout Socinians. The cross of Christ is dimly scen in Taylor's works,""Table-Talk of S. T. Coleridge," vol. i. p. 165. |