Death of Isaac Taylor

Eclectic Review, July, 1865

On Wednesday 1st, after many weeks of great suffering, borne with Christian resignation, the author of Natural History of Enthusiasm closed a long career of usefulness at the advanced age of 77.

Originally trained as an artist, Isaac Taylor at an early age abandoned his profession for that literary career in which so many members of his family had attained distinction. His father, the Rev Isaac Taylor, of Ongar; his uncle Charles Taylor, the learned editor of Calmet; his sisters, Ann and Jane Taylor, the joint authors of Original Poems and Hymns for Infant Minds; his mother, Ann Taylor, and his brother, Jefferys Taylor, have all written works which have attained a wide popularity.

In 1838 Mr Taylor gave to the world the thoughts which had suggested themselves while a large family was growing up around him in his country seclusion at Stanford Rivers. This work, Home Education, bas had an extensive popularity, and has induced many parents to endeavour to promote the enjoyments of children - to educate rather than to instruct.

In the following year Mr Taylor was induced to take part with the Rev Robert Traill in bringing out a new translation of Josephus. This costly and magnificent work was accompanied with numerous illustrations engraved by some most ingenious and elaborate machinery, the invention of which had been the amusement of Mr Taylor's leisure hours. The inopportune death of Dr Traill at the eve of the publication of this work brought upon Mr Taylor ruinous pecuniary responsibilities, from which for many years he was unable to extricate himself. The engraving machine was patented in England, Scotland and America, and, though, productive of small benefit to the inventor, has realised large returns in the hands of others.

About this period the Tracts for the Times were creating an unexampled excitement in the religious world. Mr Taylor had long made himself familiar with the whole range of patristic literature; he felt that the writers of the Tracts were giving an essentially perverted view of the tendencies, doctrinal and ritual, of the early Church. As a layman, standing clear of any secular embarassments of an ecclesiastical kind, Mr Taylor felt himself impelled to come forward and state the results to which his independent and unbiased study of the Fathers had led him. This he did in a work entitled Ancient Christianity, a work which was virulently attacked, and as warmly defended, by the respective partisans in the great controversy which was then shaking the English Church. Some of the leaders of the succession which ensued have acknowledged that the facts and reasonings of this work did more than anything else to drive them over to Rome.

After an interval of seven years, Mr Taylor published essays, partly philosophical, partly historical, on the lives of Loyola and Wesley. Shortly afterwards a volume on the Christian argument was published anonymously at Cambridge, entitled the Restoration of Belief. Two volumes of essays - Logic and Theology, and Ultimate Civilisation - a series of lectures, originally delivered in Edinburgh, on The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, and a series of autobiographical papers published in the last year in Good Words were the last occupations of his declining years. To the end his mind retained all its power. He leaves, we believe, a large family.

A work by his eldest son, the Rev Isaac Taylor, entitled Words and Places, we recently had occasion to notice very favourably in these columns.