ical and
sectarian detraction has not been able to deny the title of an encourager,
as few men have encouraged them, of learning and piety--took Taylor under
his protection, made him his chaplain, and procured him incorporation at
Oxford, a fellowship at All Souls, and finally the rectory of Uppingham. To
this Taylor was appointed in 1638, and next year he married a lady who bore
him several sons, but died young. Taylor early joined the king at Oxford,
and is supposed to have followed his fortunes in the field; it is certain
that his rectory, lying in a Puritan district, was very soon sequestrated,
though not by any form of law. What took him into Wales and caused him to
marry his second wife, Joanna Brydges (an heiress on a small scale, and
said to have been a natural daughter of Charles I.), is not known. But he
sojourned in the principality during the greater part of the Commonwealth
period, and was much patronised by the Earl of Carbery, who, while resident
at Golden Grove, made him his chaplain. He also made the acquaintance of
other persons of interest, the chief of whom were, in London (which he
visited not always of his own choice, for he was more than once
imprisoned), John Evelyn, and in Wales, Mrs. Katherine Philips, "the
matchless Orinda," to whom he dedicated one of the most interesting of his
minor works, the _Measure and Offices of Friendship_. Not long before the
Restoration he was offered, and strongly pressed to accept, the post of
lecturer at Lisburn, in Ireland. He does not seem to have taken at all
kindly to the notion, but was over-persuaded, and crossed the Channel. It
was perhaps owing to this false step that, when the Restoration arrived,
the preferment which he had in so many ways merited only came to him in the
tents of Kedar. He was made Bishop of Down and Connor, held that see for
seven years, and died (after much wrestling with Ulster Presbyterians and
some domestic misfortune) of fever in 1667.

His work is voluminous and always interesting; but only a small part of it
concerns us directly here, as exhibiting him at his best and most peculiar
in the management of English prose. He wrote, it should be said, a few
verses by no means destitute of merit, but they are so few, in comparison
to the bulk of his work, that they may be neglected. Taylor's strong point
was not accuracy of statement or logical precision. His longest work, the
_Ductor Dubitantium_, an elaborate manual of casuistry, is co