I am so
fond of his vigour and originality, that for his sake I have studied and
learned the language. As the Hebrew is studied by one book, so is the
Taylorian by me for another. He never deigns to write to me, but in
print I doubt whether he has many readers who so much understand, relish,
and tolerate him, for which he ought to reward me by some of his
manuscript esoteries.' More may be said of William Taylor. It was he
who made Walter Scott a poet. Taylor's spirited translation of Burger's
'Leonore' with the two well-known lines--

'Tramp, tramp along the land they rode,
Splash, splash along the sea,'

opened up to Scott a field in which for a time he won fame and wealth.

Of Mrs. Taylor, wife of the grandson of the eminent Hebraist, Mackintosh
declared that she was the Madame Roland of Norwich. We owe to her Mrs.
Austen and Lady Duff Gordon. Mr. Reeve, the translator of De
Tocqueville's 'Democracy,' has preserved the memory of his father, Dr.
Henry Reeve, by the republication of his 'Journal of a Tour on the
Continent.' Let me also mention that Dr. Caius, the founder of Caius
College, Cambridge, was a Norwich man.

To Noncons Norwich offers peculiar attractions. We have in Dr.
Williams's library 'The Order of the Prophesie in Norwich'; and Robinson,
the leader of the Pilgrim Fathers, had a Norwich charge. Even in a later
day some of the Norwich divines had a godly zeal for freedom, worthy of
Milton himself, and on which the Pilgrim Fathers would have smiled
approval. It is told of Mark Wilks, the brother of Matthew, and the
grandfather of our London Mark Wilks, that when a deputation went from
Norwich during the Thelwall and Horne Tooke trials, when, if the
Castlereagh gang had had their will, there would have been found a short
and easy way with the Dissenters, and came back on the Sunday morning,
entering the place after the service had commenced, that he called out,
'What's the news?' as he saw them enter. 'Acquitted,' was the reply.
'Thank God!' said the parson, as they all joined in singing

'Praise God from whom all blessings flow.'

It is a fact that Wilks's first sermon in the Countess of Huntingdon's
Chapel at Norwich was from the text, 'There is a lad here with five
barley loaves and a few small fishes.' Let me tell another story, this
time in connection with that Old Meeting which has so much to attract the
visitor at Norwich. It had a grand old man, William Youngman, amo