Born, at Bishop Middleham, Durham, 1800. Served in Navy as Midshipman, 1814. To London, 1816. In Civil employment for some years, in London; at Barbados for few months in 1820. Settled in London, 1823. Held post in Colonial Office, 1824–72. Married the Hon. Theodosia Alicia Ellen Frances Charlotte Spring-Rice, 1839. Hon. D.C.L., Oxford, 2 July 1862, K.C.M.G., 30 June 1869. Died, at Bournemouth, 27 March 1886. Works: “Isaac Comnenus” (anon.), 1827; “Philip Van Artevelde,” 1834; “The Statesman,” 1836; “Edwin the Fair,” 1842; “The Eve of the Conquest,” 1847; “Notes from Life,” 1847; “Notes from Books,” 1849; “The Virgin Widow,” 1850; “St. Clement’s Eve,” 1862; “Poetical Works” (3 vols.), 1864 [1863]; “A Sicilian Summer,” 1868; “Crime considered, in a letter to the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone,” 1868; “Autobiography … 1800–1875” (2 vols.), 1885 (priv. ptd. 1874–77); “Works” (5 vols.), 1877–78. Posthumous: “Correspondence,” ed. E. Dowden, 1888.

Personal

  The two volumes that I send you are making a rumour, and are highly and I believe justly extolled. They are written by a friend of mine, a remarkably handsome young man whom you may have seen on one of our latest Thursday evening conversazioni.

  I breakfasted in the morning at Rogers’s, to meet the new poet, Mr. Taylor, the author of “Van Artevelde:” our company, besides, being Sydney Smith and Southey. Van Artevelde, a tall, handsome young fellow.

  Went to breakfast with Rogers. Met Lyon, Aubrey de Vere, and to my great delight, Henry Taylor, author of “Philip Van Artevelde.” He talked much, and talked well; his knowledge of our poets is very extensive indeed; he quoted much, and excellently well.

  Taylor himself, a solid, sound-headed, faithful, but not a well-read or wide-minded man, though of marked veracity, in all senses of that deep-reaching word, and with a fine readiness to apprehend new truth, and stand by it.

  Though thus intoxicated by solitude, Sir Henry Taylor has had little of the Wordsworthian passion for nature. He seeks refreshment and restoration from the beauty of the world, and has a peculiar delight in sylvan recesses, the haunts of meditation; but external nature has not been for him a sibyl, a maenad, a bride, or an awful mother. His wisdom and power have been drawn from human life, from human life in certain concrete forms, leading up to generalisations which are axiomata media, of invaluable service to the dramatic poet, but hardly attaining the rank of first principles…. Sir Henry Taylor for a long time cared less for the society of men of letters than for that of wits, and less for that of wits than for the society of bright, refined, and accomplished women. Half his pleasure in their presence was social, and half was the poet’s pleasure of the imagination. For sometimes it was enough that they should be seen, and should set his fancy at play. Here is a gleam of poetry in the reception-room, an oasis in the social wilderness, a solitude, a refuge, a delight amid the monstrous regiment of dowagers and damozels.

  His life was full of honour, and the close of it thoroughly to be envied. In the midst of a loving family he went, without a pang or a struggle, into the rest of death. His reputation as a man of letters, though perhaps of slow growth, is destined, I think, to endure. Though a zealous interest in literature was the ruling passion of his nature, I know no one, since Walter Scott, who rose above the ordinary defects of the literary character, more thoroughly and nobly. Jealousy and vanity were unknown to him, and if a man cannot be a poet without belonging to the “genus irritable,” a poet he was not. His genius, in truth, if not of the highest order, had nothing in common with the genius of disease; on the contrary, it was braced and strengthened by great general ability, a sound judgment, and a masculine good sense…. He cared a great deal for many things, but what he did not care a great deal for, he put aside as if it had no existence. He therefore allowed sundry subjects, which might have brought him, a dramatic poet, into closer and more cordial intercourse with varieties of men, to lie outside his ken, and this limited in some degree his reach of imagination, and his powers of thought. He has spoken for himself in his memoirs, so that these remarks are perhaps superfluous, but I could not pass over the loss of so dear a friend in silence.

  After an intimacy with him extending much over forty years, I never saw him once out of temper or once made anxious about trifles. He lived in a large world, built up by justice and truth, and in him there was no small world…. He was not only free from morbidness, but without a touch of sensitiveness. No criticism pained him, and no friend feared to speak to him with entire frankness. In his young days he was said to be a severe censor; but as life advanced, his judgments became more indulgent without becoming less just. He judged deeds as before; but not always those who did them…. It may be well to add that by no virtue was he more signally marked than by humility.

Philip van Artevelde, 1834

  I have been really cheered and delighted by some passages of a new work—“Philip Van Artevelde”—and more particularly by parts of its noble preface contained in the Athenæum of to-day. I feel assured that you will greet as gladly as myself the rising up of what appears to be a majestic mind amongst us; and the putting forth of strengthening and elevating views respecting the high purposes of intellectual power. I have already sent to order the book, feeling that it will be quite an addition to the riches of my mental estate.

  Years and years have passed since it came in the way of our office to call attention to the appearance of a new English poem at once of such pretensions and such execution. If Mr. Taylor should devote himself to dramatic composition with a view to the stage, he must learn to brace his dialogue somewhat more tightly, and to indulge less in discursive reflection; but he has already done enough to secure himself a place among the real artists of his time.

  I have heard the word “washy” applied to the superficial style of painting, where the figures have no depth, massiveness, substance, and the epithet seems to me to suit a good deal of the fashionable poetry and fiction. One admirable exception I lately met with in “Philip Van Artevelde.” Here I found myself amidst real beings, breathing the breath of life, and, in spite of some affectation of style, speaking and acting from their own souls, and not graceful or sentimental puppets, through whom the author shows you his skill and fine thoughts.

  The publication of his poem in this country was preceded by such high encomiums from the leading Reviews of Great Britain, that it was impossible that its reception amongst us should be unprejudiced and impartial; and if, notwithstanding the first feeling of disappointment from this cause and the detection of some faults in the work which we were not prepared to see, we have yet risen from its perusal with a conviction that it is a work of rare beauty and power, there can be no doubt that it well deserves this character. It is a very daring work, and risks failure in every way by attempting to unite every variety of composition in one piece. It passes from the stern to the tender, from the lofty to the pathetic, and strikes all the changes of the heroic, the lyric, the dramatic, and the descriptive, the didactic, and the familiar. No young author ever made his beginning in a bolder and more venturesome enterprise, or by his first attempt secured a more decided claim to be esteemed a writer of high and diversified talents, whose fame is already sure.

  The arguments of Mr. Taylor lead us directly to the question of why does he not write in prose? Certainly “Philip Van Artevelde” would have been as dramatic and romantic in prose as in its present form. Its rhythm appears unnecessary, and he evidently feels it. After writing a romance in about ten thousand lines of verse, which ought to have been three volumes of elegant prose, he then composes a Preface to justify the proceeding. He says, “My critical views have rather resulted from composition than directed it.” Finding he could rise no higher, he strives to show that rising higher would argue a loss “of the equipoise of reason.”

  First and highest in this list comes “Philip Van Artevelde,” of which we can say that it bears new fruit at the twentieth reading. At first it fell rather coldly on the mind, coming as it did, not as the flower of full flushed being, but with the air of an experiment made to verify a theory. It came with wrinkled critic’s brow, consciously antagonistic to a tendency of the age, and we looked on it with cold critic’s eye, unapt to weep or glow at its bidding. But, on closer acquaintance, we see that this way of looking, though induced by the author, is quite unjust. It is really a noble work that teaches us, a genuine growth that makes us grow, a reflex of nature from the calm depths of a large soul. The grave and comprehensive character of the ripened man, of him whom fire, and light, and earth have tempered to an intelligent delegate of humanity, has never been more justly felt, rarely more life-like painted, than by this author.

  Though the motion is often quick and always progressive in Mr. Taylor’s plays, though there is much of humour in them and much also of pathos, he does not depend on action only for his effect; but lays bare and examines the sources of action, and shows the early, underground springs of the mind from which the rivers of thought well up to the light with admirable success. I do not know that we have a clearer idea of the inward working of Hamlet’s mind than we have of that of Van Artevelde, as he rises through patriotism from the contented philosophy of private life to be the saviour of his city and dictator of his countrymen; and afterwards falls through too close a contact with worldly greatness and worldly ways into sin, violence, and destruction.

  The author of the finest dramatic poem of our time.

  There are those, the writer is one, in whose life the first reading and re-reading of “Philip Van Artevelde” was an epoch. The other writings of Sir Henry Taylor, both in prose and verse, left their impression, but the great “Dramatic Romance” has always stood alone. It was not merely the wonderful thoughtfulness and beauty of passages beyond number: and not many readers know how many lines from “Philip Van Artevelde” have passed into stock quotations: The world knows nothing of its greatest men has been said by numbers who never read a play of Sir Henry Taylor’s. But there was a strange and awe-inspiring influence exerted upon youthful readers by the stern sobriety, the restrained good sense, combined with the bright gleam of something very near to the highest poetic genius. One thought the author must be sixty at least: we find he was only thirty-four: though in the days of the first enthusiastic study of the drama that would have appeared as advanced middle age. Good sense, in combination with brilliancy, overawes readers of twenty-two: impresses them with the sense of an infinite elevation above their own standpoint.

  The poem is remarkable throughout for its metre, which cannot be surpassed in force, variety, harmony, and dramatic significance…. His is not the poetry which contents itself with raking superficially the loose soil of the affections. He ploughs deeply, and turns up a substratum of human feeling not often revealed to light in the merely descriptive drama so common in modern times…. Were a critic to describe “Philip Van Artevelde” in one word, he might say it was a solid work. In its extreme thoughtfulness it preserves the better characteristics of our age; but those who have only been in the habit of reading poetry as a trivial amusement, or a relaxation from study, and who are only familiar with works produced to gratify the taste of the moment, to stimulate the jaded appetite, to flatter an abject love of the mere ornaments of poetry, or an effeminate dependence on its sensual part,—all those persons must have at first felt surprised at finding themselves confronted with a work so substantial in its materials, so manly in its structure, so severe in its style, and so gravely impressive in spirit and general tendency, as this remarkable work. It is full of the philosophy of practical life; and in this respect it is analogous to many productions of an age which has occupied itself with the philosophy of all subjects.

  As a study of a group of characters, “Philip Van Artevelde” stands almost alone.

  “Philip Van Artevelde” is so clearly Taylor’s best work that his literary faculty may be judged, certainly without danger of depreciation, from it alone. It is a historical drama, and the title sufficiently indicates the age and country in which the scene is laid. The whole drama is long, and the slow movement adapts it rather for reading than for representation. It is composed of two parts, separated by “The Lay of Elena,” a lyrical piece in which may be detected echoes both of Wordsworth and Coleridge, with an occasional suggestion of Scott…. A man of talent with a touch of genius, Taylor saw clearly what the poetry of his time needed, but for want of the “passion of thought” he failed to supply it.

General

  Henry Taylor’s Tragedies are of the very best kind.

  I think, or hope, that he will yet write things worthy of ungrudging praise; and I much approve his manly style, as an antidote to the sentimental jargon of which we have so much; but he must cultivate moral refinement, to give pleasure where he must wish to please. Above all, he must never again make his hero exclaim, “How little flattering is a woman’s love!”

  The diligent students and cultivated admirers of poetry will assign to the author of “Edwin the Fair” a rank second to none of the competitors for the laurel in his own generation. They will celebrate the rich and complex harmony of his metre, the masculine force of his understanding, the wide range of his survey of life and manners, and the profusion with which he can afford to lavish his intellectual resources. The mere lovers of his art will complain, that in the consciousness of his own mental wealth, he forgets the prevailing poverty; that he levies too severe a tribute of attention, and exacts from a thoughtless world meditations more deep, and abstractions more prolonged, than they are able or willing to command…. They will admit that the author of “Edwin the Fair” can both judge as a philosopher, and feel as a poet; but will wish that his poetry had been less philosophical, or his philosophy less poetical. It is a wish that will be seconded by those who revere his wisdom, and delight in his genius; and who, therefore, regret to anticipate that his labours will hardly be rewarded by an early or an extensive popularity.

  No educated person can read the works of Mr. Taylor without a consciousness that he is communing with a mind of high order. They are reflective and dignified, and are written in pure and nervous English. The dialogue is frequently terse and impressive, and sometimes highly dramatic. Mr. Taylor has no sickly sentiment, and scarcely any pathos or passion; but in his writings there are pleasant shows of feeling, fancy, and imagination which remind us that he might have been a poet of a different sort had he been governed by a different theory. His principal faults, so far as style is concerned, are occasional coarseness of expression, and inappropriate or disagreeable imagery. He exhibits also a want of that delicacy and refinement of conduct and feeling in some of his characters which would have resulted from a nicer sense of the beautiful and a more loving spirit in himself.

  Taylor, whose noble intellect and fine constructive powers were early affected by the teachings of Wordsworth, entered a grand protest against the sentimentalism into which the Byronic passion now had degenerated. He would, I believe, have done even better work, if this very influence of Wordsworth had not deadened his genuine dramatic power. He saw the current evils, but could not substitute a potential excellence or found an original school. As it is, “Philip Van Artevelde” and “Edwin the Fair” have gained a place for him in English literature more enduring than the honors awarded to many popular authors of his time.

  His success in characterisation seems to be limited to the cases in which he has drawn upon his observation, or in which ample data for the construction of types have lain at his disposal. Where he has failed it is evident that he has transcended the range of sight, or been inadequately furnished with historical and biographical material. The students of his plays must be content to miss the shaping forethought, the definite analysis, the vivid energy, and intense passion of the great dramatists; but, in lieu of these, they will be rewarded with a discriminating selection of dramatic subjects, many truthful portraits and representations of historical scenery, much ripe scholarship and sound wisdom, habitual dignity and occasional grace of style, and a uniformly high-minded and healthy tone.

  The subject of this Saxon drama abounds in variety of interests, political, ecclesiastical, personal, and romantic; and not less various are the modes of treatment…. Throughout it we find one spirit; the spirit, namely, of England in the time of that struggle which raged with such violence between the “men of arms and the men of thought.” Throughout the whole play we trace this spirit working its way in different characters according to their constitution, varying with their varieties, but everywhere active.

  Sir Henry Taylor was a man of sterling moral worth, intellectual power, sound wisdom, refined taste, and mature judgment; a man of thought and scholarship; and, more especially, a dramatic poet of great and peculiar ability, whose works, thoroughly English in character, have deservedly given him an enduring reputation among all thoughtful readers.

  His chief dramatic poem, “Philip Van Artevelde,” has had the good fortune to please the critics, and has been greatly applauded and admired in those circles where applause is the most sweet, but it cannot be said ever to have caught the general ear. It has not sufficient force either of life or of poetry to secure that wider audience, yet the place of the author among contemporary poets has always been high, though without this essential basis of fame. His other works—“Edwin the Fair,” the “Virgin Widow,” and “St. Clement’s Eve”—have not, we think, gained even this succès d’estime.

  Sir Henry Taylor, though the bulk of his poems are in the form of dramas, was not par excellence a dramatic poet. He had more regard for the delicacies of character, and the nuances of thought in relation to them, than for incident, situation, and what would go towards effect in representation. In truth, his dramas are overweighted with thought and reflection—“too full of good things,” as has been said…. Sir Henry Taylor was generally too inclined to brood and meditate over his “men and women” to present them with that force of sustained and convincing reality needful for the stage…. He was a wonderful restorer of historical episodes; a romancer born out of due time, seeking to accommodate himself to a form hardly in keeping with his spirit and temper. Many bright droplets of lyrical verse are scattered through the plays, full of light and natural naïveté and brightness. The same has to be said of the short poems printed at the end of the plays.

  There is always a public for what is called “thoughtful” poetry, and Taylor’s is more than merely thoughtful. But it may be suspected by observers that when Robert Browning came into fashion Henry Taylor went out.

  His work is like his life, smooth, calm, unchargeable with faults; but it is not the kind that animates mankind.