Taylor, JOHN

Taylor, JOHN, the 'Water-poet,' as he styled himself, was born at Gloucester in 1580, and became a waterman on the Thames, but was pressed into the naval service and served at the siege of Cadiz. He collected for many years for the lieutenant of the Tower his perquisite of wine from all ships which brought wine up the Thames. When the rebellion broke out in 1642 Taylor left London for Oxford, where he kept a public-house, which he afterwards gave up for another in London, and here he hawked the doggerel which he wrote. He performed some fantastic feats of rowing, but the chief event of his life was his journey on foot from London to Edinburgh (14th July—13th August 1618). Ben Jonson thought the Water-poet's intention was to burlesque his own journey, yet when he met him at Leith he gave him a piece of gold to drink his health in England. Taylor described his journey in his Penniless Pilgrimage (1618); other books of the same kind were his Travels in Germanie (1617) and The Praise of Hempseed, a story of a voyage from London to Queenborough in Kent in a brown paper boat (1618). He died in 1654. Taylor's works were published under the title of All the Works of John Taylor the Water-poet, being sixty and three in number (1630, folio). His poems are not destitute of natural humour, abounding with the low, jingling wit which prevailed in the reign of James I., and which too often bordered upon bombast and nonsense. Allibone's Dictionary contains a list of 138 articles written by the Water-poet. The best reprint of his works is a complete edition issued by the Spenser Society (1868-78).