Taylor, THOMAS

Taylor, THOMAS, 'the Platonist,' was born in London, 15th May 1758, went three years to St Paul's School, next studied mathematics and classics under private teachers, but, betwixt an imprudent marriage and the pinch of poverty, found it impossible to realise his dream of completing his studies at Aberdeen with a view to the ministry, and entered Lubbock's bank as a clerk. But he still found six hours in every day for study, and at length left his desk to teach private pupils and fill the office of assistant-secretary to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c. During his last forty years he lived in a small house at Walworth, immersed in Plato and the Platonist philosophers, and partly supported by a gift of £100 a year from Mr Meredith, a retired tradesman with ideas, and here he died, November 1, 1835. His fifty works include translations of the Hymns of Orpheus, and parts of the works of Plotinus, Proclus, Pausanias, Apuleius, Maximus Tyrius, the Greek mathematicians, Iamblichus, Hierocles, Porphyry, &c., besides complete translations of Plato (nine, however, of the Dialogues by Floyer Sydenham, 5 vols. 1804) and Aristotle (11 vols. 1806-12). Mr W. E. A. Axon in a biographical and bibliographical sketch (privately printed, 1890) gives a list of forty-eight books, but does not include The Spirit of All Religions (Amst. 1790), which expresses his strange polytheistic creed.