Jeremy Taylor

ENGLISH JEREMY TAYLOR BY EDMUND GOSSE S0tlt THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON MACMILLAN CO., LTD. 1904 All rights reserved Reference .- -, 1904, BY THE MACMILLAff COMPANY. Set up, electrotype and published January, 1904. ott Crests J. S. Cm Mag Co. Berwick Smith. Co. Norwood, Mass., U. S. A. PREFATORY NOTE THIS volume contains a conscientious attempt to present for the first time a detailed biography of Jeremy Taylor. It is remarkable that the career of so eminent and so beloved a writer should not have attracted more attention from literary historians. But its incidents were neglected during the lifetime of those who could have remembered him, and were not made the object of inquiry until external evidence could no longer be obtained. The Funeral Sermon, published by George Bust, Bishop of Drornore, in 1668, is a document invaluable to the biographer, but it stands alone. Some particulars were added by Anthony a Wood, and some by Harris in his 1746 edition of the Works of Sir James Ware, who, how ever, died before Jeremy Taylor. In the eighteenth century several efforts were made to collect notes for Taylors memoirs, in particular by George Home, Bishop of Norwich, and then by Thomas Zouch, the antiquary, but these were aban doned for lack of material. In 1793, to a volume of selections, Wheeldon prefixed a Life, which is a mere paraphrase of Rust, and is without independent value. vi JEREMY TAYLOR The Kev. Henry Kaye Bonney was the first to suc ceed in making original researches, which he used in his memoir of Jeremy Taylor published in 1815. This book, however, is inadequate and untrustworthy, and no one became more conscious of its defects than Bonney himself, who set himself to correctit, and who, when he heard that Heber was engaged in editing Jeremy Taylor, generously withdrew his book from circulation, and placed his corrections and fresh information in Heber 5 s hands. Every student of Jeremy Taylor owes a debt of gratitude to Eeginald Heber, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, for his edition of the text and for his care ful commentary. He worked at the former when he was vicar of Hodnet, Salop, and he finished it just before he went out to India. The Works appeared in 1822, in fifteen volumes, and contained a Life which threw a flood of new light over the biography and bibliography of Jeremy Taylor. As was inevitable, however, in surveying a tract of literary history so long and so completely neglected, Hebers narrative contained a large number of misstaternents, and he was moreover the victim of a mystification which will presently be referred to. His exile in India, and his premature death, prevented any revision of his valua ble work. Meanwhile, J. S. Hughes, in 1831, prefixed to a selection from Taylors Works a Life that has no biographical value. But in 1847 the Eev. Eobert Aris Willmott, of Bearwood, published a very graceful PREFATORY NOTE vii little boob entitled Bishop Jeremy Taylor, his Prede cessors, Contemporaries, and Successors, a sketch of tlie English Church in the seventeenth century, in the course of which he corrected Heber in some par ticulars, and added one or two fresh facts. All these biographies were superseded, however, by the labours of the Bev. Charles Page Eden, fellow of Oriel, and vicar of St. Marys, Oxford, who undertook the complete revision of Hebers Jeremy Taylor. His edition of the Works, which was in ten volumes, and occupiedseveral years, was completed in 1854 by what was called volume i., which contained Hebers Life of Jeremy Taylor, corrected, enlarged, and sup plied with voluminous notes. Eden was a fine scholar, and he must have been one of the most modest of men, for he concealed the importance of his work under the guise of a loyal fidelity to Heber...