# Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Sir Henry Taylor

See also Henry Taylor (dramatist) on Wikipedia; Henry Taylor on Wikipedia; Sir Henry Taylor in the 11th edition; and the disclaimer.
Sir Henry Taylor is pre-eminently the statesman among English poets. When he can speak poetically in this character he is impressive, almost great; when he deals with the more prosaic aspects of policy he is dignified and weighty, without being altogether a poet when his theme is entirely unrelated to the conduct of public affairs or private life he is usually little more than an accomplished man of letters. An exception must be made for the interesting character of Elena in Philip van Artevelde, and for Artevelde's early love experience, which reproduces and transfigures the writer's own. The circumstance of Philip van Artevelde being to a great extent the vehicle of his own ideas and feelings explains its great superiority to his other works. It is subjective as well as objective, and to a certain extent lyrical in feeling, though not in form. Though more elaborate than any of his other dramas, it seems to smell less of the lamp. He has thoroughly identified himself with his hero, and the only fault to be found with this noble picture of a consummate leader and statesman is the absence of the shadow required for a tragic portrait The blame allotted to Artevelde is felt to be merely conventional, and the delineation of uniform excellence becomes monotonous. The hero of Edwin the Fair, Dunstan, the ecclesiastical statesman, the man of two worlds, is less sympathetic to the author and less attractive to the reader. The character is nevertheless a fine psychological study, and the play is full of historical if not of dramatic interest. Isaac Comnenus is more Elizabethan in tone than his other dramas. Comnenus is like a preliminary sketch for Van Artevelde; and the picture of the Byzantine court and people is exceedingly lively. The idea of the revival of romantic comedy in The Virgin Widow is excellent, but the play lacks the humour which might have made it a success. The length of the speeches, even when not set speeches, is a drawback to all these dramas. Taylor's lyrical work is in general laboriously artificial. It is therefore extraordinary that he should have produced two songs {"Quoth tongue of neither maid nor wife" and "If I had the wings of a dove") which it would hardly be an exaggeration to call worthy of Shakespeare. His character as an essayist repeats his character as a dramatist. The essays published under the title of The Statesman occupy a peculiar place in literature. They have serious faults, especially the too obvious imitation of Bacon, but they nevertheless are original in their point of view, and their wisdom is the result of a different kind of observation from that which qualifies the bulk of essayists on human life. When writing as one of these Taylor is less removed from the commonplace, though many of his remarks are admirable. As a literary critic he seems unable to get beyond Wordsworth and the select circle of poets admired by the latter. His essays on Wordsworth did much to dispel the conventional prejudices of the day, but will not advance the study of the poet where his greatness is already recognized. His strictures on Byron and Shelley are narrow and not a little presumptuous. Presumption, indeed, the last fault to have been expected in so grave and measured a writer, is one of those of which he most freely accuses himself in the autobiography published a year before his death. It is not otherwise apparent in this highly interesting book, which, sinning a little by the egotism pardonable in a poet and the garrulity natural to a veteran, is in the main a pleasing and faithful picture of an aspiring youth, an active maturity, and a happy and honoured old age.(r. g.)