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Blake and Thomas Taylor
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2021
Extract
The mystical philosophical (or pseudo-philosophical) tendencies of the English romantic movement probably owed a good deal to Thomas Taylor. From the publication of Cowper's Task and Burns' Kilmarnock poems to the death of Shelley and Byron, Taylor poured out an unceasing stream of commentaries and translations elucidating for England the doctrines of Plato and the Neo-Platonists. To be sure, his works had very limited sale, and most of one edition was locked up for a lifetime in the archives of the rich nobleman who financed its publication. But no man could print so much and receive as many comments as he did without having a definite effect.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1928
References
page 1121 note 1 Some of the more obvious likenesses between Taylor and Blake have been pointed out by Professor Damon in his William Blake.
page 1121 note 2 For a very full list of Taylor's works see Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, List of Original Works and Translations, prepared for Newberry Library by Ruth Balch of the Library Staff. Chicago. 1917.
page 1122 note 3 I have made, not an exhaustive search, but a reasonably thorough one, without finding such sources.
page 1122 note 4 First noticed by Professor Damon.
page 1123 note 5 About three-fourths through the dialogue. The likeness was mentioned by Professor Damon in his William Blake.
page 1123 note 6 I have compared all quoted passages with the anonymous and dateless first edition in the Boston Public Library (Amsterdam ed.).
page 1123 note 7 Miss Balch lists a copy as in the British Museum.
page 1124 note 8 The Poetical Works of William Blake, ed. by John Sampson, London, Oxford Univ. Press, 1913.
page 1124 note 9 The Prophetic Writings of William Blake, ed. by D. J. Sloss and J. P. R. Wallis, Oxford, 1926.
page 1126 note 10 S. F. Damon, William Blake, 1924, p. 435.
page 1130 note 11 Pointed out by Professor Damon.
page 1131 note 12 The Amsterdam first edition reads “plantal” instead of “vegetive.”
page 1137 note 13 Quotations throughout this essay from The Works of Plato are almost wholly from Taylor's vast mass of editorial matter, not from the Platonic dialogues themselves.
page 1138 note 14 Remember that “soul” is used here in the Neo-Platonic sense as something inferior to intellect.
page 1139 note 15 This was written before The Works of Plato was even planned. But the likeness may represent some common source, now lost, and so help to interpret Blake.
page 1139 note 16 According to Sampson (Poetical Works of Wm. Blake, p. 187 of 1913 ed.), this was written some two years before The Works of Plato appeared. But there is the possibility of personal contact between Blake and Taylor.
page 1140 note 17 The Songs of Experience appeared ten years before The Works of Plato. But there is the possibility that Blake knew Taylor personally, and got ideas from him long before they appeared in print.
page 1141 note 18 The phrase “golden chain” is found in Homer and Milton, but neither uses it to symbolize a continuous system of thought. Since Prof. Lowes, in his Road to Xanadu, has shown that Coleridge read Taylor enthusiastically, the following quotation from Coleridge's prose may be in point: “From the time of Honorius to the destruction of Constantinople .. there was a continued succession of individual intellects; the golden chain was never wholly broken, though the connecting links were often of baser metal” (The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. by Prof. Shedd, New York, 1853, IV, 30.)