His chief master was William Taylor, the "Anglo-Germanist" of "Lavengro." Taylor was born in 1765. He studied in Germany as a youth and returned to England with a great enthusiasm for German literature. He translated Goethe's "Iphigenia" (1793), Lessing's "Nathan" (1791), Wieland's "Dialogues of the Gods," etc. (1795); he published "Tales of Yore," translated from several languages, and a "Letter concerning the two first chapters of Luke," in 1810, "English Synonyms discriminated" in 1813, and an "Historical Survey of German Poetry," interspersed with various translations, in 1823-30. He was bred among Unitarians, read Hume, Voltaire and Rousseau, disliked the Church, and welcomed the French Revolution, though he was no friend to "the cause of national ambition and aggrandisement." He belonged to a Revolution Society at Norwich, and in 1790 wrote from Paris calling the National Assembly "that well-head of philosophical legislation, whose pure streams are now overflowing the fairest country upon earth and will soon be sluiced off into the other realms of Europe, fertilising all with the living energy of its waters." In 1791 he and his father withdrew their capital from manufacture and William Taylor devoted himself to literature. Hazlitt speaks of the "style of philosophical criticism which has been the boast of the 'Edinburgh Review,'" as first introduced into the "Monthly Review" by Taylor in 1796. Scott said that Taylor's translation of Burger's "Lenore" made him a poet. Sir James Mackintosh learned the Taylorian language for the sake of the man's "vigour and originality"--"As the Hebrew is studied for one book, so is the Taylorian by me for one author." {picture: William Taylor, of Norwich: page66.jpg}