aine's Lives of the Poets.
2. Wood's Fasti Oxon. vol. i. p. 205.

* * * * *

JOHN TAYLOUR, Water-Poet,

Was born in Gloucestershire, where he went to school with one Green,
and having got into his accidence, was bound apprentice to a Waterman
in London, which, though a laborious employment, did not so much
depress his mind, but that he sometimes indulged himself in poetry.
Taylour retates [sic] a whimsical story of his schoolmaster Mr. Green,
which we shall here insert upon the authority of Winstanley. "Green
loved new milk so well, that in order to have it new, he went to the
market to buy a cow, but his eyes being dim, he cheapened a bull, and
asking the price of the beast, the owner and he agreed, and driving it
home, would have his maid to milk it, which she attempting to do,
could find no teats; and whilst the maid and her master were arguing
the matter, the bull very fairly pissed into the pail;" whereupon his
scholar John Taylour wrote these verses,

Our master Green was overseen
In buying of a bull,
For when the maid did mean to milk,
He piss'd the pail half full.

Our Water-poet found leisure to write fourscore books, some of which
occasioned diversion enough in their time, and were thought worthy to
be collected in a folio volume. Mr. Wood observes, that had he had
learning equal to his natural genius, which was excellent, he might
have equalled, if not excelled, many who claim a great share in the
temple of the muses. Upon breaking out of the rebellion, 1642, he left
London, and retired to Oxford, where he was much esteemed for his
facetious company; he kept a common victualling house there, and
thought he did great service to the Royal cause, by writing Pasquils
against the round-heads. After the garrison of Oxford surrendered, he
retired to Westminster, kept a public house in Phaenix Alley near Long
Acre, and continued constant in his loyalty to the King; after whose
death, he set up a sign over his door, of a mourning crown, but that
proving offensive, he pulled it down, and hung up his own picture[1],
under which were these words,

There's many a head stands for a sign,
Then gentle reader why not mine?

On the other side,

Tho' I deserve not, I desire
The laurel wreath, the poet's hire.

He died in the year 1654, aged 74, and was buried in the church yard
of St. Paul's Covent-Garden; his nephew, a P