ly interlinked with Scott and Southey.
Lucy Aikin records that she heard Sir Walter Scott declare to Mrs.
Barbauld that Taylor had laid the foundations of his literary
career--had started him upon the path of glory through romantic verse to
romantic prose, from _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ to _Waverley_. It
was the reading of Taylor's translation of Buerger's _Lenore_ that did
all this. 'This, madam,' said Scott, 'was what made me a poet. I had
several times attempted the more regular kinds of poetry without
success, but here was something that I thought I could do.' Southey
assuredly loved Taylor, and each threw at the feet of the other the
abundant literary learning that both possessed. This we find in a
correspondence which, reading more than a century after it was written,
still has its charm.[36] The son of a wealthy manufacturer of Norwich,
Taylor was born in that city in 1765. He was in early years a pupil of
Mrs. Barbauld. At fourteen he was placed in his father's counting-house,
and soon afterwards was sent abroad, in the company of one of the
partners, to acquire languages. He learnt German thoroughly at a time
when few Englishmen had acquaintance with its literature. To Goethe's
genius he never did justice, having been offended by that great man's
failure to acknowledge a book that Taylor sent to him, exactly as
Carlyle and Borrow alike were afterwards offended by similar
delinquencies on the part of Walter Scott. When he settled again in
Norwich he commenced to write for the magazines, among others for Sir
Richard Phillips's _Monthly Magazine_, and to correspond with Southey.
At the time Southey was a poor man, thinking of abandoning literature
for the law, and hopeful of practising in Calcutta. The Norwich
Liberals, however, aspired to a newspaper to be called _The Iris_.
Taylor asked Southey to come to Norwich and to become its editor.
Southey declined and Taylor took up the task. The _Norwich Iris_ lasted
for two years. Southey never threw over his friendship for Taylor,
although their views ultimately came to be far apart. Writing to Taylor
in 1803 he says:

Your theology does nothing but mischief; it serves only to thin
the miserable ranks of Unitarianism. The regular troops of
infidelity do little harm; and their trumpeters, such as
Voltaire and Paine, not much more. But it is such pioneers as
Middleton, and you and your German friends, that work
underground and sap the