TAYLOR, EDWARD
EDWARD (1642, Sketchley, Leicestershire, England-24 June, 1729, Westfield, MA). Education: B.A., Harvard College, 1671. Career: Minister, Westfield, MA, 1671-1729.
Edward Taylor, the great Puritan poet, was a member of the second generation of Puritan refugees from religious persecution in England. During the decade of the great migration, 1630-40, thousands of Puritans fled religious persecution to settle in America. But in the 1640s and 1650s the Puritan Revolution in England allowed Puritans to worship freely without crossing the Atlantic. However, with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the Anglican Church was reestablished in England, and two thousand dissenting clergymen were ejected from their posts.
Taylor was a popular schoolmaster in Bagworth, Leicestershire, at the time, and his supporters wanted him to get a license to preach. But because he could not in good conscience take the required oaths, he was denied a license and even prevented from continuing as a teacher. Taylor remained in England for a time, then took ship to Boston. Shortly after arriving in the summer of 1668, he entered Harvard College.
Taylor's account of life at Harvard shows that even in the heyday of Puritan New England, students did not always fit the stereotype of sobriety we might associate with the "nursery" of the colonial ministers. Taylor tells the story of a tutor who fell into disfavor with the students. In a phrase that suggests his later talent as a writer, Taylor notes, "Mr. Graves, not having his name for nought, lost the love of the undergraduates by his too much austerity." Some students developed the practice of nailing shut the classroom door while Graves was teaching, and Taylor, being then in his mid-twenties and presumably more mature than his fellow students, was not entirely comfortable with this behavior. He and others were relieved when a new tutor was appointed who treated the students so respectfully "that he had our very hearts."
Shortly after receiving his degree, Taylor was visited at Harvard by Thomas Dewy, representative of Westfield, Massachusetts, a Connecticut River town. Dewy begged him to come to the frontier to preach. Taylor was still debating what to do when, during a snowstorm in November, 1671, Dewy appeared again, beseeching Taylor to come. Taylor writes, "I not knowing how to cast down Goodman Dewy's expectations after I had raised them, I set forward, not without much apprehension of a tedious and hazardous journey, the snow being about mid-leg deep, the way unbeaten, or the track filled up again, and over rocks and mountains, and the journey being about an 100 miles-and Mr. Cooke of Cambridge told us it was the desperatest journey that ever Connecticut man undertook." On their second day out the travelers lost their way, and by the time they found it again, by trail markings on the trees, they had traveled thirty miles with prospect of "neither house nor wigwam in our way." But after sunset they came upon a place where they could spend the night.
Two days later they were on the banks of the newly frozen Connecticut River. "We ventured to lead our horses, in great danger over the Connecticut River, though altogether against my will, upon the ice, which was about 2 days in freezing, but mercy going along with [us], though the ice cracked every step yet we came over safely, and well, to the wonder almost of all that knew it"
During the trip the sun had shone and the air was calm, but within an hour of Taylor's arrival in Westfield, as he was warming himself by a fire in the house of Captain Cook, one of his parishioners-to-be, "there came such gusts of wind against his house, as I scarce ever heard I know not that ever I heard such gusts and scuffs of wind as blew then." But the storm did not prevent the men of the village from coming to welcome Taylor, and Cook "entertained us with great joy and gladness, giving me many thanks for coming, and that at such a season." The story of Taylor's journey to Westfield shows the relish that pious New Englander's took in obtaining a good ministerial prospect. Taylor was somewhat overwhelmed, not to say appalled, at being pursued despite deep snow and frozen rivers, but his experience testifies to the commonality of purpose among the early Congregationalists. A town was hardly a town without a minister.
The inducements to settle in Westfield were few. But shared hardships can be one of the strongest of bonds. Taylor was an educated man, who had impressed Harvard's president with his talent. During his early years at Westfield, New England was on the brink of King Philip's War. The people worked in the fields with loaded guns nearby; four houses were burned in raids; the government of Massachusetts urged them to abandon their homes, and move to Springfield.
Instead they built a fort and stayed. But the disruption of King Philip's War delayed their formal organization of the church. Finally in the spring of 1679 the community drew up a church covenant, and Edward Taylor was ordained minister of Westfield The town grew and prospered, and so did the church. In 1697 after expanding and painting the meeting house, the selectmen sold two hundred acres of land to purchase a bell, so that the people need no longer be called to worship by the beating of a drum. Like many other country pastors Taylor was a physician as well as a minister. He served Westfield for half a century and died in 1729. In most respects his life as a clergyman was interchangeable with the lives of hundreds other country pastors.
But he differs from them, and gained notoriety after his death far in excess of his reputation in life, because during the spare moments in his parish life, he wrote poetry. Sometime before 1690 he wrote "God's Determinations Touching His Elect, to poems about sin and redemption, ending with reassuring lines about Christ's power to defeat Satan. Between 1682 and 1725 he wrote poems prior to communion roughly once every two months; these he called "Preparatory Meditations before my Approach to the Lord's Supper." He carefully bound the manuscripts in parchment, perhaps a hundred volumes in all. These he left to his grandson Ezra Stiles*, later president of Yale. His descendents were instructed never to publish them, and for years the poems were lost in obscurity. Even in the nineteenth century they were regarded as something of a curiosity, lacking any real literary merit. It was not until the twentieth century that Taylor was recognized as a major American poet.
"In Taylor's love of language for itself," it has been said, "he commands an eminence unique among Puritan writers in America, and today critical assessment gives him first rank among American poets before the nineteenth century." In him the Puritan and poet combined and produced stunning images such as these lines on God as creator:
Who blew the Bellows of his Furnace Vast?
Or held the Mould wherein the world was Cast?
Who laid its Comer Stone? Or whose Command?
Where stand the Pillars upon which it stands?
Who Lac'de and Fillitted the earth so fine,
With Rivers like green Ribbons Smaragdine?
Who made the Sea's its Selvedge, and its locks
Like a Quilt Ball within a Silver Box?
Who Sprad its Canopy? Or Curtains Spun?
Who in this Bowling Alley bowld the Sun?
Today Edward Taylor occupies an honored place in libraries and lecture halls. And so he should. But it is useful to recall that in his own lifetime he was a Puritan country pastor, who first journeyed to his parish through deep snow, following marks on trees, across river ice that cracked with every step, where he was sustained only by "mercy."
Bibliography
A: Thomas H. Johnson, ed., The Poetical Works of Edward Taylor (New York, 1939; 1943); Donald E. Stanford, ed., Poems (New Haven, 1960); Norman S. Grabo, ed., Christographia (New Haven, 1962) [sermons, 1701-03, each with a poetic meditation]; Donald E. Stanford, ed., A Transcript of Edward Taylor's Metrical History of Christianity (n.p., c.1962); Norman S. Grabo, ed., Treatise Concerning the Lord's Supper, (East Lansing, Mich., 1966); Thomas M. and Virginia L. Davis, eds., The Unpublished Writings of Edward Taylor, 3 vols. (Boston, 1981) [vol. I, Church Records and Related Sermons; vol. 2, Edward Taylor vs. Solomon Stoddard: the Nature of the Lord's Supper; vol. 3, Edward Taylor's Minor Poetry]; Virginia L. Davis, ed., Edward Taylor's Harmony of the Gospels (Delmar, N.Y., 1983).
B: AAP, I, 177-81; SHG 2, 397-412; Norman S. Grabo, Edward Taylor (New York, 1961); Constance J. Gefvert, Edward Taylor: An Annotated Bibliography (Kent, Ohio, 1971); Karl Keller, The Example of Edward Taylor (Amherst, Mass., 1975); William J. Scheick, The Will and the World: the Poetry of Edward Taylor (Amherst, Mass., 1975); Burley G. Smith, Edward Taylor and the Lord's Supper (Kent, Ohio, 1975); Karen E. Rowe, Saint and Singer: Edward Taylor's Typology and the Poetics of Meditation (Cambridge, Mass., 1986); Thomas M. Davis, Edward Taylor's Elegy on Deacon David Dewey (Charlottesville, Va., 1986); Sidney Lind, "Edward Taylor: A Revaluation," New England Quarterly, 21 (1948), 518-30; Roy H. Pearce, "Edward Taylor: the Poet as Puritan," New England Quarterly, 23 (1950), 310-46; Donald E. Stanford, "Edward Taylor's "Spiritual Relation," American Literature, 35 (1964),467-75; David L. Parker, "Edward Taylor's Preparationism: A New Perspective on the Taylor-Stoddard Controversy," Early American Literature, 11 (1976-77), 259-78; Thomas William Stender, "Edward Taylor in Westfield" (Ph. D. Dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1977); Rosemary Fithian, "The Influence of the Psalm Tradition on the Meditative Poetry of Edward Taylor," (Ph. D. Dissertation, Kent State University, 1979).
Edward Taylor, the great Puritan poet, was a member of the second generation of Puritan refugees from religious persecution in England. During the decade of the great migration, 1630-40, thousands of Puritans fled religious persecution to settle in America. But in the 1640s and 1650s the Puritan Revolution in England allowed Puritans to worship freely without crossing the Atlantic. However, with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the Anglican Church was reestablished in England, and two thousand dissenting clergymen were ejected from their posts.
Taylor was a popular schoolmaster in Bagworth, Leicestershire, at the time, and his supporters wanted him to get a license to preach. But because he could not in good conscience take the required oaths, he was denied a license and even prevented from continuing as a teacher. Taylor remained in England for a time, then took ship to Boston. Shortly after arriving in the summer of 1668, he entered Harvard College.
Taylor's account of life at Harvard shows that even in the heyday of Puritan New England, students did not always fit the stereotype of sobriety we might associate with the "nursery" of the colonial ministers. Taylor tells the story of a tutor who fell into disfavor with the students. In a phrase that suggests his later talent as a writer, Taylor notes, "Mr. Graves, not having his name for nought, lost the love of the undergraduates by his too much austerity." Some students developed the practice of nailing shut the classroom door while Graves was teaching, and Taylor, being then in his mid-twenties and presumably more mature than his fellow students, was not entirely comfortable with this behavior. He and others were relieved when a new tutor was appointed who treated the students so respectfully "that he had our very hearts."
Shortly after receiving his degree, Taylor was visited at Harvard by Thomas Dewy, representative of Westfield, Massachusetts, a Connecticut River town. Dewy begged him to come to the frontier to preach. Taylor was still debating what to do when, during a snowstorm in November, 1671, Dewy appeared again, beseeching Taylor to come. Taylor writes, "I not knowing how to cast down Goodman Dewy's expectations after I had raised them, I set forward, not without much apprehension of a tedious and hazardous journey, the snow being about mid-leg deep, the way unbeaten, or the track filled up again, and over rocks and mountains, and the journey being about an 100 miles-and Mr. Cooke of Cambridge told us it was the desperatest journey that ever Connecticut man undertook." On their second day out the travelers lost their way, and by the time they found it again, by trail markings on the trees, they had traveled thirty miles with prospect of "neither house nor wigwam in our way." But after sunset they came upon a place where they could spend the night.
Two days later they were on the banks of the newly frozen Connecticut River. "We ventured to lead our horses, in great danger over the Connecticut River, though altogether against my will, upon the ice, which was about 2 days in freezing, but mercy going along with [us], though the ice cracked every step yet we came over safely, and well, to the wonder almost of all that knew it"
During the trip the sun had shone and the air was calm, but within an hour of Taylor's arrival in Westfield, as he was warming himself by a fire in the house of Captain Cook, one of his parishioners-to-be, "there came such gusts of wind against his house, as I scarce ever heard I know not that ever I heard such gusts and scuffs of wind as blew then." But the storm did not prevent the men of the village from coming to welcome Taylor, and Cook "entertained us with great joy and gladness, giving me many thanks for coming, and that at such a season." The story of Taylor's journey to Westfield shows the relish that pious New Englander's took in obtaining a good ministerial prospect. Taylor was somewhat overwhelmed, not to say appalled, at being pursued despite deep snow and frozen rivers, but his experience testifies to the commonality of purpose among the early Congregationalists. A town was hardly a town without a minister.
The inducements to settle in Westfield were few. But shared hardships can be one of the strongest of bonds. Taylor was an educated man, who had impressed Harvard's president with his talent. During his early years at Westfield, New England was on the brink of King Philip's War. The people worked in the fields with loaded guns nearby; four houses were burned in raids; the government of Massachusetts urged them to abandon their homes, and move to Springfield.
Instead they built a fort and stayed. But the disruption of King Philip's War delayed their formal organization of the church. Finally in the spring of 1679 the community drew up a church covenant, and Edward Taylor was ordained minister of Westfield The town grew and prospered, and so did the church. In 1697 after expanding and painting the meeting house, the selectmen sold two hundred acres of land to purchase a bell, so that the people need no longer be called to worship by the beating of a drum. Like many other country pastors Taylor was a physician as well as a minister. He served Westfield for half a century and died in 1729. In most respects his life as a clergyman was interchangeable with the lives of hundreds other country pastors.
But he differs from them, and gained notoriety after his death far in excess of his reputation in life, because during the spare moments in his parish life, he wrote poetry. Sometime before 1690 he wrote "God's Determinations Touching His Elect, to poems about sin and redemption, ending with reassuring lines about Christ's power to defeat Satan. Between 1682 and 1725 he wrote poems prior to communion roughly once every two months; these he called "Preparatory Meditations before my Approach to the Lord's Supper." He carefully bound the manuscripts in parchment, perhaps a hundred volumes in all. These he left to his grandson Ezra Stiles*, later president of Yale. His descendents were instructed never to publish them, and for years the poems were lost in obscurity. Even in the nineteenth century they were regarded as something of a curiosity, lacking any real literary merit. It was not until the twentieth century that Taylor was recognized as a major American poet.
"In Taylor's love of language for itself," it has been said, "he commands an eminence unique among Puritan writers in America, and today critical assessment gives him first rank among American poets before the nineteenth century." In him the Puritan and poet combined and produced stunning images such as these lines on God as creator:
Who blew the Bellows of his Furnace Vast?
Or held the Mould wherein the world was Cast?
Who laid its Comer Stone? Or whose Command?
Where stand the Pillars upon which it stands?
Who Lac'de and Fillitted the earth so fine,
With Rivers like green Ribbons Smaragdine?
Who made the Sea's its Selvedge, and its locks
Like a Quilt Ball within a Silver Box?
Who Sprad its Canopy? Or Curtains Spun?
Who in this Bowling Alley bowld the Sun?
Today Edward Taylor occupies an honored place in libraries and lecture halls. And so he should. But it is useful to recall that in his own lifetime he was a Puritan country pastor, who first journeyed to his parish through deep snow, following marks on trees, across river ice that cracked with every step, where he was sustained only by "mercy."
Bibliography
A: Thomas H. Johnson, ed., The Poetical Works of Edward Taylor (New York, 1939; 1943); Donald E. Stanford, ed., Poems (New Haven, 1960); Norman S. Grabo, ed., Christographia (New Haven, 1962) [sermons, 1701-03, each with a poetic meditation]; Donald E. Stanford, ed., A Transcript of Edward Taylor's Metrical History of Christianity (n.p., c.1962); Norman S. Grabo, ed., Treatise Concerning the Lord's Supper, (East Lansing, Mich., 1966); Thomas M. and Virginia L. Davis, eds., The Unpublished Writings of Edward Taylor, 3 vols. (Boston, 1981) [vol. I, Church Records and Related Sermons; vol. 2, Edward Taylor vs. Solomon Stoddard: the Nature of the Lord's Supper; vol. 3, Edward Taylor's Minor Poetry]; Virginia L. Davis, ed., Edward Taylor's Harmony of the Gospels (Delmar, N.Y., 1983).
B: AAP, I, 177-81; SHG 2, 397-412; Norman S. Grabo, Edward Taylor (New York, 1961); Constance J. Gefvert, Edward Taylor: An Annotated Bibliography (Kent, Ohio, 1971); Karl Keller, The Example of Edward Taylor (Amherst, Mass., 1975); William J. Scheick, The Will and the World: the Poetry of Edward Taylor (Amherst, Mass., 1975); Burley G. Smith, Edward Taylor and the Lord's Supper (Kent, Ohio, 1975); Karen E. Rowe, Saint and Singer: Edward Taylor's Typology and the Poetics of Meditation (Cambridge, Mass., 1986); Thomas M. Davis, Edward Taylor's Elegy on Deacon David Dewey (Charlottesville, Va., 1986); Sidney Lind, "Edward Taylor: A Revaluation," New England Quarterly, 21 (1948), 518-30; Roy H. Pearce, "Edward Taylor: the Poet as Puritan," New England Quarterly, 23 (1950), 310-46; Donald E. Stanford, "Edward Taylor's "Spiritual Relation," American Literature, 35 (1964),467-75; David L. Parker, "Edward Taylor's Preparationism: A New Perspective on the Taylor-Stoddard Controversy," Early American Literature, 11 (1976-77), 259-78; Thomas William Stender, "Edward Taylor in Westfield" (Ph. D. Dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1977); Rosemary Fithian, "The Influence of the Psalm Tradition on the Meditative Poetry of Edward Taylor," (Ph. D. Dissertation, Kent State University, 1979).