Background
He was born in Leicestershire, England, probably at Sketchley, circa 1645.
(Now considered America's foremost colonial poet, Edward T...)
Now considered America's foremost colonial poet, Edward Taylor was virtually unknown until some of his poems were discovered in the Yale library and published in 1937. The intellectual brilliance and the emotional intensity of his poetical meditations have led critics to compare him to John Donne and George Herbert. These poems are now recognized as one of the great achievements in American devotional literature.
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He was born in Leicestershire, England, probably at Sketchley, circa 1645.
He is said to have received his education under a Nonconformist schoolmaster.
President Charles Chauncy admitted him to Harvard as a sophomore on July 23, and gave him the lucrative and highly responsible post of college butler, one which Taylor retained until he was graduated with the degree of A. B. in 1671. His classmate Samuel Sewall was his roommate, and the two continued lifelong friends and correspondents.
Harvard conferred on him the degree of master of arts in 1720.
He himself kept a school at Bagworth for a brief time, but his staunch adherence to Congregational principles made him unwilling to subscribe to the required oaths of conformity. Thus, aware that his scruples would bar advancement at home, he emigrated to New England, arriving in Boston, July 5, 1668. The welcome accorded him by the Rev. John Mayo, and by Increase Mather and John Hull, together with the friendships he soon established, indicates the consideration he received.
Accepting a call from the newly organized church at Westfield, Massachussets, Taylor arrived late in 1671, though his ordination was delayed by Indian uprisings until 1679. He remained its minister until his death, performing also for many years the duties of a physician.
He was admitted a freeman at Westfield in 1678.
Though Taylor's manuscript "Poetical Works" was not critically examined until 1937, it had long been known that he was interested throughout his life in fashioning verses, but that he himself never desired the poetry to be printed. It is clear now that Taylor possessed a high degree of poetic sensibility, and the first edition of The Poetical Works of Edward Taylor, edited by T. H. Johnson, comprising nearly all of the best that he wrote, was published in 1939. His longest single poem, "Gods Determinations, " was written probably before 1690. It is an extended verse sequence, conceived in semidramatic form, describing the contest between Christ and Satan for man's soul, and it culminates in man's salvation by way of Covenant theology. Though dealing with a universal theme, its localized treatment clearly limits its effectiveness. Yet the intensity, the metrical variety and skill, and the freshness of language and imagery of many passages and whole sequences, distinguish it as perhaps the finest single poetic achievement in America before the nineteenth century.
By far the most numerous of Taylor's verses are his "Sacramental Meditations, " brief stanzaic voluntaries undertaken, about five times a year from 1682 to 1725, as private reflections upon Bible texts chosen for communion services. Their execution, as a group, is uneven, and many of those written after 1700 are merely metrical exercises, repetitious in thought, image, and even in phrasing. Taylor elected to compose in the manner of early seventeenth-century sacred or "concettist" poets, a fashion certainly anachronistic during his lifetime. He transplanted the manner, furthermore, without adapting it to a New England environment, so that even his arresting localisms and word coinages bear to the last the stamp of his native Leicestershire. But the total number of his "Meditations" is large, and among them are many of sustained felicity and unquestioned merit.
(Now considered America's foremost colonial poet, Edward T...)
In his principles he supported the Congregational way in opposition to Presbyterian church discipline.
He is said to have been a man small in stature, but intense, keen, sensitive, and earnest.
Taylor first married, November 5, 1674, Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. James Fitch, of Norwich, Connecticut She died in 1689, and only one of their seven children lived to maturity. On June 2, 1692, he married Ruth, daughter of the Hon. Samuel Wyllys, of Hartford. Of their six children, five were daughters, all of whom married Connecticut ministers. Ezra Stiles, who became president of Yale, was the only child of Taylor's youngest daughter Kezia.