John Taylor (1578–1653)

For other people named "John Taylor", see John Taylor.

John Taylor, self-styled as "The Water Poet", was an English poet.

Quotes

• In paper, many a poet now survives

Or else their lines had perish'd with their lives.

Old Chaucer, Gower, and Sir Thomas More,

Sir Philip Sidney, who the laurel wore,

Spenser, and Shakespeare did in art excell,

Sir Edward Dyer, Greene, Nash, Daniel.

Sylvester, Beaumont, Sir John Harrington,

Forgetfulness their works would over run

But that in paper they immortally

Do live in spite of death, and cannot die.

• From "The Praise of Hemp-seed", published 1620. This is the earliest surviving printed reference to the death of William Shakespeare and Francis Beaumont, who had both died in 1616.

• Lewd did I live & evil I did dwel
  (Lewd did I live, evil I did dwel)
  • Early author-attributed palindrome (c. 1614); reported in Dave Fisher, The Wonderful World of Palindromes (October 30, 2015).

• God sends meat, and the Devil sends cooks.

  Works, vol. ii, p. 85 (1630). Compare the 1735 Poor Richard's Almanack.

• 'Tis a mad world (my masters) and in sadnes / I travail'd madly in these dayes of madnes.

  Wanderings to See the Wonders of the West, 1649; reported in Esther Moir, The Discovery of Britain: The English Tourists 1540-1840, page 26.

  • The syntax of "a mad world (my masters)" may indicate allusion to and/or acknowledgement of Nicholas Breton's 1603 tract "A Mad World, my Masters".
    • The play A Mad World, My Masters by Thomas Middleton, published in 1608, is recorded as being performed in 1605.
  • The veteran BBC journalist John Simpson used "A Mad World, My Masters" as the title for memoirs published in 1999/2000.