Throughout his life Sir Henry Taylor was known as "the Author of Philip van Artevelde," a "dramatic romance" in verse first published in 1834 and frequently revised and reprinted in the author's lifetime. Today the play is less read than its preface, an important document in the early Victorian reaction against Byron and Shelley, While The Statesman (1836), a gently ironic treatise which owes more to Bacon than to Machiavelli, still enjoys some attention from students of the history of political theory.

Taylor grew up in the vicinity of Durham; he was the third son of George Taylor, whose wife, Eleanor Ashworth Taylor, died in Henry's infancy. George Taylor managed a farm and led his life in bookish solitude, educating his sons himself. Entered as a midshipman in the navy in 1814, Henry was discharged for reasons of health a few months afterward. His father and two brothers, who died within...