TANNAHILL, ROBERT (1774-1810).—­Poet, b. in Paisley where he was a weaver.  In 1807 he pub. a small vol. of poems and songs, which met with success, and carried his hitherto local fame over his native country.  Always delicate and sensitive, a disappointment in regard to the publication of an enlarged ed. of his poems so wrought upon a lowness of spirits, to which he was subject, that he drowned himself in a canal.  His longer pieces are now forgotten, but some of his songs have achieved a popularity only second to that of some of Burns’s best.  Among these are The Braes of Balquhidder, Gloomy Winter’s now awa’ and The Bonnie Wood o’ Craigielea.

TATE, NAHUM (1652-1715).—­Poet, s. of a clergyman in Dublin, was ed. at Trinity Coll. there.  He pub. Poems on Several Occasions (1677), Panacea, or a Poem on Tea, and, in collaboration with Dryden, the second part of Absalom and Achitophel.  He also adapted Shakespeare’s Richard II. and Lear, making what he considered improvements.  Thus in Lear Cordelia is made to survive her f., and marry Edgar.  This desecration, which was defended by Dr. Johnson, kept the stage till well on in the 19th century.  He also wrote various miscellaneous poems, now happily forgotten.  He is best remembered as the Tate of Tate and Brady’s metrical version of the Psalms, pub. in 1696.  T., who succeeded Shadwell as Poet Laureate in 1690, figures in The Dunciad.  NICHOLAS BRADY (1659-1726).—­Tate’s fellow-versifier of the Psalms, b. at Bandon, and ed. at Westminster and Oxf., was incumbent of Stratford-on-Avon.  He wrote a tragedy, The Rape, a blank verse translation of the AEneid, an Ode, and sermons, now all forgotten.

TATHAM, JOHN (fl. 1632-1664).—­Dramatist.  Little is known of him.  He produced pageants for the Lord Mayor’s show and some dramas, Love Crowns the End, The Distracted State, The Scots Figgaries, or a Knot of Knaves, The Rump, etc.  He was a Cavalier, who hated the Puritans and the Scotch, and invented a dialect which he believed to be their vernacular tongue.

TAUTPHOEUS, BARONESS (MONTGOMERY) (1807-1893).—­Dau. of an Irish gentleman, m. the Baron T., Chamberlain at the Court of Bavaria.  She wrote several novels dealing with German life of which the first, The Initials (1850), is perhaps the best.  Others were Cyrilla (1883), Quits (1857), and At Odds (1863).

TAYLOR, BAYARD (1825-1878).—­Poet, b. in Pennsylvania of Quaker descent, began to write by the time he was 12.  Apprenticed to a printer, he found the work uncongenial and, purchasing his indentures, went to Europe on a walking tour, and thereafter he was a constant and enterprising traveller.  After his return from Europe he ed. a paper, got on the staff of the New York Tribune, and pub.