Jeremy Taylor (1) (1613–1667)

[From A Writer’s Notebook, Doubleday & Company, 1949, ch. “1901”, pp. 54-7:]

Jeremy Taylor. Of no one, perhaps, can it be said with greater truth that the style is the very man himself. When you read Holy Dying, with its leisurely gait, its classical spirit, its fluent, facile poetry, you can imagine what sort of man was Jeremy Taylor; and from a study of his life and circumstances you could hazard a guess that he would write exactly as he does. He was a Caroline prelate. His life was easy, moderately opulent and gently complacent. And such was his style. It reminds one, not, like Milton’s, of a tumultuous torrent breaking its way through obstacles almost insurmountable, but of a rippling brook meandering happily through a fertile meadow carpeted with the sweet-smelling flowers of spring. Jeremy Taylor is no juggler with words, but well content to use them in their ordinary sense. His epithets are seldom subtle, and seldom discover in the object a new or striking quality; he uses them purely as decoration, and he repeats them over and over again, as if they were not living, necessary things, but merely conventional adjuncts of a noun. Consequently, notwithstanding his extreme floridity, he gives an impression of simplicity. He seems to use the words that come most naturally to the mouth, and his phrases, however nicely turned, have a colloquial air. Perhaps, also, the constant repetition of and adds to this sensation of naivete. The long clauses, tacked on to one another in a string that appears interminable, make you feel that the thing has been written without effort. It seems like the conversation of a good-natured, rather long-winded, elderly cleric. Often, it is true, the endless phrases, clause after clause joined together with little regard to the meaning, with none at all to the construction of the sentence, depend merely upon looseness of punctuation, and by a rearrangement of this can be made into compact and well composed periods. Jeremy Taylor, when he likes, can put together his words as neatly as anyone, and then writes a sentence of perfect music. ‘He that desires to die well and happily above all things must be careful that he do not live a soft, a delicate, and voluptuous life; but a life severe, holy and under the discipline of the Cross, under the conduct of prudence and observation, a life of warfare and sober counsels, labour and watchfulness.’ On the other hand, sometimes his phrases run away with him, then and is heaped upon and, idea upon idea, till one cannot make head or tail of the meaning; and the sentence at last tails off obscurely, unfinished, incomplete and ungrammatical. On occasion, however, these tremendous sentences are managed with astonishing skill; and in a long string of clauses the arrangement of epithets, the form and order of the details, will be varied with skill and elegance.

But the great charm of Holy Dying lies in the general atmosphere of the book, scented and formal, calm and urbane like an old-world garden; and still more in the beautiful poetry of stray phrases. One cannot turn a page without finding some felicitous expression, some new order of simple words which seems to give them a new value; and often enough some picturesque passage, overladen, like that earlier rococo in which decoration was exuberant, but notwithstanding kept within the bounds of perfect taste.

[From Points of View, Vintage Classics, 2000 [1958], “Prose and Dr. Tillotson”, pp. 104-5:]

Of these two styles, the plain and the ornate, you cannot say that one is better than the other. There is no right or wrong here. It is merely a matter of taste. I would suggest that the plain style is more suited to matters of practical interest than the ornate. If you are concerned with the subject of your discourse, the bread and butter of it, rather than the jam, you will be more persuasive if you eschew ornament. To substantiate this, I would ask the reader to compare Jeremy Taylor’s Liberty of Prophesying with his Holy Dying. Holy Dying is remarkable for its dazzling embroideries and the luxuriance of its images. The Liberty of Prophesying is written as plainly and straightforwardly, though of course in the idiom of the period, as if it were an official report on the condition of the navy. In this Jeremy Taylor was dealing with a matter in which he had a personal concern. His rich living had been sequestered, his estate seized, his house plundered and his family turned out of doors. After various hazards he found a refuge in South Wales, where the local grandee, the Earl of Carbery, welcomed him. His wife and children joined him. Lord Carbery made him his private chaplain, but the salary was small and, it is suggested, irregularly paid. It was in these untoward circumstances that he wrote The Liberty of Prophesying. He had suffered much, his future was dark, and he was dependent on the uncertain liberality of his patron; it is not strange that when he came to write this book, it should not have the “pomp of imagery”, I am quoting Edmund Gosse, “which is characteristic of his finest writing.” The style is pure and direct, though a trifle dry. The argument can be stated in a few words; and has been well put by the historian of the early Stuarts, “Reason is the ultimate judge of religion as of other matters; now, since reason is an individual attribute, there are likely to be different opinions. As no man can be certain that his opinion is right or better than another’s, it is wrong to persecute unorthodox beliefs, for there is no demonstrable proof that they are erroneous.” Could anything be more sensible?

The Liberty of Prophesying was written in 1646, Holy Dying in 1651. During the years Jeremy Taylor passed at Golden Grove, Lord Carbery’s seat, his chief mainstay was the Earl’s wife, who appears to have been a good, clever and courageous woman. After thirteen years of marriage, worn out by constant pregnancies, she died on giving birth to her tenth child. This was in 1650. A year later Jeremy Taylor’s wife died. It is natural to suppose that it was these events which gave him the impulse to write Holy Dying. Everyone agrees that it is the greatest of his works. Critics have vied with one another to praise the sustained beauty and profusion of its style, its “limpid and continuous glory” and the amazing abundance of its images. It is written in a very different manner from that of The Liberty of Prophecying [sic]. In this he was concerned with his own private wrongs and he wrote, not to edify, but to persuade. In Holy Dying he gave free reign to his more precious gifts. There can be no doubt that his grief at the loss of the amiable Countess and of his affectionate wife was sincere. In Holy Dying he not only erected an imperishable monument to their memory, but it may well be found solace in the ingenious conceits that his fertile imagination presented to him and in the melodious sentences that his pen put to paper. For it is the inestimable privilege of the creative artist to win in creation release from the pains of life.… (more)