TAYLOR, BROOK, was born at Edmonston, on the 28th of August 1685. He was the son of John Taylor, Esq., of Bifrons House in Kent, by Olivia, daughter of Sir Nicholas Tempest, of Durham, Bart. His grandfather, Nathaniel Taylor, was one of those puritans whom "Cromwell thought fit to elect by a letter, dated June 14, 1653, to represent the county of Bedford in Parliament." The character of his father partook in no small degree of the austerity that had been transmitted to him in the line of his ancestors, and by the spirit of the times in which they lived; and to this cause may be ascribed the disaffection which sometimes subsisted between the father and even such a son as is the subject of this article. The old gentleman's morose temper, however, yielded to the powers of music; and the most eminent professors of the art in that period were hospitably welcomed in his house. His son Brook was induced, by his natural genius, and by the disposition of his father, which he wished by all the means in his power to conciliate, to direct his particular attention to music; and he became in very early life a distinguished proficient in it. To music he added another accomplishment, in which he equally excelled, that of drawing and painting. His classical education was conducted at home under a private tutor; and his proficiency in the ordinary branches of the languages and the mathematics was so great, that he was deemed qualified for the university at the early age of fifteen.
In 1701 he was entered a fellow-commoner of St John's College, Cambridge. At that period mathematics engaged more particularly the attention of the university; and the examples of eminence in the learned world, derived from that branch of science, attracted the notice and roused the emulation of every youth possessed of talents and of application. In 1708 he wrote his treatise on the "Centre of Oscillation," which was not published in the Philosophical Transactions till some years afterwards. In 1709 he took the degree of LL.B. In 1712 he was chosen a Fellow of the Royal Society. During the interval between these two periods, he corresponded with Dr Keill on several of the most abstruse subjects of mathematical disquisition. Sir William Young informs us, that he had in his possession a letter, dated in 1712, addressed to Mr Machin, which contains at length a solution of Kepler's problem, and explains the use to be derived from that solution. In this year he presented to the Royal Society three different papers: one on the "Ascent of Water between two Glass Planes;" a second on the "Centre of Oscillation;" and a third on the "Motion of a Stretched String." It appears from his correspondence with Keill, that in 1713 he presented a paper on his favourite subject of "Music;" but this is not preserved in the Transactions.
His distinguished proficiency in those branches of science which engaged the particular attention of the Royal Society at this period, and which embroiled them in contests with foreign academies, recommended him to the notice of its most illustrious members; and in 1714 he was elected to the office of secretary. In this year he took the degree of LL.D.; and during the same year he transmitted, in a letter to Sir Hans Sloane, an "Account of some curious Experiments relative to Magnetism;" which, however, was not delivered to the society till many years afterwards when it was printed in the Transactions. His application to those studies to which his genius inclined was indefatigable; for we find that in 1715 he published in Latin his Methodus Incrementorum; a curious essay preserved in the Philosophical Transactions, entitled an "Account of an Experiment for the Discovery of the Laws of Magnetic Attraction;" and a treatise well known to mathematicians, and highly valued by the best judges, his "New Principles of Linear Perspective." In the same year (such were his admirable
talents, and so capable were they of being directed to various subjects), he conducted a controversial correspondence with the Count Raymond de Montmort, on the tenets of Malebranche; which occasioned his being particularly noticed in the eulogium pronounced by the French Academy on the decease of that eminent metaphysician.
The new philosophy of Newton, as it was then called, engaged the attention of mathematicians and philosophers both at home and abroad. At Paris it was in high estimation; and the men of science in that city were desirous of obtaining a personal acquaintance with the learned secretary of the Royal Society, whose reputation was so generally acknowledged, and who had particularly distinguished himself in the Leibnizian or German controversy, as we may denominate it, of that period. In consequence of many urgent invitations, he determined to visit his friends at Paris in the year 1716. He was received with many tokens of affection and respect. Besides the mathematicians, to whom he had always free access, he was here introduced to Lord Bolingbroke, the Count de Caylus, and Bishop Bossuet.
Early in 1717 he returned to London, and composed three treatises, which were presented to the Royal Society, and published in the thirtieth volume of the Transactions. About this time his intense application had to a considerable degree impaired his health; and he was under the necessity of repairing, for relaxation and relief, to Aix-la-Chapelle. Having likewise a desire of directing his attention to subjects of moral and religious speculation, he resigned his office of secretary to the Royal Society in 1718. After his return to England in 1719, he applied to subjects of a very different kind from those that had employed the thoughts and labours of his more early life. Among his papers of this date, Sir William Young found detached parts of a "Treatise on the Jewish Sacrifices," and a dissertation of considerable length on the "Lawfulness of eating Blood."
Towards the end of the year 1720, Dr Taylor accepted the invitation of Lord Bolingbroke to spend some time at La Source, a country seat near Orleans, which he held in right of his wife, the widow of the Marquis de Vilette, nephew of Madame de Maintenon. In the next year he returned to England, and published the last paper which appears with his name in the Philosophical Transactions, entitled an "Experiment made to ascertain the Proportion of Expansion of Liquor in the Thermometer," with regard to the degree of heat.
In 1721 he married Miss Bridges of Wallington, in the county of Surrey, a young lady of good family, but of small fortune, and this marriage occasioned a rupture with his father, whose consent he had never obtained. The death of his wife in 1725, and that of an infant son, whom the parents regarded as the presage and pledge of reconciliation with the father, and who actually proved such, deeply affected his sensibility. During the two succeeding years he resided with his father at Bifrons, where "the musical parties, so agreeable to his taste and early proficiency, and the affectionate attentions of a numerous family welcoming an amiable brother, so long estranged by paternal resentment, not only soothed his sorrows, but ultimately engaged him to a scene of country retirement, and domesticated and fixed his habits of life." In 1725, with the full approbation of his father and family, he married Sabetta, daughter of John Sawbridge, Esq., of Olantigh, in Kent. In 1729, on the death of his father, he succeeded to the family estate of Bifrons. In the following year he lost his wife in child-bed. The daughter whose birth occasioned this melancholy event survived, and became the mother of Sir William Young, to whom we owe these notices of his grandfather.
In the interval that elapsed between the years 1721 and
Taylor, Jeremy. 1730, no production of Taylor appears in the Philosophical Transactions; nor in the course of that time did he publish any work. His biographer has found no traces of his learned labour, excepting a "Treatise of Logarithms," which was committed to his friend Lord Paisley (afterwards Abercorne), in order to be prepared for the press, but which probably was never printed. His health was now much impaired; relaxation became necessary, and he was diverted by new connections from the habit of severe study, which had distinguished the early period of his life, and which had contributed to contract its duration. He did not long survive the loss of his second wife; and his remaining days were days of increasing imbecility and sorrow. The essay entitled Contemplatio Philosophica, published by Sir William Young in 1793, appears to have been written about this time, and probably with a view to abstract his mind from painful recollections and regret. It was the effort of a strong mind, and is a singular example of the close logic of the mathematician applied to metaphysics. But the blow had sunk too deep for study to afford more than temporary relief. Having survived his second wife little more than a year, he died of a decline in the forty-sixth year of his age, December 29, 1731, and was buried in the churchyard of St Ann's, Soho.