In 1818 a friend of the family, Josiah Conder, then editor of the Eclectic Review, persuaded Taylor to join its regular staff, which already included Robert Hall, John Foster, and Olinthus Gilbert Gregory.

In 1836 Taylor contested the chair of logic at Edinburgh University with Sir William Hamilton, and was narrowly beaten.

Though he joined the Anglican communion at an early stage in his career, Taylor remained on good terms with friends among the dissenters.

[1] Taylor was granted a civil list pension of £200 in 1862 as acknowledgment of his services to literature, and he died at Stanford Rivers three years later, on 28 June 1865.

Those that appeared were praised by John Wilson in Blackwood's Magazine and the last of the three particularly by Sir James Stephen in the Edinburgh Review (April 1840).

1866), a work of speculation, anticipating a scheme of duties in a future world, adapted to an assumed expansion of human powers after death.

1867), in which he insisted on the beneficial influence of a country life, the educational value of children's pleasures, and the natural rather than the stimulated growth of a child's mental powers.

He then completed and edited a translation of the Jewish Wars of Josephus by Robert Traill (1793–1847);[3] it appeared in two sumptuous illustrated volumes (1847 and 1851), but lost money.

), Taylor argued as controversialist against the Tracts for the Times, his contention being that the Christian Church of the fourth century had already matured into superstition and error.

Early in life he invented a beer-tap (patented 20 November 1824) which came into wide use, and he designed a machine for engraving on copper (pat.

Though it did not profit him, the idea was eventually applied on a large scale by a syndicate to engraving patterns on copper cylinders for calico printing in Manchester.