JANE TAYLOR.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 26 June 1924, Page 3

JANE TAYLOR.

DIED APRIL, 1&4. (London Times.) There cannot be inany English homes to-ciay where the lines “Twinkle, twinkle, little star! How I wouder what you are!” are altogether unfamiliar. But of the thousands who may have known and iepeai>eu the words, there are few, perhaps, who are sure of the name of their author.

Jane Taylor, who wrote the lines, was a daughter of the Rev. Isaac Taylor, a Congregational minister in Suffolk and Essex, himself a gifted writer and artist. She was born in Red Lion Street, Holborn, in 1783, and began versifying and dramatising almost from the cradle. An instinct for the pen seems to be inherent in her family. Twenty years ago an- illustrated edition of “Original Poems.” by Jane Taylor, her sister Ann, and a triend, with which is included “Rhymes for the Nursery,” by Jane, was brought out by Mr E. V. Euc-as. “Among the Children’s Books,” says Mr Lucas, “which have stood, and will stand, the test of time, the Qiiginal Poems is, 1 believe, the only one of the first order which was written for children by authors who were concerned only for the entertainment of little people. . . . Defoe, Swift, Bunyan stumbled upon their nursery popularity; the Taylors toiled for it.”

Jane was a dainty, delicate little person, of gicat vivaciousness, and bubbling over to express herself in a manner that should be at the same time impioviiig and droll. Pier sister Ann (Mrs Gilbert) .gives charming pictures of little Jane, at five years old, haranguing an interested and delighted audience from her seat -upon the counter of the baker's shop at Lavenham, or at a slightly more advanced age planning out plays a;id poems while she indulged in her favourite pastime of whipping a top. From the first she evinced a blend of depth and si nee lity with sprightly humour and common sense —a rare combination of qualities which delights us still, as it delighted such critics as Scott, Southey, Swinburne, and Browning, it is shown not only in the “Original Poems” and the “Rhymes for the Nursery” which followed them, but also in the “H f ymns for Infant Minds,” where the somewhat dour theology is tempered by the tender simplicity of such lines as* “God made tlie stars and the daisies too, And watches over them and you.” But Jane’s writings had a wider public than the nursery. For a journal of some note at that period, called the Youths’ Magazine, she wrote ry number of verses; tales, Scriptural dissertations. and fables, which were afterwards collected in a volume entitled “Contributions of Q. 0.” Her tnoralisings on Scripture texts, though sound and to the point-, would lie tedious now, in spite of some terse and arresting remarks. But it is in her failles in verse and prose that Jane's characteristic humour finds its best expression. Sonic strike? a serious, even a religious, note, as “The Philosopher’s Stone” (on fame), “How it Strikes a Stranger" (which suggested to Browning ins poem “Rephan”), or “The Clever Fool” (who specialised in pineapples and neglected his soul). Others, such as “The Idle Mead” and “The Discontented Pendulum.” are in a lighter vein. The same spirit of delicate raillery, together with satire shrewd and kindly, is shown in a dialogue entitled “The Pleasures of Taste” and in a novel, “Display.'' and more strikingly Mill in the “Essays of

Rhyme,” which are regarded by some critics as the best work Jane Taylor ever did. Her letters to her friends are? full of thoughtful and independent criticism on current events and on the larger interests of life.