The death of Mr. Tom Taylor removes one who for many years past has been a prominent figure in the literary world, and whose name is connected more or less directly with nearly all of the best known literary and dramatic celebrities for the last quarter of a century. It was Mr. Tom Taylor’s misfortune that for the last few years of his busy life he was engaged upon an unsuitable occupation, the editing of Punch, a task for which his undeniably brilliant capacities by no means specially qualified him, and while thus engaged upon work which was not always satisfactorily done, time which might have been very much better employed was spent. Perhaps the best work that Mr. Tom Taylor did was his art criticism for the Times, though many of the notices of performances given by the Comédie Française last year at the Gaiety were written with keenly critical ability. The art notices, however, were almost always to the point, and while he never failed to speak of everyone as kindly as was consistent with justice, he never forgot that the cause he had to serve was that of art and not that of individual painters. His most successful theatrical pieces were adaptations from the French, but he dressed them for the English stage with taste and judgment, and if there are improbabilities and inconsistencies in some of them, it must be remembered that audiences were less exigent and authors naturally less careful a few years ago. His attempt to revive the poetical drama was at any rate admirable in its conception.
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Bibliography
Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (24 July 1880): 12
Created 10 December 2023