John Taylor (1578–1653)

John Taylor, self-styled as "The Water Poet", was an English poet.

Quotes

 * ''In paper, many a poet now survives
 * ''Or else their lines had perish'd with their lives.
 * ''Old Chaucer, Gower, and Sir Thomas More,
 * ''Sir Philip Sidney, who the laurel wore,
 * ''Spenser, and Shakespeare did in art excell,
 * ''Sir Edward Dyer, Greene, Nash, Daniel.
 * ''Sylvester, Beaumont, Sir John Harrington,
 * ''Forgetfulness their works would over run
 * ''But that in paper they immortally
 * ''Do live in spite of death, and cannot die.
 * From "The Praise of Hemp-seed", published 1620. This is the earliest surviving printed reference to the death of William Shakespeare and Francis Beaumont, who had both died in 1616.


 * Lewd did I live & evil I did dwel (Lewd did I live, evil I did dwel)
 * Early author-attributed palindrome (c. 1614); reported in Dave Fisher, The Wonderful World of Palindromes (October 30, 2015).


 * God sends meat, and the Devil sends cooks.
 * Works, vol. ii, p. 85 (1630). Compare the 1735 Poor Richard's Almanack.
 * 'Tis a mad world (my masters) and in sadnes / I travail'd madly in these dayes of madnes.
 * Wanderings to See the Wonders of the West, 1649; reported in Esther Moir, The Discovery of Britain: The English Tourists 1540-1840, page 26.
 * The syntax of "a mad world (my masters)" may indicate allusion to and/or acknowledgement of Nicholas Breton's 1603 tract "A Mad World, my Masters".
 * The play A Mad World, My Masters by Thomas Middleton, published in 1608, is recorded as being performed in 1605.
 * The veteran BBC journalist John Simpson used "A Mad World, My Masters" as the title for memoirs published in 1999/2000.