Edward Taylor was born about 1642, probably in Sketchley, Leicestershire, England, into a world in which political upheaval and religious conviction entered ordinary life with unusual force. He died on 24 June 1729 in Westfield, Massachusetts, after nearly six decades as that frontier town’s minister, physician, teacher, community counselor, and private poet. During his lifetime he was known chiefly as a learned and…
Compare Poets
Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Poet A
Edward Taylor
Poet B
Tobias Hume
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 61%
Blended 61%
Swap sides
Another related pair
In the vast and glittering tapestry of Renaissance music, where names like Palestrina, Byrd, and Dowland shimmer with canonical brilliance, there strides a figure less polished by posterity, yet no less compelling — Tobias Hume. Born in 1579, likely in the shadowed alleys of London or perhaps the rolling countryside of northern England, Hume emerges not as a cloistered churchman or courtly favorite, but as a man of t…
“My studies are far from servile imitations, I robbe no others inventions... These are mine own Phansies expressed by my proper Genius, which if thou dost dislike, let me see thine.”
In time
Edward Taylor
Tobias Hume
1579
1729
They overlapped for 4 years (1642–1645).
When Edward Taylor was born, Tobias Hume was about 63.
Edward Taylor was about 3 when Tobias Hume died.
On the map
About 363 km separate Sketchley, Leicestershire, England from Redbraes Castle, Berwickshire, Scotland. Both have ground in England.
Edward Taylor
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.
From the biographies
Edward Taylor: sketchley, leicestershire, westfield, harvard college, elizabeth fitch, james fitch, the lay-man’s lamentation, upon wedlock, and death of children. Tobias Hume: london, swedish army, duke charles, the first part of ayres, harke, harke, a souldiers resolution, captain humes poeticall musicke, the battle.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
1642
Battle of Edgehill
Edward Taylor
1668
Migration to America
Emotional landscapes
Edward Taylor: Spirituality, Sorrow, Despair. Tobias Hume: Irony, Joy, Sensuality.