Hamburg, and other narrow theologians, for having edited papers that
contained an attack on Christianity, which Lessing himself had said
that he wished to see answered before he died. The uncharitable
bitterness of these attacks, felt by a mind that had been touched to
the quick by the deepest of sorrows, helped to the shaping of
Lessing's calm, beautiful lesson of charity, this noblest of his
plays--"Nathan the Wise." But Lessing's health was shattered, and
he survived his wife only three years. He died in 1781, leaving
imperishable influence for good upon the minds of men, but so poor
in what the world calls wealth, that his funeral had to be paid for
by a Duke of Brunswick.

William Taylor, the translator of Lessing's "Nathan the Wise;" was
born in 1765, the son of a rich merchant at Norwich, from whose
business he was drawn away by his strong bent towards literature.
His father yielded to his wishes, after long visits to France and to
Germany, in days astir with the new movements of thought, that
preceded and followed the French Revolution. He formed a close
friendship with Southey, edited for a little time a "Norwich Iris,"
and in his later years became known especially for his Historic
Survey of German Poetry, which included his translations, and among
them this of "Nathan the Wise." It was published in 1830, Taylor
died in 1836. Thomas Carlyle, in reviewing William Taylor's Survey
of German Poetry, said of the author's own translations in it
"compared with the average of British translations, they may be
pronounced of almost ideal excellence; compared with the best
translations extant, for example, the German Shakespeare, Homer,
Calderon, they may still be called better than indifferent. One
great merit Mr. Taylor has: rigorous adherence to his original; he
endeavours at least to copy with all possible fidelity the term of