Headmaster of Hawkshead Grammar School for five years between 1781 (11) and 1786 (16), the Reverend William Taylor ('an honoured teacher of my youth') encouraged Wordsworth not only to read but also to write poetry. The following lines from The Prelude Bk X describe the occasion when Wordworth visited Taylor's grave at Cartmel Priory in 1795 (25). The Priory is situated close to the Kent Estuary and Lancaster Sands and, for many years, provided a guide for travellers wishing to cross the water on the way to Lancaster, a significantly dangerous undertaking. Painters David Cox and William Mallord Turner treated the subject, giving adequate confirmation of Wordsworth's description of the area as presenting a 'fulgent spectacle'.
On the fulgent spectacle,
That neither passed away nor changed, I gazed
Enrapt; but brightest things are wont to draw
Sad opposites out of the inner heart,
As even their pensive influence drew from mine.
How could it otherwise? for not in vain
That very morning had I turned aside
To seek the ground where, 'mid a throng of graves,
An honoured teacher of my youth was laid,
And on the stone were graven by his desire
Lines from the churchyard elegy of Gray.
This faithful guide, speaking from his death-bed,
Added no farewell to his parting counsel,
But said to me, "My head will soon lie low;"
And when I saw the turf that covered him,
After the lapse of full eight years, those words,
With sound of voice and countenance of the Man,
Came back upon me, so that some few tears
Fell from me in my own despite. But now
I thought, still traversing that widespread plain,
With tender pleasure of the verses graven
Upon his tombstone, whispering to myself:
He loved the Poets, and, if now alive,
Would have loved me, as one not destitute
Of promise, nor belying the kind hope
That he had formed, when I, at his command,
Began to spin, with toil, my earliest songs.
from The Prelude Book X
Taylor was a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.