1

PRIOR

ATTHEW PRIOR is one of those that have burst out

MATTHE

from an obscure original to great eminence. He was born July 21, 1664, according to some, at Winburne in Dorsetshire, of I know not what parents; others say that he was the son of a Joiner of London': he was perhaps willing enough to leave his birth unsettled', in hope, like Don Quixote, that the historian of his actions might find him some illustrious alliance 3.

2 He is supposed to have fallen by his father's death into the hands of his uncle, a vintner* near Charing-cross, who sent him

'The son of Mr. George Prior, Citizen of London, by trade a joiner, and was born there in 1664. Life of Prior, by Samuel Humphreys; Prior's Poems on Several Occasions, 1733,iii. 1.

'He was the son of a reputable citizen of London, where he was born July 21, 1664.' Prior's History of my own Time, 1740, p. 2; a work, says the title-page, 'compiled from the original MSS. of Prior, revised and signed by himself, and copied fair for the press by Adrian Drift, his executor.' It was published after the death of Drift, who was his Secretary. With the exception of Prior's account of his examination before a Parliamentary Committee (post, PRIOR, 34) it contains little but State Papers. The editor was so ignorant that he calls this Committee a Committee of the Privy Council.

2

The difficulty of settling Prior's birth-place is great. In the register of his College he is called, at his admission by the President, Matthew Prior of Winburn in Middlesex; by himself next day Matthew Prior of Dorsetshire, in which county, not in Middlesex, Winborn, or Wimborne, as it stands in the Villare [ante, ROWE, I n.], is found. When he stood candidate for his fellowship five years afterwards he was registered again by himself as of

Middlesex. The last record ought to be preferred, because it was made upon oath. It is observable that, as a native of Winborne, he is styled Filius Georgii Prior, generosi; not consistently with the common account of the meanness of his birth. JOHNSON.

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9

'In the Admission Register of St. John's, ii. 92, we read Matthaeus Prior Dorcestr," altered by a later hand to "Middlesexiensis." N. & 2.6 S. ix. 209. For the 'local tradition in favour of his having been born at Wimborne' see Mr. Austin Dobson's Prior, 1889, p. 205.

3 Perhaps the sage who writes my history may so brighten up my kindred and genealogy that I may be found the fifth or sixth in descent fromaking.' Don Quixote, 1820, 1.234.

'Burns,' wrote Cowper, 'is, I believe, the only poet these kingdoms have produced in the lower rank of life since Shakespeare (I should rather say since Prior) who need not be indebted for any part of his praise to a charitable consideration of his origin, and the disadvantages under which he has laboured.' Southey's Cowper, vi. 54.

'My uncle, rest his soul! when living

Might have contrived me ways of thriving;

for some time to Dr. Busby' at Westminster; but, not intending to give him any education beyond that of the school, took him, when he was well advanced in literature, to his own house, where the earl of Dorset, celebrated for patronage of genius, found him by chance, as Burnet relates, reading Horace, and was so well pleased with his proficiency that he undertook the care and cost of his academical education 3.

He entered his name in St. John's College at Cambridge in 3 1682, in his eighteenth year; and it may be reasonably supposed that he was distinguished among his contemporaries. He became a Bachelor, as is usual, in four years; and two years afterwards wrote the poem on the Deity, which stands first in his volume".

It is the established practice of that College to send every year 4 to the earl of Exeter some poems upon sacred subjects, in acknowledgment of a benefaction enjoyed by them from the bounty of his ancestor'. On this occasion were those verses

Taught me with cyder to replenish My vats, or ebbing tide of Rhenish.' PRIOR, An Epistle to F. Shephard, Eng. Poets, xxxii. 160.

[See Wheatley's Pepys, i. 42, Feb. 3, 1660, for Pepys taking his cousin, a barrister, out of Westminster Hall 'to Prior's, the Rhenish Wine House.' See also Prior's Selected Poems, 1889, p. 207, where the question of the locality of the tavern in which Prior was employed is exhaustively treated by Mr. Austin Dobson. Theold Rummer Tavern near Charing Cross was kept by one Samuel Prior in 1685. NICHOLS, Johnson's Works, viii. 1.]

I

2

Ante, DRYDEN, 4.

Ante, DORSET, 13.

3 Burnet describes him as 'one Prior,' and continues:-'He had been taken a boy out of a tavern by the Earl of Dorset, who found him reading Horace, and he, being very generous, gave him an education in literature.' History, iv. 276.

'He probably was the Duke of Dorset's brother.'

6 HORACE WALPOLE, Letters, ii. 160. 'There is no evidence to support this probability.' CUNNINGHAM. The Duke was the Earl's son.

'I scarce knew what life was,' writes

7 [Lord Burghley founded in 1581 two exhibitions at St. John's College. A sermon in which the gift is to be declared is preached annually by a member of the College at Hatfield

written, which, though nothing is said of their success, seem to have recommended him to some notice; for his praise of the countess's musick and his lines on the famous picture of Seneca 2 afford reason for imagining that he was more or less conversant with that family.

5 The same year he published The City Mouse and Country Mouse, to ridicule Dryden's Hind and Panther, in conjunction with Mr. Montague. There is a story of great pain suffered and of tears shed on this occasion by Dryden, who thought it hard that 'an old man should be so treated by those to whom he had always been civil.' By tales like these is the envy raised by superior abilities every day gratified: when they are attacked, every one hopes to see them humbled; what is hoped is readily believed, and what is believed is confidently told. Dryden had been more accustomed to hostilities than that such enemies should break his quiet, and if we can suppose him vexed it would be hard to deny him sense enough to conceal his uneasiness *. 6 The City Mouse and Country Mouse procured its authors more solid advantages than the pleasure of fretting Dryden; for they were both speedily preferred. Montague, indeed, obtained the first notice, with some degree of discontent, as it seems, in Prior, who probably knew that his own part of the performance was the best. He had not, however, much reason to complain; for he

and at Stamford. The preacher presents copies of Latin and Greek verses written by scholars. Camb. Univ. Cal. 1902-3, p. 821.]

Tothe Countess of Exeter playing on the Lute. It contains the following couplet :

'Some cherub finishes what you begun,

And to a miracle improves a tune.'

Eng. Poets, xxxii. 155.

2 On a Picture of Seneca dying in a Bath. By Jordain [Jordaens]. At the Earl of Exeter's at Burleigh House. Ib. p. 156.

3 The Deity was written in 1688, but The City Mouse in 1687. Ante, HALIFAX, 5. See also ante, DRYDEN, 127, 288; Prior's Poems, 1733, iii. 169.

This,' writes Malone, 'is not a traditional tale. Dr. Lockier related it to Spence. His words were: -"I have heard Dryden say:-'For two young fellows that I have always

been very civil to, to use an old man in misfortunes in so cruel a manner !! -and he wept as he said it" [Spence's Anec. p. 61]. Malone's Dryden, i. 199. Dryden was fifty-seven years old in 1688.

In the MS. quoted above Prior writes:-'From the prospect of some little fortune to be made, and friendship to be cultivated with the great men, I did not launch much into satire, which, however agreeable for the present to the writers or encouragers of it, does in time do neither of them good.' Ib. i. 545.

5 Ante, HALIFAX, 5.

6 Prior ends his first Epistle to Shephard (Eng. Poets, xxxii. 161) as follows:

'There's one thing more I had
almost slipt,
[script:
But that may do as well in post-
My friend Charles Montague's pre-
ferr'd;

came to London, and obtained such notice that (in 1691) he was sent to the Congress at the Hague as secretary to the embassy. In this assembly of princes and nobles, to which Europe has perhaps scarcely seen any thing equal, was formed the grand alliance against Lewis'; which at last did not produce effects proportionate to the magnificence of the transaction.

The conduct of Prior in this splendid initiation into public 7 business was so pleasing to king William, that he made him one of the gentlemen of his bedchamber; and he is supposed to have passed some of the next years in the quiet3 cultivation of literature and poetry.

The death of queen Mary (in 1695) produced a subject for all 8 the writers: perhaps no funeral was ever so poetically attended. Dryden, indeed, as a man discountenanced and deprived, was silent; but scarcely any other maker of verses omitted to bring his tribute of tuneful sorrow. An emulation of elegy was universal. Maria's praise was not confined to the English language, but fills a great part of the Musa Anglicanas.

Prior, who was both a poet and a courtier, was too diligent 9 to miss this opportunity of respect. He wrote a long ode, which was presented to the king, by whom it was not likely to be ever read".

In two years he was secretary to another embassy at the treaty 10 of Ryswick (in 1697)'; and next year had the same office at the

Nor would I have it long observ'd That one mouse eats, while t'other's starv'd.'

'Macaulay's Hist. vi. 6.

2

Biog. Brit. p. 3440.

3 'Quiet' is not in the first edition. Prior was at the Hague on April 2, N.S. 1694. Cata. of MSS. in Record Office Museum, p. 85. In The Secretary (1696) he describes himself as 'In a little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night;

On my left hand my Horace, a
Nymph on my right.'

Eng. Poets, xxxii. 232. In June 1697 he wrote from the Hague: The King has named me his secretary in Ireland.' Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, iii. 426; post, PRIOR, 44.

[In the third volume of Dryden's Miscellany Poems, 1693, are included six poems under Prior's name. Two

more appear in the fourth volume, 1694. All these eight poems are included in English Poets.]

It was lamented by Pomfret (Eng. Poets, xvii. 48); Stepney (ib. xvii. 193); Prior (ib. xxxii. 206); Congreve (ib. xxxiv. 131; post, CONGREVE, 13); Addison (ante, ADDISON, 14); A. Philips (post, PHILIPS, 1); and by Steele (H. R. Montgomery's Steele, i. 6).

5 In the three volumes there are six elegies on Mary, eight on Anne, and eight on her son, the Duke of Gloucester.

• Ante, ADDISON, 17; post, BLACKMORE, 12; YALDEN, 4. 'Prior,' wrote Hughes in 1718, omitted this ode in the late edition of his poems.' Hughes Corres. i. 205.

"The treaty was signed on Sept. 11, 1697. A sloop was in waiting for Prior. He hastened on board,

court of France, where he is said to have been considered with great distinction.

11 As he was one day surveying the apartments at Versailles, being shewn the Victories of Lewis painted by Le Brun, and asked whether the king of England's palace had any such decorations, 'The monuments of my Master's actions,' said he, ‘are to be seen everywhere but in his own house. The pictures of Le Brun are not only in themselves sufficiently ostentatious, but were explained by inscriptions so arrogant, that Boileau and Racine thought it necessary to make them more simple 2.

12 He was in the following year at Loo3 with the king, from whom, after a long audience, he carried orders to England, and upon his arrival became under-secretary of state in the earl of Jersey's office; a post which he did not retain long, because Jersey was removed: but he was soon made commissioner of Trades.

13

This year (1700) produced one of his longest and most splendid

and on the third day. . . landed on the coast of Suffolk.... In the afternoon of the thirteenth of September some speculators in the City received by a private channel, certain intelligence that the treaty had been signed before dawn on the morning of the eleventh. ... On the next day Prior, with the treaty, presented himself before the Lords Justices at Whitehall.' Macaulay's Hist. vii. 437. 'Prior received from them a reward of 200 guineas.' NICHOLS, Johnson's Works, viii. 3.

"The French courtier asked Mr. Prior whether King William's actions were also to be seen in his palace. "No, Sir," replied the English Secretary, "the monuments, &c."' OLDMIXON, Hist. of Eng. 1735, 178.

Les inscriptions doivent être simples, courtes, et familières. La pompe, ni la multitude des paroles n'y valent rien, et ne sont point propres au style grave, qui est le vrai style des inscriptions.... "Le passage du Rhin" dit beaucoup plus que "le merveilleux passage du Rhin." BOILEAU, Euvres, iii. 73.

3 For Loo see Macaulay's Hist. ii. 440, and for the Second Treaty of Partition negotiated there in 1699 see ib. viii. 186.

* Prior wrote to Dorset from Paris in Dec. 1698-'I am weary of this dancing on the high-rope in spangled breeches; and if my Lord Jersey be Secretary of State I'll endeavour to get home, and seat myself in a desk in his office.' Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, iii. 428.

In his Carmen Seculare for the Year 1700, he foretells that Jersey shall receive the Garter. Addressing Windsor he says:

'Jersey shall at thy altars stand; Shall there receive thy azure band.' Eng. Poets, xxxii. 307. In Collins's Peerage there is no mention of a Garter conferred on the Earl.

5 In 1700. Post, PRIOR, 44.

Burke, speaking in 1780 on the clause in his Establishment Bill for abolishing the Board of Trade, exclaimed:-'Alas, poor clause! if it be thy fate to be put to death, thou shalt be gloriously entombed; thou shalt lie under a splendid mausoleum. The corners of thy cenotaph shall be supported by Locke, by Addison [ante, ADDISON, 25], by Prior, and by Molesworth.' Parl. Hist. xxi. 236. For Gibbon as a Lord of Trade see his Memoirs, pp. 207, 322.