THE

CLASS-BOOK OF POETRY.

PART II.

MATTHEW PRIOR.

(1664-1721.)

PRIOR was born in Abbot Street, one mile from Wimborne Minster, in Dorsetshire. He was educated by his uncle, Samuel Prior, who kept the Rummer Tavern at Charing Cross. He furnishes no intelligence himself respecting his origin. Shortly after leaving Westminster School, while residing with his uncle in London, he attracted the notice of the Earl of Dorset, who sent him to Cambridge. The publication, with Montague, of the "City Mouse and the Country Mouse," in ridicule of Dryden's "Hind and Panther," seems to have opened to the young poet the road of preferment. He obtained the secretaryship of the English Embassy in the congress at the Hague in 1691. From this period till the end of the reign of Queen Anne, he was employed by the government in high official situations. On the accession of the queen he had changed his politics; he became the intimate friend of Bolingbroke and Oxford, the chiefs of the Tory party. In 1712, at the conclusion of the Spanish Succession War, he acted under the English ambassador at the French

court, for the speedier arrangement of the peace between England and France, which the tardy conferences at Utrecht were slow in effecting. In 1713, on the return of the Duke of Shrewsbury from France, Prior enjoyed till the following year the dignity of ambassador at Paris. The death of the queen leading to the fall of the Tory party, he was recalled, and shared in the hardships of impeachment and imprisonment, with which their opponents visited the friends of Bolingbroke and Oxford. On his release in 1717 he was in distressed circumstances, but he realized a considerable sum by the publication of his collected works; and the gratitude of Lord Oxford's son purchased an estate for his father's friend. He did not long enjoy tranquillity after his busy life. He died in 1721, at Wimpole, a seat of the Earl of Oxford. He left £500 to build a monument over his remains in Westminster Abbey.

Prior is a lively and graceful writer, sometimes far from pure in sentiment; never rising to passion or sublimity; but moving in a round of elegant and sparkling, though common thought. "His diction," says Johnson, " is more his own than that of any among the successors of Dryden." "His diligence has justly placed him amongst the most correct of the English poets." His poems consist of Epistles, Humorous Tales, Fables, Epigrams, Odes in honour of his patrons William and Anne, Songs, etc. His longer works are "Henry and Emma," a frigid paraphrase of the beautiful old ballad, the "Nutbrown Maid ;" "Solomon on the Vanity of the World," in heroic rhyme; and "Alma, or the Progress of the Mind," a humorous philosophical piece in the style of Hudibras. There is a great charm about the lighter pieces of Prior-a combination of wit, fancy, and knowledge of the world, embodied in easy flowing verse.

WILLIAM III. OF ENGLAND AND LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE CONTRASTED.

VIRTUE to verse immortal lustre gives,
Each by the other's mutual friendship lives;

WILLIAM III. AND LOUIS XIV. CONTRASTED. 269

Æneas suffered, and Achilles fought,

The hero's acts enlarged the poet's thought,
Or Virgil's majesty, and Homer's rage,
Had ne'er, like lasting nature, vanquished age.
Whilst Louis then his rising terror drowns

With drums' alarms, and trumpets' sounds;
Whilst, hid in arm'd retreats, and guarded towns,
From danger as from honour far,

He bribes close murder against open war:
In vain you Gallic muses strive

With laboured verse to keep his fame alive :
Your mouldering monuments in vain ye raise,
On the weak basis of the tyrant's praise:
Your songs are sold, your numbers are profane,
'Tis incense to an idol given,

Meat offered to Prometheus' man,

That had no soul from heaven.

Against his will, you chain your frighted king
On rapid Rhine's divided bed;

And mock your hero, whilst ye sing
The wounds for which he never bled;
Falsehood does poison on your praise diffuse,
And Louis' fear gives death to Boileau's muse.1

On its own worth true majesty is reared,
And virtue is her own reward;
With solid beams and native glory bright,
She neither darkness dreads, nor covets light:
True to herself, and fixed to inborn laws,
Nor sunk by spite, nor lifted by applause,
She from her settled orb looks calmly down,
On life or death, a prison or a crown.

When bound in double chains poor Belgia lay,
To foreign arms and inward strife a prey,

Whilst one good man buoyed up her sinking state,
And virtue laboured against fate;

When fortune basely with ambition joined,
And all was conquered but the patriot's mind;
When storms let loose, and raging seas,

Just ready the torn vessel to o'erwhelm,
Forced not the faithful pilot from his helm,
Nor all the syren songs of future peace

And dazzling prospect of a promised crown,
Could lure his stubborn virtue down ;

But against charms, and threats, and hell, he stood,
To that which was severely good;

Then had no trophies justified his fame,

No poet blest his song with Nassau's name.

1 Prior displays the most unrelenting contempt for the poetical flatterer of Louis.

270

A SIMILE.

Dear Thomas, did'st thou never pop
Thy head into a tinman's shop?
There, Thomas, did'st thou never see
('Tis but by way of simile)

A squirrel spend his little rage,
In jumping round a rolling cage;
The cage, as either side turned up,
Striking a ring of bells at top?—

Moved in the orb, pleased with the chimes,
The foolish creature thinks he climbs :
But, here or there, turn wood or wire,
He never gets two inches higher.

So fares it with those merry blades,
That frisk it under Pindus' shades,
In noble song and lofty odes,

They tread on stars, and talk with gods;
Still dancing in an airy round,

Still pleased with their own verses' sound;
Brought back, how fast soe'er they go,
Always aspiring, always low.

FROM ANSWER TO CHLOE.

What I speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write shows,
The difference there is betwixt nature and art;

I court others in verse, but I love thee in prose;
And they have my whimsies, but thou hast my heart.

The god of us versemen, you know child, the sun,
How after his journey he sets up his rest;
If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run,
At night he reclines on his Thetis's breast.

So when I am wearied with wandering all day,
To thee, my delight, in the evening I come;

No matter what beauties I saw in my way,
They were but my visits, but thou art my home.

FROM EPISTLE TO CHARLES MONTAGUE, ESQ.

The hoary fool, who many days

Has struggled with continued sorrow,
Renews his hope, and blindly lays
The desperate bet upon to-morrow.