Is there a variance? enter but his door,
Balked are the courts, and contest is no more.
Despairing quacks with curses fled the place,
And vile attorneys, now a useless race.

B. Thrice happy man! enabled to pursue
What all so wish, but want the pow'r to do!
Oh say, what sums that generous hand supply?
What mines, to swell that boundless charity?

P. Of debts, and taxes, wife and children clear,
This man possessed-five hundred pounds a year.
Blush, grandeur, blush! proud courts, withdraw your blaze!
Ye little stars! hide your diminished rays.

Matthew

Prior

(1664-1721)

Matthew Prior (1664-1721) was the son of a joiner at Wimborne Minster, in Dorsetshire, where he was born on the 21st of July 1664. The family moved to London, and the future poet was sent to Westminster School. While he was there, under Dr. Busby, the elder Prior died, leaving his wife so poor that she was obliged to take Matthew away from school. He was put to serve in the bar of the Rhenish Wine-house in Cannon Row, of which his uncle was the proprietor, and there Lord Dorset one day found the boy with a Horace in his hand. He told his fashionable friends, and it became a recognised amusement to go to the wine-shop to hear the vintner's boy read Latin poetry. With Lord Dorset's help he went back to Westminster School; he made friends with the young Montagues, and was much in the company of the elder of these (Charles, afterwards Lord Halifax). In 1683 Prior

accepted a scholarship at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he stayed many years. In 1687 he was engaged with Charles Montagu on the facetious pamphlet of The Hind and the Panther Transvers'd; this is said to have greatly annoyed Dryden, who had "always been very civil" to Prior. About 1690, having gradually grown dissatisfied with his position as the resident fellow of a Cambridge college, Prior, still under the tireless patronage of Dorset, began his career as a public servant. He was now for several years secretary to the Earl of Berkeley, our Ambassador at the Hague. He showed great ability as a diplomatist, and in 1698, after useful service at the Treaty of Ryswick, he was appointed Secretary to the British Embassy in Paris. Honours were now showered upon him, and

in 1699 Prior came back to England an Under-Secretary of State. After a brief experience in Parliament, he went back to Paris in 1712 as Ambassador, but at the fall of the Tories he was impeached, and was kept in prison from 1715 to 1717. While in confinement he wrote his Alma. He left prison with nothing to live on but his college fellowship, and his friends set about to collect his poems and issue them in a sumptuous subscription folio. This was done in 1719, and Prior received £4000. Lord Harley gave him an equal sum to buy the estate of Down Hall, in Essex. The rest of the poet's life was spent in ease improving this pretty property. But his health was declining, and he did not enjoy Down Hall long. He died "of a lingering fever" on the 18th of September 1721 at Wimpole, where he was the guest of Lord Harley (the second Earl of Oxford). Prior was buried in Westminster Abbey, in a tomb surmounted by a fine bust by Coysevox. He was "a spare, frail, solemn-faced man," very grave in public employments, but, "alone with his friends, Lord, how merry was he!"

VOL. III.

TO A CHILD OF QUALITY.

Lords, knights, and 'squires, the numerous band.
That wear the fair Miss Mary's fetters,
Were summon'd by her high command,
To show their passions by their letters.

Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset, the friend and patron of Prior After the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller at Bayfordbury

For, while she makes her silkworm's beds

With all the tender things I swear;
Whilst all the house my passion reads
In papers round her baby's hair;

She may receive and own my flame,

For, though the strictest prudes should know it,
She'll pass for a most virtuous dame,

And I for an unhappy poet.

Then too, alas! when she shall tear

The lines some younger rival sends,
She'll give me leave to write, I fear,
And we shall still continue friends.

For, as our different ages move,

'Tis so ordain'd (would Fate but mend it!

That I shall be past making love,

When she begins to comprehend it.

his Fable 3 times this year for want of Mony lo bay Provisions, that wither the Dauphin or Mon: Luxeinberg are very well in are very well in fourt, bang both in with a fatal of Women whom Mada de Maintenon Kator, that their Grand Monarch it grown so gouly, pewish and Superstitions (three admirable Qualities of

Robody knows what to do with Hime. that the given of the menus whole year for the War, of which that body grows very weary, as the rest of Frano i

F the Clergy this,

I know not if any thing of this to world informing You, or if you would have the ush Him any thing which may be judged for His Majher Service. I shek (as it is my Duty) Kanz hans an y 3 upon the Man hore, and as wohl in what regards the publick as in my private obligations to 48. Jelf endeavour to approve My Self

well

the

son in

I recrved this beday from England, wi which are Ld Brington's Gordonball, which I that fnward to his Lordify as soon

know how to do it safet

212

Extract from a Letter of Prior to Secretary Blathwayt