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 Transversd; 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 ! "

To A Child Of Quality.

Lords, knights, and 'squires, the numerous hand,

That wear the fair Miss Mary's fetters, Were summon'd by her high command,

To show their passions by their letters. VOL. III. o

Matthew Prior

After the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kncller

Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset, ths 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.

A Letter.

My noble, lovely, little Peggy Let this, my First Epistle, beg ye, At dawn of morn, and close of even, To lift your heart and hands to heaven. In double beauty say your prayer : Our Father first, then Notre fere :

John Gay (1685-1732) was the youngest son of William Gay, of JBarnstaplc, John Gay

where he was born in September 1685. The occupation of his parents is not known, but they were in fairly comfortable circumstances. He was educated at the Grammar School of Barnstaple, where his earliest verses, about a swallow shot in the churchyard, are said to have been written. Gay was early apprenticed to a silk-mercer in London, but was soon tired of the shop, " and easily persuaded his master to discharge him." His verses written at Barnstaple after his return were hidden in the arm of a chair, whence they were not dislodged until 1820. He went back to London, but little is known of his career until, in 1708, he published his first work, the imitative poem called Wine. In 1711 Gay formed the acquaintance of Steele and Pope, and thus entered literary society. In 1712 he was appointed domestic steward to the Duchess

of Monmouth, and published his first notable work, Rural .'ports, in 1713; the latter succeeded, although, as Swift said, Gay could not " distinguish rye from barley, nor an oak from a crab-tree.'' His " highest country skill" was fishing for gudgeons. A more important production, and one which holds a place in the history of literature, was The Shepherd's Week of i 714, a set of burlesque pastorals in which Gay exercised his genuine rustic talent while indulging

(1685-1732)

John Gay

After the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kne ller

Engraving from the Illustrated Edition of Gay's Fables