compositions, the Carmen Seculare, in which he exhausts all his powers of celebration. I mean not to accuse him of flattery; he probably thought all that he writ, and retained as much veracity as can be properly exacted from a poet professedly encomiastick'. King William supplied copious materials for either verse or prose2. His whole life had been action, and none ever denied him the resplendent qualities of steady resolution and personal courage 3. He was really in Prior's mind what he represents him in his verses; he considered him as a hero, and was accustomed to say that he praised others in compliance with the fashion, but that in celebrating king William he followed his inclination. To Prior gratitude would dictate praise, which reason would not refuse. 3 Among the advantages to arise from the future years of William's 14 reign, he mentions Societies for useful Arts, and among them 'Some that with care true eloquence shall teach, And schools profess our tongue through every land Tickell, in his Prospect of Peace, has the same hope of a new 15 academy: 'In happy chains our daring language bound, Whether the similitude of those passages which exhibit the same thought on the same occasion proceeded from accident or imitation, is not easy to determine. Tickell might have been impressed with his expectation by Swift's Proposal for ascertaining the English Language, then lately published. In the parliament that met in 1701 he was chosen representative 16 of East Grinstead'. Perhaps it was about this time that he changed his party; for he voted for the impeachment of those 17 lords who had persuaded the king to the Partition-treaty, a treaty in which he had himself been ministerially employed'. A great part of queen Anne's reign was a time of war, in which there was little employment for negotiators, and Prior had therefore leisure to make or to polish verses. When the battle of Blenheim called forth all the verse-men2, Prior among the rest took care to shew his delight in the increasing honour of his country by an Epistle to Boileau3. 18 He published soon afterwards a volume of poems, with the encomiastick character of his deceased patron the duke of Dorset 5: it began with the College Exercise and ended with the Nutbrown Maid'. 19 6 The battle of Ramillies soon afterwards (in 1706) excited him to another effort of poetry. On this occasion he had fewer or less formidable rivals; and it would be not easy to name any other composition produced by that event which is now remembered. 20 Every thing has its day. Through the reigns of William and Anne no prosperous event passed undignified by poetry. In the last war, when France was disgraced and overpowered in every quarter of the globe, when Spain, coming to her assistance, only shared her calamities, and the name of an Englishman was reverenced through Europe, no poet was heard amidst the 1 Ante, HALIFAX, 9; ROWE, 20 n. For Sir James Montagu's explanation of his conduct see Mr. Austin Dobson's Prior, p. 217. 2 Ante, J. PHILIPS, 5; ADDISON, 25, 130. Congreve also in his Pindaric Ode celebrated the victory. Eng. Poets, xxxiv. 286. Wesley's father was one of the verse-men, and was rewarded by Marlborough with ‘a chaplain's place in one of the new regiments.' Hearne's Remains, i. 39. John Dennis was another, in his Britannia Triumphans. Select Works, 1718, i. 417. See also post, FENTON, 6. 3 A Letter to Monsieur Boileau Despreaux, occasion'd by the Victory at Blenheim, 1704, Eng. Poets, xxxiii. 9; post, PRIOR, 58. was An unauthorized version published in 1707, and Prior's own edition in 1709. See Mr. Austin Dobson's Prior, p. 219. 5 The Earl of Dorset, who died on Jan. 19, 1705-6. Ante, DORSET, 12. For the character see Eng. Poets, xxxii. 125; ante, DORSET, 1. For Johnson's mistake about his title see ante, DRYDEN, 27; post, A. PHILIPS, 3. 6 Ante, PRIOR, 4. 7 Eng. Poets, xxxiii. 28; post, POPE, 63. 8 An Ode to the Queen. Post, PRIOR, 59; Eng. Poets, xxxiii. 68. Prior, sending it to Sir Thomas Hanmer, wrote:-'Prose you see, Sir, is below me. I have left method for rage, and common sense for enthusiasm.' Hanmer Corres. p. 100. 9 Gibbon says of his visit to Paris in 1763: The moment was happily chosen. At the close of a successful war the British name was respected on the Continent. Clarum et venerabile nomen Gentibus. Our opinions, our fashions, even general acclamation: the fame of our counsellors and heroes was intrusted to the Gazetteer 1. The nation in time grew weary of the war, and the queen grew 21 weary of her ministers. The war was burdensome, and the ministers were insolent. Harley and his friends began to hope that they might, by driving the Whigs from court and from power, gratify at once the queen and the people. There was now a call for writers, who might convey intelligence of past abuses, and shew the waste of publick money, the unreasonable Conduct of the Allies, the avarice of generals, the tyranny of minions, and the general danger of approaching ruin 3. For this purpose a paper called The Examiner was periodically 22 published, written, as it happened, by any wit of the party, and sometimes, as is said, by Mrs. Manley. Some are owned by Swift'; and one, in ridicule of Garth's verses to Godolphin upon the loss of his place, was written by Prior, and answered by Addison, who appears to have known the author either by conjecture or intelligence". written a gross ballad on her. Ib. ii. 447, xii. 289, and Swift's Works, 1803, x. 94 n. Jacob, in The Poetical Register, i. 167, says that she is now called the Atalantic Lady, from her inimitable Atalantis, being deservedly esteemed for her affability, wit and loyalty.' Pope mentions the book in The Rape of the Lock, iii. 165: 'As long as Atalantis shall be read, Or the small pillow grace a lady's bed.' On which Warburton remarks in a note :-'A famous book written about that time [1711] by a woman; full of Court and party scandal, and in a loose effeminacy of style and sentiment, which well suited the debauched taste of the better vulgar.' 6 Ante, GARTH, 12. Addison wrote (Works, iv. 371):-'In what follows there is such a shocking familiarity both in his railleries and civilities, that one cannot long be in doubt who is the author.' On Feb. 9, 1710-11 Swift wrote (Works, ii. 168):-'Prior was like to be insulted in the street for being supposed the author of it [an Examiner]? 23 The Tories, who were now in power, were in haste to end the war, and Prior, being recalled (1710) to his former employment of making treaties, was sent (July 1711) privately to Paris with propositions of peace'. He was remembered at the French court; and, returning in about a month, brought with him the Abbé Gaultier, and M. Mesnager, a minister from France, invested with full powers 3. 24 25 This transaction not being avowed, Mackay, the master of the Dover packet-boat, either zealously or officiously, seized Prior and his associates at Canterbury. It is easily supposed that they were soon released. The negotiation was begun at Prior's house, where the Queen's ministers met Mesnager (September 20, 1711), and entered privately upon the great business. The importance of Prior appears from the mention made of him by St. John in his Letter to the Queen 6. 26 'My Lord Treasurer moved, and all my Lords were of the same opinion, that Mr. Prior should be added to those who are empowered to sign; the reason for which is, because he, having personally treated with Monsieur de Torcy, is the best witness we can produce of the sense in which the general preliminary * Parl. Hist. vii. App. p. 4; Swift's Works, v. 73. Swift wrote on Aug. 24, 1711:'People confidently affirm Mr. Prior has been in France, and I half believe it.' For Swift's 'formal relation of Prior's journey, all pure invention,' of which 1,000 copies were sold in one day, see his Works, ii. 325, 335, 345, iv. 58. 2 Prior's Hist. of my Own Time, p. 348. 36 Sept. 28, 1711. I supped with Mr. Secretary and Prior, and two private ministers from France, and a French priest. I know not the two ministers' names; but they are come about the peace. The names the Secretary called them, I suppose, were feigned.' SWIFT, Works, ii. 361. The second minister was the Abbé Du Bois. See also ib. xv. 458. For Gaultier and Mesnager see ib. v. 61, 76. They were seized at Canterbury in their way to London by Mr. Macky, the Master of the Packet-Boats, who had got information of Mr. Prior's journey.' Prior's History, p. 348. Swift wrote on Sept. 11 (Works, ii. 344) It seems he was discovered by a rascal at Dover, who had positive orders to let him pass.' See also ib. v. 76. 5 Johnson's authority is Walpole's Report from the Committee of Secrecy appointed by the House of Commons to examine the negotiations for the Peace. Parl. Hist. vii. App. p. 105. Dated Sept. 20, 1711. lb. p. 106. On Sept. 30 Swift wrote:-' Prior went away yesterday with his Frenchmen.... The Whigs are in a rage about the peace, but we'll wherret them, I warrant, boys.' Works, ii. 362. ' Colbert's nephew. 'Il joignit la dextérité à la probité, ne donna jamais de promesses qu'il ne tînt, fut aimé et respecté des étrangers.' VOLTAIRE, Œuvres, xvii. 35. Macaulay calls him 'a minister of eminent ability.' History, viii. 103. engagements are entered into: besides which, as he is the best versed in matters of trade of all your Majesty's servants who have been trusted in this [the] secret, if you shall think fit to employ him in the future treaty of commerce, it will be of consequence that he has been a party concerned in concluding that convention which must be the rule of this treaty "." The assembly of this important night was in some degree 27 clandestine, the design of treating not being yet openly declared, and, when the Whigs returned to power, was aggravated to a charge of high treason3; though, as Prior remarks in his imperfect answer to the Report of the Committee of Secrecy, no treaty ever was made without private interviews and preliminary discussions*. My business is not the history of the peace, but the life of Prior. 28 The conferences began at Utrecht on the first of January (171112), and the English plenipotentiaries arrived on the fifteenth 3. The ministers of the different potentates conferred and conferred ; but the peace advanced so slowly that speedier methods were found necessary, and Bolingbroke was sent to Paris to adjust differences with less formality; Prior either accompanied him or followed him, and after his departure had the appointments and authority of an ambassador, though no publick character. By some mistake of the Queen's orders the court of France 29 had been disgusted; and Bolingbroke says in his Letter, 'Dear Mat, hide the nakedness of thy country, and give the best turn thy fertile brain will furnish thee with to the blunders of thy countrymen, who are not much better politicians than the French are poets." birth will not entitle him to the 7'Aug. 7, 1712. Lord Bolingbroke and Prior set out for France last Saturday. My Lord's business is to hasten the peace before the Dutch are too much mauled, and hinder France from carrying the jest of beating them too far.' SWIFT, Works, iii. 44. See also ib. v. 204; Parl. Hist. vii. App. p. 191. 66 The Peace of Utrecht' was popularly known as Matt's Peace."' Dict. Nat. Biog. xlvi. 399. |