PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE.

MATTHEW PRIOR was one of those famous and lucky wits of the auspicious reign of Queen Anne, whose name it behoves us not to pass over. Mat was a world-philosopher of no small genius, good nature, and acumen.* He loved, he drank, he sang. He describes himself, in one of his lyrics, "in a little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night; on his left hand his Horace, and a friend on his right," going out of town from the Hague to pass that evening, and the ensuing Sunday, boozing at a Spielhaus with his companions, perhaps bobbing for perch in a Dutch canal, and noting down, in a strain and with a grace not unworthy of his Epicurean master, the charms of his idleness, his retreat, and his Batavian Chloe. A vintner's son in Whitehall, and a distinguished pupil of Busby of the Rod, Prior attracted some notice by writing verses at St. John's College,

*Gay calls him-" Dear Prior * Welcome from Greece.

* beloved by every muse."—Mr. Pope's

Swift and Prior were very intimate, and he is frequently mentioned in the "Journal to Stella." "Mr. Prior," says Swift, "walks to make himself fat, and I to keep myself down. * * *We often walk round the park together."

*

In Swift's works there is a curious tract called "Remarks on the Characters of the Court of Queen Anne" [SCOTT's edition, vol. xii.] The "Remarks" are not by the Dean; but at the end of each is an addition in italics from his hand, and these are always characteristic. Thus, to the Duke of Marlborough, he adds, “Detestably covetous," &c. Prior is thus noticed

" MATTHEW PRIOR, Esq., Commissioner of Trade.

"On the Queen's accession to the throne, he was continued in his office; is very well at court with the ministry, and is an entire creature of my Lord Jersey's, whom he supports by his advice; is one of the best poets in England, but very facetious in conversation. A thin, hollow-looking man, turned of forty years old. This is near the truth."

"Yet counting as far as to fifty his years,

His virtues and vices were as other men's are.

High hopes he conceived and he smothered great fears,
In a life party-coloured-half pleasure, half care.

"Not to business a drudge, nor to faction a slave,
He strove to make interest and freedom agree;
In public employments industrious and grave,
And alone with his friends, Lord, how merry was he!

"Now in equipage stately, now humble on foot,

Both fortunes he tried, but to neither would trust;
And whirled in the round as the wheel turned about
He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust."
PRIOR'S Poems. [For my own monument.]

*

Cambridge, and, coming up to town, aided Montague in an attack on the noble old English lion John Dryden; in ridicule of whose work, "The Hind and the Panther," he brought out that remarkable and famous burlesque, "The Town and Country Mouse." Aren't you all acquainted with it? Have you not all got it by heart? What! have you never heard of it? see what fame is made of! The wonderful part of the satire was, that, as a natural consequence of "The Town and Country Mouse," Matthew Prior was made Secretary of Embassy at the Hague! I believe it is dancing, rather than singing, which distinguishes the young English diplomatists of the present day; and have seen them in various parts perform that part of their duty very finely. In Prior's time it appears a different accomplishment led to preferment. Could you write a copy of Alcaics? that was the question. Could you turn out a neat epigram or two? Could you compose "The Town and Country Mouse?" It is manifest that, by the possession of this faculty, the most difficult treaties, the laws of foreign nations, and the interests of our own, are easily understood. Prior rose in the diplomatic service, and said good things that proved his sense and his spirit. When the apartments at Versailles were shown to him, with the victories of Louis XIV. painted on the walls, and Prior was asked whether the palace of the King of England had any such decorations, "The monuments of my master's actions," Mat said, of William whom he cordially revered, to be seen everywhere except in his own house." Bravo, Mat! Prior rose to be full ambassador at Paris,† where he somehow was cheated out of his ambassadorial plate; and in an heroic poem, addressed by him to her late lamented Majesty, Queen Anne, Mat makes some magnificent allusions to these dishes and spoons, of which Fate had deprived him. All that he

66

are

"They joined to produce a parody, entitled the 'Town and Country Mouse,' part of which Mr. Bayes is supposed to gratify his old friends, Smart and Johnson, by repeating to them. The piece is therefore founded upon the twice-told jest of the 'Rehearsal.' *** There is nothing new or original in the idea. *** In this piece, Prior, though the younger man, seems to have had by far the largest share.”— SCOTT's Dryden, vol. i. p. 330.

"He was to have been in the same commission with the Duke of Shrewsbury, but that that nobleman," says Johnson, "refused to be associated with one so meanly born. Prior therefore continued to act without a title till the Duke's return next year to England, and then he assumed the style and dignity of ambassador." He had been thinking of slights of this sort when he wrote his Epitaph :

"Nobles and heralds, by your leave,

Here lies what once was Matthew Prior,

The son of Adam and of Eve;

Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher?"

But, in this case, the old prejudice got the better of the old joke.

wants, he says, is her Majesty's picture; without that he can't

be happy.

"Thee, gracious Anne, thee present I adore :

Thee, Queen of Peace, if Time and Fate have power
Higher to raise the glories of thy reign,

In words sublimer and a nobler strain

May future bards the mighty theme rehearse.
Here, Stator Jove, and Phoebus, king of verse,
The votive tablet I suspend."

With that word the poem stops abruptly. The votive tablet is suspended for ever, like Mahomet's coffin. News came that the Queen was dead. Stator Jove, and Phœbus, king of verse, were left there, hovering to this day, over the votive tablet. The picture was never got, any more than the spoons and dishes the inspiration ceased, the verses were not wanted— the ambassador wasn't wanted. Poor Mat was recalled from his embassy, suffered disgrace along with his parents, lived under a sort of cloud ever after, and disappeared in Essex. When deprived of all his pensions and emoluments, the hearty and generous Oxford pensioned him. They played for gallant stakes the bold men of those days-and lived and gave splendidly.

Johnson quotes from Spence a legend, that Prior, after spending an evening with Harley, St. John, Pope, and Swift, would go off and smoke a pipe with a couple of friends of his, a soldier and his wife, in Long Acre. Those who have not read his late Excellency's poems should be warned that they smack not a little of the conversation of his Long Acre friends. Johnson speaks lightly of his lyrics; but with due deference to the great Samuel, Prior's seem to be amongst the easiest, the richest, the most charmingly humorous of English lyrical poems.* Horace is always in his mind: and his song, and his His epigrams have the genuine sparkle:

"THE REMEDY WORSE THAN THE DISEASE.

"I sent for Radcliff; was so ill,

That other doctors gave me over:
He felt my pulse, prescribed his pill,
And I was likely to recover.

"But when the wit began to wheeze,

And wine had warmed the politician,
Cured yesterday of my disease,

I died last night of my physician."

"Yes, every poet is a fool;

By demonstration Ned can show it;
Happy could Ned's inverted rule
Prove every fool to be a poet."

philosophy, his good sense, his happy easy turns and melody, his loves and his Epicureanism bear a great resemblance to that most delightful and accomplished master. In reading his works, one is struck with their modern air, as well as by their happy similarity to the songs of the charming owner of the Sabine farm. In his verses addressed to Halifax, he says, writing of that endless theme to poets, the vanity of human wishes

"So whilst in fevered dreams we sink,

And waking, taste what we desire,
The real draught but feeds the fire,'
The dream is better than the drink.

"Our hopes like towering falcons aim
At objects in an airy height:

To stand aloof and view the flight,
Is all the pleasure of the game."

Would not you fancy that a poet of our own days was singing? and in the verses of Chloe weeping and reproaching him for his inconstancy, where he says

"The God of us versemen, you know, child, the Sun,
How, after his journeys, he sets up his rest.

If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run,
At night he declines 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!

"Then finish, dear Chloe, this pastoral war,
And let us like Horace and Lydia agree:
For thou art a girl as much brighter than her,
As he was a poet sublimer than me."

If Prior read Horace, did not Thomas Moore study Prior? Love and pleasure finds singers in all days. Roses are always blowing and fading-to-day as in that pretty time when Prior sang of them, and of Chloe lamenting their decay—

"She sighed, she smiled, and to the flowers
Pointing, the lovely moralist said:

"On his death-bed poor Lubin lies,
His spouse is in despair;

With frequent sobs and mutual cries.
They both express their care.

"A different cause,' says Parson Sly,
'The same effect may give;
Poor Lubin fears that he shall die,
His wife that he may live.'"

See, friend, in some few fleeting hours,
See yonder what a change is made!

"Ah me! the blooming pride of May
And that of Beauty are but one:
At morn both flourish, bright and gay,
Both fade at evening, pale and gone.

"At dawn poor Stella danced and sung,
The amorous youth around her bowed:
At night her fatal knell was rung;

I saw, and kissed her in her shroud.

"Such as she is who died to-day,

Such I, alas, may be to-morrow.
Go, Damon, bid thy Muse display

The justice of thy Chloe's sorrow."

Damon's knell was rung in 1721.

on him.

May his turf lie lightly

Deus sit propitius huic potatori, as Walter de Mapes sang. .* Perhaps Samuel Johnson, who spoke slightly of Prior's

"DEAR SIR,—

"PRIOR TO SIR THOMAS HANMER.

Aug. 4, 1709. "FRIENDSHIP may live, I grant you, without being fed and cherished by correspondence; but with that additional benefit I am of opinion it will look more cheerful and thrive better: for in this case, as in love, though a man is sure of his own constancy, yet his happiness depends a good deal upon the sentiments of another, and while you and Chloe are alive, 'tis not enough that I love you both, except I am sure you both love me again; and as one of her scrawls fortifies my mind more against affliction than all Epictetus, with Simplicius's comments into the bargain, so your single letter gave me more real pleasure than all the works of Plato.

*

豪 The

I must return my answer to your very kind question concerning my health. Bath waters have done a good deal towards the recovery of it, and the great specific, Cape caballum, will, I think, confirm it. Upon this head I must tell you that my mare Betty grows blind, and may one day, by breaking my neck, perfect my cure: if at Rixam fair any pretty nagg that is between thirteen and fourteen hands presented himself, and you would be pleased to purchase him for me, one of your servants might ride him to Euston, and I might receive him there. This, sir, is just as such a thing happens. If you hear, too, of a Welch widow, with a good jointure, that has her goings and is not very skittish, pray, be pleased to cast your eye on her for me too. You see, sir, the great trust I repose in your skill and honor, when I dare put two such commissions in your hand. * *" -The Hanmer Correspondence, p. 120.

"FROM MR. PRIOR.

"Paris, 1st-12th May, 1714.

"MY DEAR LORD AND FRIEND,— "MATTHEW never had so great occasion to write a word to Henry as now: it is noised here that I am soon to return. The question that I wish I could answer to the many that ask, and to our friend Colbert de Torcy (to whom I made your compliments in the manner you commanded) is, what is done for me; and to what I am recalled? It may look like a bagatelle, what is to become of a philosopher like me? but it is not such: what is to become of a person who had the honor to be chosen, and sent hither as intrusted, in the midst of a war, with what the Queen designed should make the peace; returning with the Lord Bolingbroke, one of the greatest men in England, and one of the finest heads in Europe (as they say here, if true or not, n'importe); having been left by him in the greatest character (that of her Majesty's Plenipotentiary), exercising that power conjointly with the Duke of Shrewsbury, and solely after his departure; having here received more distinguished honor than any Minister, except an Ambassador, ever did, and some which were never given to any