His verses are often insipid, but his memoirs are lively and 28 agreeable; he had the perspicuity and elegance of an historian, but not the fire and fancy of a poet'.

APPENDIX AA (PAGE 172)

In a note on Johnson's Works, vii. 482, it is stated that 'in the earliest editions of the Duke's Works he is styled Duke of Buckingham; and Walpole, in his Catalogue of Noble Authors [Works, i. 436], mentions a wish, cherished by Sheffield, to be confounded with his predecessor in the title; "but he would more easily," remarks Walpole sarcastically, "have been mistaken with the other Buckingham if he had not written at all." Burnet also, and other authorities, speak of him under the title of Duke of Buckingham. His epitaph, being in Latin, will not settle the point. It is to be regretted therefore that Johnson adduced no better evidence for his doubt than his own unsupported assertion.'

Johnson's assertion is not unsupported. Salmon, in his Chronological Historian, 1733, p. 278, enters under March 9, 1702:-' John Sheffield, Marquis of Normanby, created Duke of the County of Bucks and of Normanby.' The same title is given him in Cockayne's Hist. Peerage. Crull, in The Antiquities of St. Peter's, ii. 48, says that at the Duke's funeral Garter King at Arms proclaimed his title as Duke of Buckinghamshire. In An Account of the Pedigree of the Sheffield Family in the Duke's Works, ii. 351, he is so styled, though he signed his will Buckingham. Ib. p. 366. In the list of Peers in 1715 in Parl. Hist. vii. 28, he is entered as Duke of Buckinghamshire and Normanby. Bolingbroke, in 1722, wrote of him as Duke of Buckinghamshire (Swift's Works, xvi. 378), and so did Pope in 1723. SHEFFIELD, 28 n. Jacob, in 1720, so described the Duke in dedicating to him his Poetical Register. In Macky's Characters (1733) the first Duke is so described. Swift's Works, xii. 224. In Brit. Mus. Cata. the same title is given at the head of the article. The title expired in 1735. See also SHEFFIELD, 21 n.

In Dodsley's London, ii. 41, is

Pope wrote to Caryl in 1722:'I have the care of overlooking the Duke of Buckingham's papers, and correcting the press. That will be a very beautiful book.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 280.

Lord Carteret on April 18, 1722, 'signed a royal licence to protect the copyright of the Duke's Works. Before the book appeared the ministers learnt that it contained passages in favour of the Pretender. The impression was seized and the obnoxious leaves cut out.' Pope wrote to Carteret on Feb. 16, 1722-3:-'I am told... that I've been suspected

a letter of the Duke's describing

of putting that vile thing a trick upon you, in being the procurer of your licence to the Duke of Buckinghamshire's book. ... I now think myself obliged to assure you that I never look'd into those papers, or was privy to the contents of them, when that licence was procured by Mr. Barber, to secure his own property.' Ib. viii. 191, x. 139. See also ib. v. 193, x. 198.

In the copy of this edition in the British Museum these passages are not cut out. The edition of 1729 contains 'The Castrations' in an Appendix.

Buckingham House. From the roof there is 'a far distant prospect of hills and dales, and a near one of parks and gardens.'

In Biog. Brit. p. 3661 it is stated that through his gaming 'a good part of the garden came into the hands of a person who insultingly grazed his sheep and oxen close under his Grace's window.'

The house (the site of Buckingham Palace) was bought by George III in 1761, and settled on Queen Charlotte. It was in the library that Johnson met the King. Boswell's Johnson, ii. 33 n.

APPENDIX BB (PAGE 173)

The Duke of Buckingham thought that the 'interests of the Catalans were too much sacrificed to the peace with Spain. He thought no sort of terms ought to be agreed on without first securing the lives and liberties of those poor people, who had entirely relied on England for protection.' Works, ii. 338.

In 1705, in the War of the Succession in Spain, Catalonia had risen against Philip V in favour of the Archduke Charles. Macaulay's Essays, ii. 73. In 1712, in the stipulations of the Peace of Utrecht, they were neglected. Swift, in The Public Spirit of the Whigs, answering Steele's Crisis, writes:-'Having mentioned the Catalonians Mr. Steele puts the question, "Who can name the Catalonians without a tear?" That can I.' Swift's Works, iv. 262. See also Parl. Hist. vi. 1308, for Steele's quotation of this passage in his Apology. Their abandonment made the sixth article in the impeachment of the Earl of Oxford in 1715. Parl. Hist. vii. 124.

APPENDIX CC (PAGE 174)

For the Duke of Buckingham's lines On Mr. Hobbes and his Writings see Eng. Poets, xxxii. 94. In his will he directed the following lines to be put on his monument :-'In one place :

"Pro Rege saepe, Pro Republica semper."

In another place :

"Dubius, sed non improbus, vixi,

Incertus morior, sed inturbatus;

Humanum est nescire et errare:
Christum adveneror, Deo confido
Omnipotenti, benevolentissimo:

Ens entium, miserere mei."' Works, ii. 364.

This epitaph gave rise to controversey. In 1721 Richard Fiddes, in an Answer to a Letter from a Freethinker occasioned by the late Duke of Buckinghamshire's Epitaph, quotes the letter of 'a Lady of the first Quality,' testifying to the frequency with which the Duke had taken the Sacrament.

'I like the Duke's epitaph,' wrote Erasmus Darwin. C. Darwin's Life of E. Darwin, 1887, p. 15. For Prior's epigram On Bishop Atterbury's Burying the Duke of Buckingham see Eng. Poets, xxxiv. 63.

APPENDIX DD (PAGE 175)

The Essay on Satire is included in Dryden's Works, xv. 200, and Eng. Poets, xviii. 124, where it is attributed to both poets. It is in Sheffield's Works, 1729, i. 111: Wood says that after a time Sheffield was generally thought to be the author.' Ath. Oxon. iv. 210.

Dean Lockier, who first met Dryden in 1685, said that 'Sheffield's Essay was a good deal corrected by Dryden. Could anything,' he continues, 'be more impudent than his publishing that satire, for writing which Dryden was beat in Rose Alley (and which was known as the Rose Alley Satire), as his own? He made, indeed, a few alterations in it first; but these were only verbal.' Spence's Anec. p. 63. Lockier seems to say that Dryden and Sheffield corrected the poem of some unknown author.

Malone shows that the defective versification proves that it is not Dryden's. 'If it be compared with the first copy of the Essay on Poetry, which is Sheffield's, a great similarity may be observed between them.' Malone's Dryden, i. 129. See ante, DRYDEN, 105.

APPENDIX EE (PAGE 175)

Rochester praised him in An Epistolary Essay: Eng. Poets, xv. 38. Walsh described him as 'a great modern critic.' Ib. xvii. 338. Garth, in the first edition of The Dispensary, paid him a compliment which he afterwards suppressed:

'The Tiber now no courtly Gallus sees,

But smiling Thames enjoys his Normanbys.'

Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ii. 80. Addison, in The Spectator, No. 253, calls the Essay 'a masterpiece.' The Hon. Simon Harcourt (post, POPE, 401) begins his lines To Mr. Pope:

'He comes, he comes! bid every bard prepare
The song of triumph, and attend his car.
Great Sheffield's muse the long procession heads
And throws a lustre o'er the pomp she leads.'

Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), i. 30.

'Happy the poet, blest the lays,

Which Buckingham has deigned to praise.'

Gay, in Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece, describes him as 'Sheffield, who knows to strike the living lyre, With hand judicious, like thy Homer skilled.'

Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), v. 174. Goldsmith writes of the Essay: It is enrolled among our great English productions. The precepts are sensible, the poetry not indifferent, but it has been praised more than it deserves.' Works, iii. 439.

1

PRIOR

ATTHEW PRIOR is one of those that have burst out

1 MATTH

from an obscure original to great eminence. He was born July 21, 1664, according to some, at Winburne in Dorsetshire, of I know not what parents; others say that he was the son of a Joiner of London: he was perhaps willing enough to leave his birth unsettled', in hope, like Don Quixote, that the historian of his actions might find him some illustrious alliance 3.

2 He is supposed to have fallen by his father's death into the hands of his uncle, a vintner near Charing-cross, who sent him

'The son of Mr. George Prior, Citizen of London, by trade a joiner, and was born there in 1664. Life of Prior, by Samuel Humphreys; Prior's Poems on Several Occasions,1733,iii. 1. 'He was the son of a reputable citizen of London, where he was born July 21, 1664.' Prior's History of my own Time, 1740, p. 2; a work, says the title-page, compiled from the original MSS. of Prior, revised and signed by himself, and copied fair for the press by Adrian Drift, his executor.' It was published after the death of Drift, who was his Secretary. With the exception of Prior's account of his examination before a Parliamentary Committee (post, PRIOR, 34) it contains little but State Papers. The editor was so ignorant that he calls this Committee a Committee of the Privy Council.

The difficulty of settling Prior's birth-place is great. In the register of his College he is called, at his admission by the President, Matthew Prior of Winburn in Middlesex ; by himself next day Matthew Prior of Dorsetshire, in which county, not in Middlesex, Winborn, or Wimborne, as it stands in the Villare [ante, ROWE, I n.], is found. When he stood candidate for his fellowship five years afterwards he was registered again by himself as of

'In the Admission Register of St. John's, ii. 92, we read "Matthaeus Prior Dorcestr," altered by a later hand to "Middlesexiensis." N. & 2.6 S. ix. 209. For the 'local tradition in favour of his having been born at Wimborne' see Mr. Austin Dobson's Prior, 1889, p. 205.

36

'Perhaps the sage who writes my history may so brighten up my kindred and genealogy that I may be found the fifth or sixth in descent fromaking.' Don Quixote, 1820, 1.234.

'Burns,' wrote Cowper, 'is, I believe, the only poet these kingdoms have produced in the lower rank of life since Shakespeare (I should rather say since Prior) who need not be indebted for any part of his praise to a charitable consideration of his origin, and the disadvantages under which he has laboured.' Southey's Cowper, vi. 54.

'My uncle, rest his soul! when living

Might have contrived me ways of thriving;

for some time to Dr. Busby' at Westminster; but, not intending to give him any education beyond that of the school, took him, when he was well advanced in literature, to his own house, where the earl of Dorset, celebrated for patronage of genius, found him by chance, as Burnet relates, reading Horace, and was so well pleased with his proficiency that he undertook the care and cost of his academical education 3.

He entered his name in St. John's College at Cambridge in 3 1682, in his eighteenth year; and it may be reasonably supposed that he was distinguished among his contemporaries *. He became a Bachelor, as is usual, in four years 5; and two years afterwards wrote the poem on the Deity, which stands first in his volume 6.

It is the established practice of that College to send every year 4 to the earl of Exeter some poems upon sacred subjects, in acknowledgment of a benefaction enjoyed by them from the bounty of his ancestor'. On this occasion were those verses

Taught me with cyder to replenish My vats, or ebbing tide of Rhenish.' PRIOR, An Epistle to F. Shephard, Eng. Poets, xxxii. 160.

[See Wheatley's Pepys, i. 42, Feb. 3, 1660, for Pepys taking his cousin, a barrister, out of Westminster Hall 'to Prior's, the Rhenish Wine House.' See also Prior's Selected Poems, 1889, p. 207, where the question of the locality of the tavern in which Prior was employed is exhaustively treated by Mr. Austin Dobson. Theold Rummer Tavern near Charing Cross was kept by one Samuel Prior in 1685. NICHOLS, Johnson's Works, viii. 1.] Ante, DRYDEN, 4.

I