SHEFFIELD. standing this aversion or indifference, made marquis of Normanby, (1694,) but still opposed the court on some important questions; yet at last he was received into the cabinet-council, with a pension of three thousand pounds. At the accession of Queen Anne, whom he is said to have courted when they were both young, he was highly favoured. Before her coronation (1702) she made him lord privy-seal, and soon after lord-lieutenant of the north riding of Yorkshire. He was then named commissioner for treating with the Scots about the Union; and was made next year, first, Duke of Normanby, and then of Buckinghamshire, there being suspected to be somewhere a latent claim to the title of Buckingham. Soon after, beeoming jealous of the Duke of Marlborough, he resigned the privy-seal, and joined the discontented tories in a motion, extremely offensive to the Queen, for inviting the Princess Sophia to England. The Queen courted him back with an offer no less than that of the chancellorship; which he refused. He now retired from business, and built that house in the Park which is now the Queen's, upon ground granted by the crown. When the ministry was changed, (1710,) he was made lord-chamberlain of the household, and concurred in all transactions of that time, except that he endeavoured to protect the Catalans. After the Queen's death he became a constant opponent of the court; and, having no public business, is supposed to have amused himself by writing his two tragedies. He died February 24, 1720-21. He was thrice married: by his two first wives he had no children; by his third, who was the daughter of King James by the Countess of Dorchester, and the widow of the Earl of Anglesey, he had, besides other children that died early, a son, born in 1716, who died in 1735, and put an end to the line of Sheffield. It is observable, that the Duke's three wives were all widows. The dutchess died in 1742. His character is not to be proposed as worthy of imitation. His religion he may be supposed to have learned from Hobbes; and his morality was such as naturally proceeds from loose opínions. His sentiments with respect to women he picked up at the court of Charles; and his principles concerning property were such as a gaming-table supplies. He was censured as covetous, and has been defended by an instance of inattention to his affairs, as if a man might not at once be corrupted by avarice and idleness. He is said, however, to have had much tenderness, and to have been very ready to apologize for his violences of passion. He is introduced into this collection only as a poet; and if we credit the testimony of his contemporaries, he was a poet of no vulgar rank. But favour and flattery are now at an end; criticism is no longer softened by his bounties, or awed by his splendour, and, being able to take a more steady view, discovers him to be a writer that sometimes glimmers, but rarely shines, fee- In his "Essay on Satire," he was always sup- Upon this piece he appears to have set a high value; for he was all his lifetime improving it by successive revisals, so that there is scarcely any poem to be found of which the last edition differs more from the first. Amongst other changes, mention is made of some compositions of Dryden, which were written after the first appearance of the essay. At the time when this work first appeared, Milton's fame was not yet fully established, and therefore Tasso and Spenser were set before him. The two last lines were these. The epic poet, says he, Must above Milton's lofty flights prevail, Succeed where great Torquato, and where greater PRIOR. MATTHEW PRIOR is one of those that has burst [ out from an obscure original to great eminence. He was born July 21, 1664, according to some, at Winburn, 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. 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 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. He entered his name in St. John's College, at Cambridge, in 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 ;+ and two years afterwards wrote the poem on the "Deity," which stands first in his volume. envy raised by superior abilities every day gratified: when they are attacked, every one hopes to see them humbled: what is hoped is readily believed, and what is believed is confidently told. Dryden had been more accustomed to hostilities than that such enemies should break his quiet; and if we can suppose him vexed, it would be hard to deny him sense enough to conceal his uneasiness. The "City Mouse and Country Mouse" procured its authors more solid advantages than the pleasure of fretting Dryden; for they were both speedily preferred. Montague, indeed, obtained the first notice, with some degree of discontent, as it seems, in Prior, who probably knew that his own part of the performance was the best. He had not, however, much reason to complain; for he came to London, and obtained such notice, that (in 1691) he was sent to the Congress at the Hague as secretary to the embassy. In this assembly of princes and nobles, to which Europe has perhaps scarcely seen any thing equal, was formed the grand alliance against Louis, which at last did not produce effects proportionate to the magnificence of the transaction. The conduct of Prior in this splendid initiation into public business, was so pleasing to King William, that he made him one of the gentlemen of his bedchamber; and he is supposed to have passed some of the next years in the quiet cultivation of literature and poetry. It is the established practice of that College, to send every year to the Earl of Exeter some poems upon sacred subjects, in acknowledgment of a benefaction enjoyed by them from The death of Queen Mary (in 1695) produced the bounty of his ancestor. On this occasion a subject for all the writers; perhaps no funeral were those verses written, which, though no- was ever so poetically attended. Dryden, inthing is said of their success, seem to have re-deed, as a man discountenanced and deprived, commended him to some notice; for his praise was silent; but scarcely any other maker of of the Countess's music, and his lines on the verses omitted to bring his tribute of tuneful famous picture of Seneca, afford reason for ima-sorrow. An emulation of elegy was universal. gining that he was more or less conversant Maria's praise was not confined to the English with that family. language, but fills a great part of the "Musæ Anglicane." The same year he published the "City Mouse and Country Mouse," to ridicule Dryden's "Hind and Panther," in conjunction with Mr. Montague. There is a story of great pain suffered, and of tears shed, on this occasion, by Dryden, who thought it hard that " an old man should be so treated by those to whom he had always been civil." By tales like these is the The difficulty of settling Prior's birthplace 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 Winborne, as it stands in the Villare, is found. When he stood candidate for his fellowship, five years afterwards, he was registered again by himself as of Middlesex. The last record ought to be preferred, be cause it was made upon oath. It is observable, that, as a native of Winborne, he is styled Filius Georgii Prior, generosi; not consistently with the common account of the meanness of his birth.-Dr. J. + Samuel Prior kept the Rummer Tavern, near Cha ring Cross, in 1685. The annual feast of the nobility and gentry living in the parish of St. Martin in the Fields was held at his house, October 14, that year.-N. He was admitted to his bachelor's degree in 1686; and to his master's, by mandate, in 1700.-N. Spence. Prior, who was both a poet and a courtier, was too diligent to miss this opportunity of respect. He wrote a long ode, which was presented to the King, by whom it was not likely to be ever read. In two years he was secretary to another embassy, at the treaty of Ryswick, (in 1697;||) and next year had the same office at the court of France, where he is said to have been considered with great distinction. As he was one day surveying the apartments at Versailles, being shown the victories of Louis, painted by Le Brun, and asked whether the King of England's palace had any such decorations: "The monuments of my master's actions," said he, " are to be seen every where but in his own house." The pictures of Le Brun are not only in themselves sufficiently ostentatious, but were explained by inscriptions so arrogant, that Boi He received, in September, 1697, a present of 200 guineas from the lords justices, for his trouble in bringing over the treaty of peace.-N. leau and Racine thought it necessary to make them more simple. He was in the following year at Loo with the King; from whom, after a long audience, he carried orders to England, and upon his arrival became under-secretary of state in the Earl of Jersey's office; a post which he did not retain long, because Jersey was removed; but he was soon made commissioner of trade. This year (1700) produced one of his longest and most splendid 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 wrote, and retained as much veracity as can be properly exacted from a poet professedly encomiastic. King William supplied copious materials for either verse or prose. His whole life had been action, and none ever denied him the resplendent qualities of steady resolution and personal courage. 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. Among the advantages to arise from the future years of William's reign, he mentions a Society for useful Arts, and among them Some that with care true eloquence shall teach, And schools profess our tongue through every land other composition produced by that event which is now remembered. 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 general acclamation; the fame of our counsellors and heroes was intrusted to the Gazetteer. The nation in time grew weary of the war, and the Queen grew 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 show the waste of public money, the unreasonable conduct of the allies, the avarice of generals, the tyranny of minions, and the general danger of approaching rum. For this purpose a paper called the "Examiner" was periodically 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. 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 trea Tickell, in his "Prospect of Peace," has the ties, was sent (July, 1711) privately to Paris, same hope of a new academy: with propositions of peace. He was remem bered at the French court; and, returning in about a month, brought with him the Abbe Gualtier, and Mr. Mesnager, a minister from France, invested with full powers. In happy chains our daring language bound, Shall sport no more in arbitrary sound. Whether the similitude of those passages, which exhibit the same thought on the same occasion, This transaction not being avowed, Mackay, proceeded from accident or imitation, is not easy the master of the Dover packet-boat, either zeato determine. Tickell might have been im-lously or officiously, seized Prior and his assopressed with his expectation by Swift's "Propo- ciates at Canterbury. It is easily supposed that sal for ascertaining the English Language," then they were soon released. lately published. In the parliament that met in 1701 he was chosen representative of East Grinstead. Perhaps it was about this time that he changed his party; for he voted for the impeachment of those 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 versemen, Prior, among the rest, took care to show his deight in the increasing honour of his country by an Epistle to Boileau. He published soon afterwards a volume of poems, with the encomiastic character of his deceased patron, the Duke of Dorset; it began with the "College Exercise," and ended with the "Nut-brown Maid." The battle of Ramilies 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 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. "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 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 secret, if you should think fit to employ him in the future treaty of commerce, it will be of consequence that he has been a party concerned in conclud ing that convention which must be the rule of this treaty." The assembly of this important night was in some degree clandestine, the design of treating not being yet openly declared, and, when the whigs returned to power, was aggravated to a charge of high treason; though, as Prior re-own house, under the custody of the messenger, marks in his imperfect answer to the report of the Committee of Secrecy, no treaty ever was made without private interviews and preliminary discussions. till he was examined before a committee of the privy council, of which Mr. Walpole was chairman, and Lord Coningsby, Mr. Stanhope, and Mr. Lechmere, were the principal interrogators; who, in this examination, of which there is printed an account not unentertaining, behaved with the boisterousness of men elated by recent authority. They are represented as asking questions sometimes vague, sometimes insidious, and writing answers different from those which they received. Prior, however, seems to have been overpowered by their turbulence; for he confesses that he signed what, if he had ever come before a legal judicature, he should have contradicted or explained away. The oath was ad My business is not the history of the peace, but the life of Prior. The conferences began at Utrecht, on the first of January, (1711-12,) and the English plenipotentiaries arrived on the fifteenth. 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 pub-ministered by Boscawen, a Middlesex justice, lic character. By some mistake of the Queen's orders, the court of France 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." Soon after, the Duke of Shrewsbury went on a formal embassy to Paris. It is related by Boyer, that the intention was to have joined Prior in the commission, but that Shrewsbury refused to be associated with a man so meanly born. Prior therefore continued to act without a title till the Duke returned next year to England, and then he assumed the style and dignity of ambassador. who at last was going to write his attestation on the wrong side of the paper. They were very industrious to find some charge against Oxford; and asked Prior, with great earnestness, who was present when the preliminary articles were talked of or signed at his house? He told them, that either the Earl of Oxford or the Duke of Shrewsbury was absent, but he could not remember which; an answer which perplexed them, because it supplied no accusation against either. "Could any thing be more absurd," says he, "or more inhuman, than to propose to me a question, by the answering of which I might, according to them, prove myself a traitor? And notwithstanding their solemn promise, that nothing which I could say should hurt myself, I had no reason to trust them; for they violated that promise about five But, while he continued in appearance a pri-hours after. However, I owned I was there prevate man, he was treated with confidence by Louis, who sent him with a letter to the Queen, written in favour of the Elector of Bavaria. "İ When he had signed the paper, he was told by shall expect," says he, "with impatience, the Walpole, that the committee were not satisfied return of Mr. Prio, whose conduct is very agree with his behaviour, nor could give such an ac able to me." And while the Duke of Shrews-count of it to the Commons as might merit bury was still at Paris, Bolingbroke wrote to Prior thus: "Monsieur de Torcy has a confidence in you make use of it, once for all, upon this occasion, and convince him thoroughly, that we must give a different turn to our parliament and our people according to their resolution at this crisis." : sent. Whether this was wisely done or not, I leave to my friends to determine." favour; and that they now thought a stricter confinement necessary than to his own house. "Here," says he, "Boscawen played the moralist, and Coningsby the Christian, but both very awkwardly." The messenger, in whose custody he was to be placed, was then called, and very decently asked by Coningsby, "if his house was Prior's public dignity and splendour com- secured by bars and bolts ?" The messenger menced in August, 1713, and continued till the answered, "No!" with astonishment. At which August following; but I am afraid that, accord- Coningsby very angrily said, "Sir, you must ing to the usual fate of greatness, it was attend-secure this prisoner; it is for the safety of the ed with some perplexities and mortifications. He had not all that is customarily given to ambassadors: he hints to the Queen, in an imperfect poem, that he had no service of plate; and it appeared by the debts which he contracted, that his remittances were not punctually made. On the first of August, 1714, ensued the downfall of the tories and the degradation of Prior. He was recalled, but was not able to return, being detained by the debts which he had found it necessary to contract, and which were not discharged before March, though his old friend Montague was now at the head of the Treasury. nation: if he escape, you shall answer for it." They had already printed their report; and in this examination were endeavouring to find proofs. He continued thus confined for some time; and Mr. Walpole (June 10, 1715) moved for an impeachment againt him. What made him so acrimonious does not appear: he was by nature no thirster for blood. Prior was a week after committed to close custody, with orders that "no person should be admitted to see him without leave from the speaker." When, two years after, an Act of Grace was passed, he was excepted, and continued still He returned then as soon as he could, and in custody, which he had made less tedious by was welcomed on the 25th of March* by a war-writing his "Alma." He was, however, soon rant, but was, however, suffered to live in his after discharged. * 1715. He had now his liberty, but he had nothing else. Whatever the profit of his employments might have been, he had always spent it; and at the age of fifty-three, was, with all his abilities, in danger of penury, having yet no solid revenue but from the fellowship of his college, which, when in his exaltation he was censured for retaining it, he said, he could live upon at last. * Being however generally known and esteemed, he was encouraged to add other poems to those which he had printed, and to publish them by subscription. The expedient succeeded by the industry of many friends, who circulated the proposals, and the care of some, who, it is said, withheld the money from him lest he should squander it. The price of the volume was two guineas; the whole collection was four thousand; to which Lord Harley, the son of the Earl of Oxford, to whom he had invariably adhered, added an equal sum for the purchase of Downhall, which Prior was to enjoy during life, and Harley after his decease. He had now, what wits and philosophers have often wished, the power of passing the day in contemplative tranquillity. But it seems that busy men seldom live long in a state of quiet. It is not unlikely that his health declined. He complains of deafness; "for," says he, "I took little care of my ears while I was not sure if my head was my own." Of any occurrences in his remaining life, I have found no account. In a letter to Swift, "I have," says he, "treated Lady Harriot at Cambridge (a fellow of a college treat!) and spoke verses to her in a gown and cap! What, the plenipotentiary, so far concerned in the damned peace at Utrecht-the man that makes up half the volume of terse prose, that makes up the report of the committee, speaking verses! Sic est, homo sum." He died at Wimpole, a seat of the Earl of Oxford, on the eighteenth of September, 1721, and was buried in Westminster; where, on a monument for which, as the "last piece of human vanity," he left five hundred pounds, is engraven this epitaph: Sui Temporis Historiam meditanti, Regi GULIELMO Reginæque MARIE Qui anno 1697 Pacem RYSWICKI Confecerunt, Qui apud Gallos annis proximis Legationem Necnon in utroque Honorabili consessu Eorum Diuque ut boni jam omnes sperant duratura,) Qui Hos omnes, quibus cumulatus est, Titulos Cui enim nascenti faciles arriserant Muse, A Vatum Choro avelli nunquam potuit, Tum in Fabellis concinnè lepidèque texendis Neminem habuit parem. Hæc liberalis animi obiectamenta, Quam nullo Illi labore constiterint, Facile i perspexere quibus usus est Amici; Apud quos Urbanitatum et Leporum plenus Cum ad rem, quæcunque forte inciderat, Aptè, variè, copiosèque alluderet, Interea nihil quæsitum, nihil vi expressum Videbatur, Sed omnia ultro effluere, Et quasi jugi è fonte affatim exuberâre, Ita suos tandem dubios reliquit, Essetne in Scriptis Poeta Elegantion An in Convictu Comes Jucundior. Of Prior, eminent as he was, both by his abilities and station, very few memorials have been left by his contemporaries; the account therefore must now be destitute of his private character and familiar practices. He lived at a time when the rage of party detected all which it was any man's interest to hide; and, as little ill is heard of Prior, it is certain that not much was known. He was not afraid of provoking censure, for when he forsook the whigs, under whose patronage he first entered the world, he became a tory so ar dent and determinate, that he did not willingly consort with men of different opinions. He was one of the sixteen tories who met weekly, and agreed to address each other by the title of brother; and seems to have adhered, not only by concurrence of political designs, but by peculiar affection, to the Earl of Oxford and his family. With how much confidence he was trusted has been already told. He was, however, in Pope'st opinion, fit only to make verses, and less qualified for business than Addison himself. This was surely said without consideration. Addison, exalted to a high place, was forced into degradation by the sense of his own incapacity; Prior, who was employed by men very capable of estimating his value, having been secretary to one embassy, had, when great abilities were again wanted, the same office another time; and was, after so much experience of his knowledge and dexterity, at last sent to transact a negotiation in the highest degree arduous and important, for which he was qualified, among other requisites, in the opinion of Bolingbroke, by his influence upon the French minister, and by skill in questions of commerce above other men. Of his behaviour in the lighter parts of life, it is too late to get much intelligence. One of his answers to a boastful Frenchman has been related; and to an impertinent he made another † Spence |