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MATTHEW PRIOR.

[MATTHEW PRIOR was born in 1664 near Wimborne Minster in Dorsetshire He was educated at Westminster under Dr. Busby, and at St. John's College, Cambridge. where he took his B.A. degree in 1686. In the following year he published, in connection with Charles Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax, a caricature of Dryden's Hind and Panther, under the title of The Hind and the Panther transvers'd to the story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse. In 1707 he published a volume of poems, and another with additions in 1718. He died in 1721.]

'Dan Prior next, belov'd by every Muse.'

So sings Gay in that welcome to Pope after his labours of the 'Iliad.' And indeed not every Muse, but all the world seem to have looked kindly on the fortunate young Horatian whom the noble Dorset had taken from the Rummer tavern to be successively a Secretary of Embassy, a Secretary of State, a Commissioner of Trade and Plantations, a Member of Parliament, and, to crown all, an Ambassador. Among the subscribers to that stately folio of 1718, by which its author, happy man! cleared some £4,000, are numbered most of the illustrious names of the age, from Newton to Beau Nash,-to say nothing of lively maids of honour like 'the Honble Mrs. Mary Bellenden,' and bishops like his Right Reverence of Winchester. Bishops and maids of honour would, we imagine, be somewhat embarrassed now-a-days by much of the ingenuous verse which the tall volume contains. But readers under Anna Augusta were either not squeamish, or they confined themselves to the portentous poem of Solomon on the Vanity of the World which occupies its latter pages.

When one looks to the general character of Prior's writings it is hard to understand how he could ever have penned this egregious didactic work. Yet he not only wrote it, but he hoped to live by

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it, and grew petulant when Pope declined to praise it as a masterpiece

'Indeed, poor Solomon in rhyme

Was much too grave to be sublime,'

exclaimed its disappointed author in his last-published piece of The Conversation. Another long poem, the frigid paraphrase of the fine old ballad of The Not-Browne Maid to which he gave the title of 'Henry and Emma,' although it contains the oft-quoted (and mis-quoted) 'Fine by degrees, and beautifully less,' is almost equally unendurable. Nor are the official performances of Prior,— the Carmen Seculare and the rest, always excepting the clever skit upon Boileau's pompous Ode sur la prise de Namur, likely to attract the modern reader. His distinctive and personal note is to be found in one only of his longer pieces, and in his vivacious tales, songs, epigrams and familiar verses. This long poem is Alma, written in 1715 and 1716 while the author lay in prison under suspicion of high treason. It is a whimsical and delightfully vagrant dialogue between Mat (Prior) and Dick (his friend Mr. Shelton) upon the various speculations of philosophers as to the relations of the soul and the body, and full of fine caprices and fitful fresh departures. Plan there is little or none; but the wayward turns of the humour lure the reader from page to page with all the fascination of a Will o' the Wisp.

We suspect, however, that in spite of its many good things, Alma is more quoted than read. With Prior's minor pieces the case is different. In these he exhibits all the verbal fitness and artful ease of such Latins as Horace and Martial, with both of whom he has considerable affinity. But his continental residence had also made him familiar with their Gallic imitators, and added a French grace and lightness to his already unencumbered muse. In his treatment of love and women he thoroughly follows his masters. However ardent, his adoration of the other sex is always conventional, while his appreciation of their foibles is keen even to malice. He seldom or never writes of them with real respect and deep feeling. What interests him most, it is clear, is not the tender passion in its more refined conditions, but those pretty episodes and accidents at which, they say, Dame Venus laughs,--

rident

Simplice Nymphae, ferus et Cupidə
Semper ardentes acuens sagittas

Cote cruenta.

That is to say, his favourite poetical attitude is rather cynical than enthusiastic-rather material than ideal. Now and then, as in the verses To a Child of Quality five years old, he can assume a playful gravity which is altogether charming; but it is in such pieces as The Merchant, to secure his treasure, A Better Answer, A Song, that he shines most equably. As a tale-teller he comes near to La Fontaine for ease of narrative and careless finish; although his themes, like those of his model, are generally more witty than delicate. In his Epistles and pieces like The Secretary and A Simile he is delightful. As an epigrammatist he is unrivalled in English.

But however much one might attempt to define the work of Prior, there would always be a something left undefined,—a something that animates the whole and yet defies the critic, who falls back upon the old threadbare devices for describing the undescribable. His is the 'nameless charm' of Piron's epigram,-that fugitive je ne sais quoi of gaiety, of wit, of grace, of audacity, it is impossible to say what, which eludes analysis as the principle of life escapes the anatomist. In the present case it lifts its possessor above any other writer of familiar verse; but it is a something to which we cannot give a name, unless, indeed, we take refuge in paradox, and say that it is.... MATTHEW PRIOR.

AUSTIN DOBSON,

THE SECRETARY.

[Written at the Hague, in the year 1696.]

While with labour assiduous due pleasure I mix,
And in one day atone for the business of six;
In a little Dutch-chaise on a Saturday night,

On my left hand my Horace, a Nymph on my right;
No Mémoire to compose and no Post-boy to move
That on Sunday may hinder the softness of love;
For her, neither visits, nor parties at tea,

Nor the long-winded cant of a dull refugee:

This night and the next shall be hers, shall be mine,
To good or ill fortune the third we resign:
Thus scorning the world and superior to fate

I drive on my car in processional state.
So with Phia through Athens Pisistratus rode;
Men thought her Minerva, and him a new God.
But why should I stories of Athens rehearse
Where people knew love, and were partial to verse;
Since none can with justice my pleasures oppose,
In Holland half-drowned in interest and prose?
By Greece and past ages what need I be tried,
When the Hague and the present are both on my side?
And is it enough for the joys of the day

To think what Anacreon or Sappho would say,
When good Vandergoes and his provident Vrouw,
As they gaze on my triumph, do freely allow,

That, search all the province, you'll find no man Lols is
So blessed as the Englishen Heer Secretar' is.

TO A CHILD OF QUALITY FIVE YEARS OLD.

Lords, knights, and 'squires, the numerous band,
That wear the fair Miss Mary's fetters,
Were summoned by her high command,
To show their passions by their letters.

My pen among the rest I took,

Lest those bright eyes that cannot read Should dart their kindling fires, and look The power they have to be obeyed.

Nor quality, nor reputation,

Forbid me yet my flame to tell,
Dear five years old befriends my passion,
And I may write till she can spell.

For, while she makes her silk-worms 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 ordained, (would Fate but mend it!)

That I shall be past making love,

When she begins to comprehend it.

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