“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, 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 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 himself had 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-men, Prior, among the rest, took care to show his delight 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 Earl of Dorset. It began with the
College exercise, and ended with the “Nutbrown Maid.”
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.
Everything 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
entrusted 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 ruin. 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 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. 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 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:—
“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 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 clandestine, the
design of treaty not being yet openly declared and when the Whigs
returned to power was aggravated to a charge of high treason; 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. The
conferences began at Utrecht on the 1st of January (1711–12), and the
English plenipotentiaries arrived on the 15th. 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 public 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. But while he continued in appearance a private
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. “I shall
expect,” says he, “with impatience, the return of Mr. Prior, whose
conduct is very agreeable to me.” And while the Duke of Shrewsbury 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.”
Prior’s public dignity and splendour commenced in August, 1713, and
continued till the August following; but I am afraid that, according to
the usual fate of greatness, it was attended 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 1st 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. He returned, then, as soon as he
could, and was welcomed on the 25th of March by a warrant, but was,
however, suffered to live in his own house, under the custody of the
messenger, 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 administered by
Boscawen, a Middlesex justice, 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 anything 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 should say should hurt myself, I had no
reason to trust them, for they violated that promise about five hours
after. However, I owned I was there present. Whether this was wisely
done or no I leave to my friends to determine.” When he had signed the
paper, he was told by Walpole that the committee were not satisfied with
his behaviour, nor could give such an account of it to the Commons as
might merit 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 indecently asked by Coningsby “if his house was secured by bars and
bolts.” The messenger answered, “No,” with astonishment. At which
Coningsby very angrily said, “Sir, you must secure this prisoner; it is
for the safety of the 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 against 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
in custody, which he had made less tedious by writing his “Alma.” He
was, however, soon after discharged. 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 Down Hall, 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 of his remaining life I have found no account. In a
letter to Swift, “I have,” says he, “treated Lady Harriet, 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 18th 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,
Paulatim obrepens Febris
Operi simul et Vitæ filum abrupit,
Sept. 18. An. Dom. 1721. Ætat. 57.
H.S.E.
Vir Eximius Serenissimis
Regi GULIELMO Reginæque MARIÆ
In Congressione Fœderatorum
Hagæ anno 1690 celebrata,
Deinde Magnæ Britanniæ Legatis
Tum iis,
Qui anno 1697 Pacem RYSWICKI confecerunt,
Tum iis,
Qui apud Gallos annie proximis Legationem obierunt
Eodem etiani anno 1657 in Hiberniâ
SECRETARIUS;
Necnon in utroque Honorabili consessu
Eorum,
Qui anno 1700 ordinandis Commercii negotiis,
Quique anno 1711 dirigendis Portorii rebus,
Præidebant,
COMMISSIONARIUS;
Postremo ab ANNA,
Felicissimæ memoriæ Reginâ,
Ad LUDOVICUM XIV. Galliæ Regem
Missus anno 1711
De Pace stabiliendâ
(Pace etiam num durante
Diuque ut boni jam omnes sperant duraturâ),
Cum sunmâ potestate Legatus;
MATTHÆS PRIOR Armiger
Qui
Hos omnes, quibus cumulates est, Titulos
Humanitatis, Ingenii, Ereditionis laude
Superavit;
Cui enim nascenti faciles arriserant Mesæ.
Hunc Puerum Schola hîc Regia perpolivit;
Jevenem in Collegio S’ti Johannis
Cantabrigia optimis Scientiis instruxit;
Virum denique auxit, et perfecit,
Multa cum viris Principibus censuetudo;
Ita natus, ita institutus,
A Vatam Choro avelli numquam potuit,
Sed solebat sæpe rerum civilium gravitatem
Amœniorum Literarum Studiis condire:
Et cum omne adeo Poeticës genus
Haud infeliciter tentaret,
Tum in Fabellis concinne lepideque texendis
Mirus Artifex
Neminem habuit parem.
Hæc liberalis animi oblectamenta:
Quam nullo illi labore constiterint,
Facile ii perspexêre, quibus usus est Amici;
Apud quos Urbanitatem et Leporum plenus
Cum ad rem, quæcunque forte inciderat,
Aptè varie copiosèque alluderet,
Interea nihil quæsitum, nihil vi expressum
Videbatur,
Sed omnia ultro effluere,
Et quasi jugi è foote affatim exuberare,
Ita suos tandem dubios reliquit,
Essetne in Scriptis, Poeta Elegantior,
An in Convictu, Comes Jocundior.
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 ardent 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’s 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 own 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 equally proper. During
his embassy he sat at the opera by a man who, in his rapture, accompanied
with his own voice the principal singer.
Prior fell to railing at the performer with all the terms of reproach
that he could collect, till the Frenchman, ceasing from his song, began
to expostulate with him for his harsh censure of a man who was
confessedly the ornament of the stage. “I know all that,” says the
ambassador, “mais il chante si haut, que je ne sçaurois vous entendre.”
In a gay French company, where every one sang a little song or stanza, of
which the burden was “Bannissons la Mélancolie,” when it came to his turn
to sing, after the performance of a young lady that sat next him, he
produced these extemporary lines:—
“Mais cette voix, et ces beaux yeux,
Font Cupidon trop dangereux,
Et je suis triste quand je crie
Bannissons la Mélancolie.”
Tradition represents him as willing to descend from the dignity of the
poet and statesman to the low delights of mean company. His Chloe
probably was sometimes ideal: but the woman with whom he cohabited was a
despicable drab of the lowest species. One of his wenches, perhaps
Chloe, while he was absent from his house, stole his plate and ran away,
as was related by a woman who had been his servant. Of his propensity to
sordid converse, I have seen an account so seriously ridiculous, that it
seems to deserve insertion.
“I have been assured that Prior, after having spent the evening with
Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope, and Swift, would go and smoke a pipe and drink
a bottle of ale with a common soldier and his wife in Long Acre before he
went to bed, not from any remains of the lowness of his original, as one
said, but I suppose that his faculties—
“‘—strained to the height,
In that celestial colloquy sublime,
Dazzled and spent, sunk down, and sought repair.’”
Poor Prior; why was he so _strained_, and in such _want of repair_, after
a conversation with men not, in the opinion of the world, much wiser than
himself? But such are the conceits of speculatists, who _strain_ their
_faculties_ to find in a mine what lies upon the surface. His opinions,
so far as the means of judging are left us, seem to have been right; but
his life was, it seems, irregular, negligent, and sensual.
* * * * *
PRIOR has written with great variety, and his variety has made him
popular. He has tried all styles, from the grotesque to the solemn, and
has not so failed in any as to incur derision or disgrace. His works may
be distinctly considered as comprising Tales, Love Verses, Occasional
Poems, “Alma,” and “Solomon.”
His tales have obtained general approbation, being written with great
familiarity and great sprightliness; the language is easy, but seldom
gross, and the numbers smooth, without appearance of care. Of these
tales there are only four: “The Ladle,” which is introduced by a preface,
neither necessary nor pleasing, neither grave nor merry. “Paulo
Purganti,” which has likewise a preface, but of more value than the tale.
“Hans Carvel,” not over-decent; and “Protogenes and Apelles,” an old
story mingled, by an affectation not disagreeable, with modern images.
“The Young Gentleman in Love” has hardly a just claim to the title of a
tale. I know not whether he be the original author of any tale which he
has given us. The adventure of Hans Carvel has passed through many
successions of merry wits, for it is to be found in Ariosto’s “Satires,”
and is perhaps yet older. But the merit of such stories is the art of
telling them.
In his amorous effusions he is less happy; for they are not dictated by
nature or by passion, and have neither gallantry nor tenderness. They
have the coldness of Cowley, without his wit, the dull exercises of a
skilful versifier, resolved at all adventures to write something about
Chloe, and trying to be amorous by dint of study. His fictions,
therefore, are mythological. Venus, after the example of the Greek
epigram, asks when she was seen _naked and bathing_. Then Cupid is
_mistaken_; then Cupid is _disarmed_; then he loses his darts to
Ganymede; then Jupiter sends him a summons by Mercury. Then Chloe goes
a-hunting with an _ivory quiver graceful at her side_; Diana mistakes her
for one of her nymphs, and Cupid laughs at the blunder. All this is
surely despicable; and even when he tries to act the lover without the
help of gods or goddesses, his thoughts are unaffecting or remote. He
talks not “like a man of this world.”
The greatest of all his amorous essays is “Henry and Emma,” a dull and
tedious dialogue, which excites neither esteem for the man nor tenderness
for the woman. The example of Emma, who resolves to follow an outlawed
murderer wherever fear and guilt shall drive him, deserves no imitation;
and the experiment by which Henry tries the lady’s constancy is such as
must end either in infamy to her or in disappointment to himself.
His occasional poems necessarily lost part of their value, as their
occasions, being less remembered, raised less emotion, Some of them,
however, are preserved by their inherent excellence. The burlesque of
Boileau’s ode on Namur has in some parts such airiness and levity as will
always procure it readers, even among those who cannot compare it with
the original. The epistle to Boileau is not so happy. The “Poems to the
King,” are now perused only by young students, who read merely that they
may learn to write; and of the “Carmen Seculare,” I cannot but suspect
that I might praise or censure it by caprice without danger of detection;
for who can be supposed to have laboured through it? Yet the time has
been when this neglected work was so popular that it was translated into
Latin by no common master.
His poem on the Battle of Ramillies is necessarily tedious by the form of
the stanza. An uniform mass of ten lines thirty-five times repeated,
inconsequential and slightly connected, must weary both the ear and the
understanding. His imitation of Spenser, which consists principally in
_I ween_ and _I weet_, without exclusion of later modes of speech, makes
his poem neither ancient nor modern. His mention of Mars and Bellona,
and his comparison of Marlborough to the eagle that bears the thunder of
Jupiter, are all puerile and unaffecting; and yet more despicable is the
long tale told by Louis in his despair of Brute and Troynovante, and the
teeth of Cadmus, with his similes of the raven and eagle and wolf and
lion. By the help of such easy fictions and vulgar topics, without
acquaintance with life, and without knowledge of art or nature, a poem of
any length, cold and lifeless like this, may be easily written on any
subject.
In his epilogues to Phædra and to Lucius he is very happily facetious;
but in the prologue before the queen the pedant has found his way with
Minerva, Perseus, and Andromeda.
His epigrams and lighter pieces are, like those of others, sometimes
elegant, sometimes trifling, and sometimes dull; among the best are the
“Chamelion” and the epitaph on John and Joan.
Scarcely any one of our poets has written so much and translated so
little: the version of Callimachus is sufficiently licentious; the
paraphrase on St. Paul’s Exhortation to Charity is eminently beautiful.
“Alma” is written in professed imitation of “Hudibras,” and has at least
one accidental resemblance: “Hudibras” wants a plan because it is left
imperfect; “Alma” is imperfect because it seems never to have had a plan.
Prior appears not to have proposed to himself any drift or design, but to
have written the casual dictates of the present moment.
What Horace said when he imitated Lucilius, might be said of Butler by
Prior; his numbers were not smooth nor neat. Prior excelled him in
versification; but he was, like Horace, _inventore minor_; he had not
Butler’s exuberance of matter and variety of illustration. The spangles
of wit which he could afford he knew how to polish; but he wanted the
bullion of his master. Butler pours out a negligent profusion, certain
of the weight, but careless of the stamp. Prior has comparatively
little, but with that little he makes a fine show. “Alma” has many
admirers, and was the only piece among Prior’s works of which Pope said
that he should wish to be the author.
“Solomon” is the work to which he entrusted the protection of his name,
and which he expected succeeding ages to regard with veneration. His
affection was natural; it had undoubtedly been written with great labour;
and who is willing to think that he has been labouring in vain? He had
infused into it much knowledge and much thought; had often polished it to
elegance, often dignified it with splendour, and sometimes heightened it
to sublimity: he perceived in it many excellences, and did not discover
that it wanted that without which all others are of small avail—the power
of engaging attention and alluring curiosity.
Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults; negligence or errors are
single and local, but tediousness pervades the whole; other faults are
censured and forgotten, but the power of tediousness propagates itself.
He that is weary the first hour is more weary the second, as bodies
forced into motion, contrary to their tendency, pass more and more slowly
through every successive interval of space. Unhappily this pernicious
failure is that which an author is least able to discover. We are seldom
tiresome to ourselves; and the act of composition fills and delights the
mind with change of language and succession of images. Every couplet,
when produced, is new, and novelty is the great source of pleasure.
Perhaps no man ever thought a line superfluous when he first wrote it, or
contracted his work till his ebullitions of invention had subsided. And
even if he should control his desire of immediate renown, and keep his
work _nine years_ unpublished, he will be still the author, and still in
danger of deceiving himself: and if he consults his friends he will
probably find men who have more kindness than judgment, or more fear to
offend than desire to instruct. The tediousness of this poem proceeds
not from the uniformity of the subject, for it is sufficiently
diversified, but from the continued tenor of the narration; in which
Solomon relates the successive vicissitudes of his own mind without the
intervention of any other speaker or the mention of any other agent,
unless it be Abra; the reader is only to learn what he thought, and to be
told that he thought wrong. The event of every experiment is foreseen,
and therefore the process is not much regarded. Yet the work is far from
deserving to be neglected. He that shall peruse it will be able to mark
many passages to which he may recur for instruction or delight; many from
which the poet may learn to write and the philosopher to reason.
If Prior’s poetry be generally considered, his praise will be that of
correctness and industry, rather than of compass of comprehension or
activity of fancy. He never made any effort of invention: his greater
pieces are only tissues of common thoughts; and his smaller, which
consist of light images or single conceits, are not always his own. I
have traced him among the French epigrammatists, and have been informed
that he poached for prey among obscure authors. The “Thief and
Cordelier” is, I suppose, generally considered as an original production,
with how much justice this epigram may tell, which was written by
Georgius Sabinus, a poet now little known or read, though once the friend
of Luther and Melancthon:—
“De _Sacerdote Furem consolante_.
“Quidam sacrificus furem comitatus euntem
Huc ubi dat sontes carnificina neci.
Ne sis mœstus, ait; summi conviva Tonantis
Jam cum coelitibus (si modo credis) eris.
Ille gemens, si vera mihi solatia præbes,
Hospes apud superos sis meus oro, refert.
Sacrificus contra; mihi non convivia fas est
Ducere, jejunas hac edo luce nihil.”
What he has valuable he owes to his diligence and his judgment. His
diligence has justly placed him amongst the most correct of the English
poets; and he was one of the first that resolutely endeavoured at
correctness. He never sacrifices accuracy to haste, nor indulges himself
in contemptuous negligence, or impatient idleness; he has no careless
lines, or entangled sentiments; his words are nicely selected, and his
thoughts fully expanded. If this part of his character suffers an
abatement, it must be from the disproportion of his rhymes, which have
not always sufficient consonance, and from the admission of broken lines
into his “Solomon;” but perhaps he thought, like Cowley, that hemistichs
ought to be admitted into heroic poetry.
He had apparently such rectitude of judgment as secured him from
everything that approached to the ridiculous or absurd; but as law
operates in civil agency, not to the excitement of virtue, but the
repression of wickedness, so judgment in the operations of intellect can
hinder faults, but not produce excellence. Prior is never low, nor very
often sublime. It is said by Longinus of Euripides, that he forces
himself sometimes into grandeur by violence of effort, as the lion
kindles his fury by the lashes of his own tail. Whatever Prior obtains
above mediocrity seems the effort of struggle and of toil. He has many
vigorous, but few happy lines; he has everything by purchase, and nothing
by gift; he had no _nightly visitations_ of the Muse, no infusions of
sentiment or felicities of fancy. His diction, however, is more his own
than of any among the successors of Dryden; he borrows no lucky turns, or
commodious modes of language, from his predecessors. His phrases are
original, but they are sometimes harsh; as he inherited no elegances,
none has he bequeathed. His expression has every mark of laborious
study, the line seldom seems to have been formed at once; the words did
not come till they were called, and were then put by constraint into
their places, where they do their duty, but do it sullenly. In his
greater compositions there may be found more rigid stateliness than
graceful dignity.
Of versification he was not negligent. What he received from Dryden he
did not lose; neither did he increase the difficulty of writing by
unnecessary severity, but uses triplets and alexandrines without scruple.
In his preface to “Solomon” he proposes some improvements by extending
the sense from one couplet to another with variety of pauses. This he
has attempted, but without success; his interrupted lines are unpleasing,
and his sense, as less distinct, is less striking. He has altered the
stanza of Spenser as a house is altered by building another in its place
of a different form. With how little resemblance he has formed his new
stanza to that of his master these specimens will show:—