Matthew Prior is one of those that have 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[1], 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[2], 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[3]; and two years afterwards wrote the poem on the
Deity, which stands first in his volume.
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 bounty of his ancestor. On this
occasion were those verses written, which, though nothing is said of
their success, seem to have recommended him to some notice; for his
praise of the countess's musick, and his lines on the famous picture of
Seneca, afford reason for imagining that he was more or less conversant
with that family.
The same year, 1688, he published the City Mouse and Country Mouse, to
ridicule Dryden's Hind and Panther, in conjunction with Mr. Montague.
There is a story[4] 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 envy, raised by superiour 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 Lewis, which, at last, did not produce
effects proportionate to the magnificence of the transaction.
The conduct of Prior, in this splendid initiation into publick 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.
The death of queen Mary, in 1695, produced a subject for all the
writers; perhaps no funeral was ever so poetically attended. Dryden,
indeed, as a man discountenanced and deprived, was silent; but scarcely
any other maker of verses omitted to bring his tribute of tuneful
sorrow. An emulation of elegy was universal. Maria's praise was not
confined to the English language, but fills a great part of the Musæ
Anglicanæ.
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[5]; 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 Lewis, 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
Boileau 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 writ, and retained as much veracity as can be
properly exacted from a poet professedly encomiastick. 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 to just idioms fix our doubtful speech;
That from our writers distant realms may know
The thanks we to our monarch owe,
And schools profess our tongue through ev'ry land,
That has invok'd his aid, or bless'd his hand.
Tickell, in his Prospect of Peace, has the same hope of a new academy:
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 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 delight in
the increasing honour of his country, by an epistle to Boileau.
He published, soon afterwards, a volume of poems, with the encomiastick
character of his deceased patron, the duke of Dorset[6]: it began with
the College Exercise, and ended with the Nut-brown Maid.
The battle of Ramilles 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 publick 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 that 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 treating 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 publick
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
same 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 Lewis, 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 publick 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 downfal 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, 1715, 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 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 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 decently 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[7], 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 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 foederatorum
Hagæ anno 1690 celebrata;
Deinde Magnæ Britanniæ legatis;
Tum iis,
Qui anno 1697 pacem RYSWICKI confecerunt;
Tum iis,
Qui apud Gallos annis proximis legationem obierunt;
Eodem etiam anno, 1697, in Hibernia
SECRETARIUS;
Nee non in utroque honorabili consessu
Eorum,
Qui anno 1700 ordinandis commercii negotiis,
Quique anno 1711 dirigendis portorii rebus,
Præsidebant,
COMMISSIONARIUS;
Postremo
Ab ANNA,
Felicissinæ memoriæ regina,
Ad LUDOVICUM XIV. Galliæ regem
Missus anno 1711
De pace stabilienda,
(Pace etiamnum durante
Diuque ut boni jam omnes sperant duratura)
Cum summa potestate legatus;
MATTHÆUS PRIOR, armiger:
Qui
Hos omnes, quibus cumulatus est, titulos
Humanitatis, ingenii, eruditionis laude
Superavit;
Cui enim nascenti faciles arriserant musæ.
Hune puerum schola hie regia perpolivit;
Juvenem in collegio S'ti Johannis
Cantabrigia optimis scientiis instruxit;
Virum denique auxit; et perfecit.
Multa cum viris principibus consuetudo;
Ita natus, ita institutus,
A vatum chioro avelli nunquam potuit,
Sed solebat sæpe rerum civilium gravitatem
Amoeniorum literarum studiis condire:
Et cum omne adeo poetices 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 perspexere, quibus usus est amici;
Apud quos urbanitatum et leporum plenus
Cum ad rem, quæcunque forte inciderat,
Apte varie copioseque alluderet,
Interea nihil quæsitum, nihil vi expressum
Videbatur,
Sed omnia ultro effluere,
Et quasi jugi e fonte afiatim exuberare,
Ita suos tandem dubios reliquit,
Essetue in scriptis, poeta elegantior,
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 [8], 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[9] 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 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 saurais 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 the 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[10] 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 this
propensity to sordid converse I have seen an account so seriously
ridiculous, that it seems to deserve insertion[11].
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,
"Strain'd 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[12]. 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 Ramilles 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 Lewis 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 topicks, 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; amongst 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 or 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 know 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
excellencies, 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; negligences or errours 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
tenour 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 the
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 moestus, ait; summi conviva Tonantis
Jam cum coelitibus (si modo credis) eris.
Ille gemens, si vera mihi solatia praebes,
Hospes apud superos sis meus oro, refert.
Sacrificus contra; mihi non convivia fas est
Ducere, jejunans 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
any 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 heroick poetry[13].
He had, apparently, such rectitude of judgment as secured him from every
thing that approached to the ridiculous or absurd; but as laws operate
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 every thing 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 that 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 elegancies, 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: