Born, probably in Dorsetshire, 21 July 1664. Educated at Westminister School; King’s Scholar, 1681. To St. John’s Coll., Camb., as Scholar, 1682; B.A., 1686; Fellow, April 1688. For a short time tutor to sons of Lord Exeter. Gentleman of Bedchamber to the King. In Holland, as Sec. to Lord Dursley, 1690[?]–97. Sec. of State in Ireland, 1697. Sec. to English Embassy in Paris, 1698. Returned to England, Nov. 1699; appointed Under-Sec. of State. Hon. M.A., Camb., 1700. Commissioner of Trade, 1700–07. M.P. for East Grinstead, Feb. to June, 1701. Commissioner of Customs, 1711–14. In Paris, 1711, and 1712–14. Imprisoned on political charge, March 1715 to 1717. Presented by Lord Harley with property of Down Hall, Essex, 1720[?]. Died, at Wimpole, 18 Sept. 1721. Works: “The Hind and the Panther transversed” (anon.), 1687; “Hymn to the Sun,” 1694; “To the King: an Ode,” 1695; “An English Ballad” (anon.), 1695; “Verses on the death of Queen Mary,” 1695; “Carmen Seculare for the year 1700” (anon.), 1700; “Letter to Monsieur Boileau Despréaux” (anon.), 1704; “An Ode … to the Queen” (anon.), 1706; “Pallas and Venus” (anon.), 1706; “Poems,” 1707 (unauthorised); “Poems,” 1709; “A Fable of the Widow and her Cat” (with Swift), 1711; “Poems,” 1716 (unauthorised); “The Dove” (anon.), 1717; “Poems,” 1718; “The Conversation” (anon.), 1720; “The Curious Maid” (anon.), 1720. Posthumous: “Down Hall,” 1723; “The Turtle and the Sparrow,” 1723; “The Unequal Match” (anon.), 1737; “History of his Own Time,” 1740; “Miscellaneous Works” (2 vols.), 1740. Collected Works: ed. by R. B. Johnson (2 vols.), 1892.

Personal

	Yet counting as far as to fifty his years,
	His virtue and vice were as other men’s are,
	High hopes he conceived and he smothered great fears,
	In a life party-coloured—half pleasure, half care.
	Nor to business a drudge, nor to faction a slave,
	He strove to make interest and freedom agree;
	In public employments industrious and grave,
	And alone with his friends, lord, how merry was he!
	Now in equipage stately, now humbly on foot,
	Both fortunes he tried, but to neither would trust;
	And whirled in the round as the wheel turned about,
	He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust.

  It is near three o’clock in the morning, I have been hard at work all day, and am not yet enough recovered to bear much fatigue; excuse therefore the confusedness of this scroll, which is only from Harry to Matt, and not from the secretary to the minister. Adieu, my pen is ready to drop out of my hand, it being now three o’clock in the morning; believe that no man loves you better, or is more faithfully yours, &c.

  One Prior, who had been Jersey’s secretary.

  Our friend Prior not having had the vicissitude of humane things before his eyes, is likely to end his days in as forlorn a state as any other poet has done before him, if his friends do not take more care of him than he did of himself. Therefore to prevent the evil which we see is coming on very fast, we have a project of printing his “Solomon” and other poetical works by subscription; one guinea to be paid in hand, and the other at the delivery of the book. He, Arbuthnot, Pope, and Gay are now with me, and remember you. It is our joint request that you will endeavour to procure some subscriptions…. There are no papers printed here, nor any advertisements, for the whole matter is to be managed by friends in such a manner as shall be least shocking to the dignity of a plenipotentiary.

  There is great care taken, now it is too late, to keep Prior’s will secret, for it is thought not to be too reputable for Lord Harley to execute this will. Be so kind as to say nothing whence you had your intelligence. We are to have a bowl of punch at Bessy Cox’s. She would fain have put it upon Lewis that she was his Emma; she owned Flanders Jane was his Chloe.

  Prior was not a right good man. He used to bury himself, for whole days and nights together, with a poor mean creature, and often drank hard. He turned from a strong whig (which he had been when most with Lord Halifax) to a violent tory; and did not care to converse with any whigs after, any more than Rowe did with tories.

  The same woman who could charm the waiter in a tavern, still maintained her dominion over the embassador at France. The Chloe of Prior, it seems, was a woman in this station of life; but he never forsook her in the height of his reputation. Hence we may observe, that associations with women are the most lasting of all, and that when an eminent station raises a man above many other acts of condescension, a mistress will maintain her influence, charm away the pride of greatness, and make the hero who fights, and the patriot who speaks, for the liberty of his country, a slave to her. One would imagine however, that this woman, who was a Butcher’s wife, must either have been very handsome, or have had something about her superior to people of her rank: but it seems the case was otherwise, and no better reason can be given for Mr. Prior’s attachment to her, but that she was his taste. Her husband suffered their intrigue to go on unmolested; for he was proud even of such a connexion as this, with so great a man as Prior; a singular instance of good nature.

  Is it surprising that the works of a poet once so popular, should now be banished from a Lady’s library?—a banishment from which all his sprightly wit cannot redeem him.—But because Prior’s love for this woman was real, and that he was really a man of feeling and genius, though debased by low and irregular habits, there are some sweet touches scattered through his poetry, which show how strong was the illusion in his fancy.

  We find him neither gay enough nor refined enough. Bolingbroke called him wooden-faced, stubborn, and said he had something Dutch in his appearance. His manners smacked very strongly of those of Rochester, and the well-clad refuse which the Restoration bequeathed to the Revolution. He took the first woman at hand, shut himself up with her for several days, drank hard, fell asleep, and let her make off with his money and clothes. Amongst other drabs, ugly enough and always dirty, he finished by keeping Elizabeth Cox, and all but married her; fortunately he died just in time.

  Apparently he was not designed by nature or tastes for a professional statesman, as was Montague. As a writer, he had not genius, like Addison’s, to compel the world to accept as truths of human nature the humours of a special period. Yet, by tempering literature with politics, and politics with literature, he made a high reputation among his contemporaries, and won lofty official rank. By the mere weight of the frequent repetition of his name, in one relation or another, in the records of the period when he flourished, his fame, as a diplomatist and poet, has descended to an age which recollects little of the circumstances of his negotiations, and not much more, in reality, of his muse…. In the unique social epoch of Queen Anne’s reign, he occupies no place apart, no individual position among the many luminaries with whom he familiarly consorted. Scarcely an idea has been handed down to us of his demeanour and general appearance. He did, said, and wrote many things which are remembered; he himself is not. A nation did not mourn for him as for Cowley; and the grief of his other old friends was as well under control as Atterbury’s, who was content to be kept away from his funeral by a cold. He had to remind posterity by a bequest for a sumptuous monument in the Abbey who he was, and what he had been.

  Who was this fair rival of Venus, Prior’s Chloe? Spence in his anecdotes asserts that she was a woman of the lowest class. Others say she was ideal. “I know the contrary,” says John Wesley—an unexceptionable witness. “I have heard my eldest brother say her name was Miss Taylor; that he knew her well, and that she once came to him in Dean’s Yard, Westminster, purposely to ask his advice. She told him. ‘Sir, I know not what to do. Mr. Prior makes large professions of his love, but he never offers me marriage.’ My brother advised her to bring the matter to a point at once. She went directly to Mr. Prior and asked him plainly, ‘Do you intend to marry me or no?’ He said many soft and pretty things, on which she said, ‘Sir, in refusing to answer you do answer. I will see you no more.’” And she did see him no more to the day of his death. But afterwards she spent many hours standing and weeping at his tomb in Westminster Abbey. There let her stand, ye inquisitive critics, the true Chloe as we would fain picture her.

Solomon

  Mr. Prior, by the suffrage of all men of taste, holds the first rank in poetry, for the delicacy of his numbers, the wittiness of his turns, the acuteness of his remarks, and, in one performance, for the amazing force of his sentiments. The stile of our author is likewise so pure, that our language knows no higher authority, and there is an air of original in his minutest performances. It would be superfluous to give any detail of his poems, they are in the hands of all who love poetry, and have been as often admired, as read. The performance however, for which he is most distinguished, is his “Solomon;” a Poem in three Books, the first on Knowledge, the second on Pleasure, and the third on Power. We know few poems to which this is second, and it justly established his reputation as one of the best writers of his age.

  “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…. 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.

  The poem has distinct merits; it is perhaps more “correct,” in Walsh’s sense, than any other in the language; but it cannot be read. This was the case in Prior’s own day, and he fretted against the neglect of his masterpiece.

  If readers like John Wesley and Cowper thought highly of “Solomon,” it must be concluded that what they admired was rather the wise king’s wisdom than Prior’s rendering of it. Johnson himself admits that it is wearisome, and Johnson, whose “lax talking” and perverse criticism have done Prior so much wrong, may, upon this point of wearisomeness, be admitted to speak with some authority.

  Is in heroic couplets of a rather Drydenian than Popian cast, with frequent Alexandrines. Here too the poem is much better worth reading than is usually thought; but the author’s inability to be frankly serious again shows itself. His treatment of Vanity has neither the bitter quintessence of Swift, nor the solemn and sometimes really tragic declamation of Young, nor that intense conviction and ethical majesty which make Johnson’s “Vanity of Human Wishes” almost a great poem, and beyond all question a great piece of literature.

Alma, 1718

  “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 suggested to Johnson the thought that the “Alma” was written in imitation of “Hudibras,” I cannot conceive. In former years they were both favourites of mine, and I often read them; but never saw in them the least resemblance to each other; nor do I now, except that they are composed in verse of the same measure.

  It is not to be read for its argument, or for that meaning which Goldsmith failed to grasp, but for its delightfully-wayward digressions, its humour and its good-humour, its profusion of epigram and happy illustration. Butler, though Cowper doubted it, is plainly Prior’s model, the difference being in the men and not in the measure. Indeed, the fact is evident from the express reference to Butler in the opening lines of Canto ii.

Henry and Emma

  I was so much charmed at fourteen with the dialogue of “Henry and Emma,” I can say it by heart to this day…. This senseless tale is, however, so well varnished with melody of words and pomp of sentiment, I am convinced it has hurt more girls than ever were injured by the worst poems extant.

  A dull and tedious dialogue, which excites neither esteem for the man, nor tenderness for the woman.

  In this effort Prior elaborated and spoilt the fine ballad of the “Nut-Brown Maid.” Assuredly “Emma and the Nut-Brown Maid” are not “one,” as Prior said.

General

	Let Prior’s Muse with soft’ning accents move,
	Soft as the strains of constant Emma’s love:
	Or let his fancy choose some jovial theme,
	As when he told Hans Carvel’s jealous dream;
	Prior th’ admiring reader entertains,
	With Chaucer’s humour, and with Spencer’s strains.

	While he of pleasure, power and wisdom sang,
	My heart lap high, my lugs wi’ pleasure rang:
	These to repeat braid spoken I wad spill,
	Altho’ I should employ my utmost skill.
	He towr’d aboon: but ah! what tongue can tell
	How high he flew? how much lamented fell?

  Lord Bathurst used to call Prior his verseman, and Lewis his proseman.—Prior, indeed, was nothing out of verse: and was less fit for business than even Addison, though he piqued himself much upon his talents for it.—What a simple thing was it to say upon his tombstone, that he was writing a history of his own times!—He could not write in a style fit for history; and, I dare say, he never had set down a word toward any such thing.

	That Matthew’s numbers ran with ease
	Each man of common-sense agrees;…
	“Matthew,” says Fame, “with endless pains
	Smoothed and refined the meanest strains,
	Nor suffered one ill-chosen rhyme
	To escape him at the idlest time;
	And thus o’er all a lustre cast,
	That while the language lives shall last.”

  Prior, lively, familiar, and amusing.

  This Bagatelle, [“Hans Cravel”] for which, by-the-by, Mr. Prior has got his greatest reputation, was a tale told in all the old Italian collections of jests; and borrowed from thence by Fontaine. It had been translated once or twice before into English, yet was never regarded till it fell into the hands of Mr. Prior. A strong instance how much every thing is improved in the hands of a man of genius.

  What he has valuable he owes to his diligence and his judgement. 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 or 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…. 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…. His numbers are such as mere diligence may attain; they seldom offend the ear, and seldom sooth it; they commonly want airiness, lightness, and facility: what is smooth, is not soft. His verses always roll, but they seldom flow.

  The best of what we copied from the Continental poets, on this desertion of our own great originals, is copied in the lighter pieces of Prior. That tone of polite raillery,—that airy, rapid, picturesque narrative, mixed up of wit and naïveté,—that style, in short, of good conversation, concentrated into flowing and polished verses,—was not within the vein of our native poets, and probably never would have been known among us if we had been left to our own resources. It is lamentable that this, which alone was worth borrowing, is the only thing which has not been retained. The tales and little apologues of Prior are still the only examples of this style in our language.

  To us the poet Prior is better known than the placeman Prior; yet in his own day the reverse often occurred. Prior was a State Proteus…. The Solomon of Bards.

  Prior’s writings evince less disposition to literary jealousy than those of any author of the age.

  Lord L[ansdowne] asked me what was the poem of Prior’s I had once mentioned to him as very pretty; he had been often trying to recollect it. It was “Dear Chloe, how blubbered,” &c., &c. We took it down and read it. Nothing can be more gracefully light and gallant than this little poem. I mentioned Lowth’s objections to the last two lines as ungrammatical, correctness requiring “than she” and “than I;” but it is far prettier as it is.

  Prior has left no single work equal to Gay’s “Fables,” or the “Beggars’ Opera.” But in his lyrical and fugitive pieces he has shown even more genius, more playfulness, more mischievous gaiety. No one has exceeded him in the laughing grace with which he glances at a subject that will not bear examining, with which he gently hints at what cannot be directly insisted on, with which he half conceals, and half draws aside, the veil from some of the Muse’s nicest mysteries. His Muse is, in fact, a giddy wanton flirt, who spends her time in playing at snap-dragon and blind-man’s buff, who tells what she should not, and knows more than she tells. She laughs at the tricks she shows us, and blushes, or would be thought to do so, at what she keeps concealed…. Some of Prior’s bon-mots are the best that are recorded. His serious poetry, as his “Solomon,” is as heavy as his familiar style was light and agreeable. His moral Muse is a Magdalen, and should not have obtruded herself on public view.

  Prior was one of the last of the race of poets who relied for ornament on scholastic allusion and pagan machinery; but he used them like Swift, more in jest than in earnest, and with good effect. In his “Alma” he contrives even to clothe metaphysics in the gay and colloquial pleasantry, which is the characteristic charm of his manner.

  I believe that one chief reason for his (John Wesley’s) high estimation of Prior among English poets was that he gives so many vivid sketches of man’s wretchedness, in spite of all possible contrivances to enjoy life.

  With the exception of his “Edwin and Emma,” founded on the old ballad of the “Nut Brown Maid:” of which it were difficult to say, whether the original or the copy be the more remarkable for its insipidity, Prior seems to be well nigh forgotten; but he was a scholar, and a man of taste, and an “influential personage” in his day.

  A poet now-a-days too much neglected.

  Had he stated facility to be his aim, [“Ode on the Battle of Ramillies”] he had shown more honesty. He has escaped the difficulties of Spenser’s stanza, but at the same time has sacrificed all its science and not a little of its beauty.

  Johnson speaks slightingly of his lyrics; but, with due deference to the great Samuel, Prior’s seem to me amongst the easiest, the richest, the most charmingly humorous of English lyrical poems. Horace is always in his mind, and his song and his philosophy, his good sense, his happy easy turns and melody, his loves, and his epicureanism, bear a great resemblance to that most delightful and accomplished master. In reading his works, one is struck with their modern air, as well as by their happy similarity to the songs of the charming owner of the Sabine farm.

  Perhaps no one of the minor wits and poets of the time has continued to enjoy higher or more general favor with posterity. Much that he wrote, indeed, is now forgotten; but some of the best of his comic tales in verse will live as long as the language, which contains nothing that surpasses them in the union of ease and fluency with sprightliness and point, and in all that makes up the spirit of humorous and graceful narrative. They are our happiest examples of a style that has been cultivated with more frequent success by French writers than by our own. In one poem, his “Alma, or The Progress of the Mind,” extending to three cantos, he has even applied this light and airy manner of treatment with remarkable felicity to some of the most curious questions in mental philosophy. In another still longer work, again, entitled “Solomon on the Vanity of the World, in three Books,” leaving his characteristic archness and pleasantry, he emulates not unsuccessfully the dignity of Pope, not without some traces of natural eloquence and picturesqueness of expression which are all his own.

  His style was like his manners. When he tried to imitate La Fontaine’s “Hans Carvel,” he made it dull, and lengthened it; he could not be piquant, but he was biting; his obscenities have a cynical crudity; his raillery is a satire; and in one of his poems, “To a Young Gentleman in Love,” the lash becomes a knocking-down blow. On the other hand he was not a common roysterer. Of his two principal poems, one on “Solomon” paraphrases and treats of the remark of Ecclesiastes, “All is vanity.” From this picture you see forthwith that you are in a biblical land: such an idea would not then have occurred to a friend of the Regent of France, the Duke of Orleans. Solomon relates how he in vain “proposed his doubts to the lettered Rabbins,” how he has been equally unfortunate in the hopes and desires of love, the possession of power, and ends by trusting to an “omniscient Master, omnipresent King.” Here we have English gloom and English conclusions. Moreover, under the rhetorical and uniform composition of his verses, we perceive warmth and passion, rich paintings, a sort of magnificence, and the profusion of a surcharged imagination.

  In the strangely opposed characteristics of his intellectual and moral nature, in his brightness of wit and grace of expression, his insincerity, impurity, unspirituality, callousness, and bad taste, as well as in his geniality and esprit de corps, Prior seems to furnish a very truthful reflection of the age which produced him.

  As a writer his longer poems have not many claims to a lasting remembrance; but his shorter pieces justly deserve all the fame they have acquired. They come barely short of perfection; Prior strives hard after obtaining a classic grace and just misses it…. Mat. Prior was held in high esteem by the most competent of his contemporaries, with whom he lived on excellent terms. But the judgment upon him must be that he faithfully represented in himself the follies of his time. His verse is flexible, sparkling, and flowing; at times, but very seldom, it merits higher praise; yet there was no one in his own day who wrote such verse so well. His views of woman, society, life, and pleasure were those almost of the lowest stratum, though his power over his art was so great that he could frequently counterfeit sentiments of a higher order.

  As a writer of what are called, not altogether happily, vers de société, Prior takes high rank. He has all the grace and lightness of touch, all the ease and ingenuity of Horace, though he wants that deeper and more serious tone which sometimes tempers the gaiety of the Latin poet. He was the first in the field which Praed and Dobson and Locker have since so successfully cultivated; a field in which we trace the influence not only of Latin but of French predecessors. But besides those qualities which he had in common with other poets, he had a charm of his own which is rather to be felt than described.

  Prior is probably the greatest of all who dally with the light lyre which thrills to the wings of fleeting Loves—the greatest English writer of vers de société; the most gay, frank, good-humoured, tuneful and engaging.

  Almost all that is good in Moore may be found in Prior, and much besides, but Prior had one great accidental advantage over Moore. To write good society verse the social tone of the time must be good and artificial and complex, for the verse reflects the talk of the town or it is nothing worth. Society was never so much all this as in Queen Anne’s day, when Prior mainly wrote, and never, for at least two hundred years previously, so bad or so brutal as in the day of King George IV., when Moore wrote his love songs.

  What he considered to be his most successful efforts are at present, as it often happens, the least valued. His three books on “Solomon on the Vanity of the World,” of which he himself ruefully admitted in “The Conversation,”

	Indeed, poor Solomon in rhyme
	Was much too grave to be sublime,

although they once found admirers in John Wesley and Cowper, find few readers to-day; and his paraphrase of the fine old ballad of “The Nut-Brown Maid” as “Henry and Emma” shares their fate. His “Alma,” which he regarded as a “loose and hasty scribble,” is, on the contrary, still a favourite with the admirers of Butler, whose “Hudibras” is its avowed model—a model which it perhaps excels in facility of rhyme and ease of versification. In Prior’s imitations of the “Conte” of La Fontaine this metrical skill is maintained, and he also shows consummate art in the telling of a story in verse. Unhappily, in spite of Johnson’s extraordinary dictum that “Prior is a lady’s book” his themes are not equally commendable. But he is one of the neatest of English epigrammatists, and in occasional pieces and familiar verse has no rival in English.

  Although Prior was neither a very great nor perhaps, in some respects, a very wise man, he had, at all events, what much greater men have often lacked, an excellent knowledge of books, the reading of which failed to make him a dull man.