5 10 15 20 25 LECTURE THE FOURTH PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. Matthew Prior was one of those famous and lucky wits of the auspicious reign of Queen Anne, whose name it behooves us not to pass over. Mat was a world-philosopher of no small genius, good-nature, and acumen. He loved, he drank, he sang. He describes himself, in one of his lyrics," in a little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night; on his left hand his Horace, and a friend on his right," going out of town from The Hague to pass that evening and the ensuing Sunday boozing at a Spielhaus with his companions, perhaps bobbing for perch in a Dutch canal, and noting down, in a strain and with a grace not unworthy of his Epicurean master, the charms of his idleness, his retreat, and his Batavian Chloe. A vintner's son in Whitehall, and a distinguished pupil of Busby of the Rod, Prior attracted some notice by writing verses at Saint John's College, Cambridge, and coming up to town aided Montague in an attack on the noble old English lion John Dryden, in ridicule of whose work, "The Hind and the Panther," he brought out that remarkable and famous burlesque, "The Town and Country Mouse." Are not you all acquainted with it? Have you not all got it by heart? What! have you never heard of it? See what fame is made of! The wonderful part of the satire was, that, as a natural consequence of "The Town and Country Mouse," Matthew 128 Б Prior was made Secretary of Embassy at The Hague. I believe it is dancing rather than singing which distinguishes the young English diplomatists of the present day, and have seen them in various parts perform that part of their duty very finely. In Prior's time it appears a different accomplishment led to preferment. Could you write a copy of Alcaics? That was the question. Could you turn out a neat epigram or two? Could you compose "The Town and Country Mouse"? It 10 is manifest that by the possession of this faculty the most difficult treaties, the laws of foreign nations, and the interests of our own are easily understood. Prior rose in the diplomatic service, and said good things that proved his sense and his spirit. When the apartments at Versailles were shown to him, with the victories of Louis XIV. painted on the walls, and Prior was asked whether the palace of the King of England had any such decorations, The monuments of my master's actions," Mat said, of William, whom he cordially revered, are to be seen everywhere except in his own house." Bravo, Mat! Prior rose to be full ambassador at Paris, where he somehow was cheated out of his ambassadorial plate; and in a heroic poem, addressed by him to her late lamented Majesty, Queen Anne, Mat makes some magnificent allusions to these dishes and spoons, of which Fate had deprived him. All that he wants, he says, is her Majesty's picture; without that, he cannot be happy. 15 20 25 30 "Thee, gracious Anne, thee present I adore: Thee, Queen of Peace, if Time and Fate have power In words sublimer and a nobler strain 5 10 15 20 25 30 May future bards the mighty theme rehearse. With that word the poem stops abruptly. The votive tablet is suspended forever, like Mahomet's coffin. News came that the Queen was dead. Stator Jove, and Phoebus, king of verse, were left there, hovering to this day over the votive tablet. The picture was never got, any more than the spoons and dishes; the inspiration ceased, the verses were not wanted - the ambassador was not wanted. Poor Mat was recalled from his embassy, suffered disgrace along with his patrons, lived under a sort of cloud ever after, and disappeared in Essex. When deprived of all his pensions and emoluments, the hearty and generous Oxford pensioned him. They played for gallant stakes, the bold men of those days, and lived and gave splendidly. Johnson quotes from Spence a legend that Prior, after spending an evening with Harley, Saint John, Pope, and Swift, would go off and smoke a pipe with a couple of friends of his, a soldier and his wife, in Long Acre. Those who have not read his late Excellency's poems should be warned that they smack not a little of the conversation of his Long Acre friends. Johnson speaks slightingly of his lyrics; but with due deference to the great Samuel, Prior's seem to me among 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 delight 5 10 15 20 25 30 ful 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. In his verses addressed to Halifax, he says, writing of that endless theme to poets, the vanity of human wishes, "So whilst in fevered dreams we sink, "Our hopes like towering falcons aim To stand aloof and view the flight Would not you fancy that a poet of our own days was singing; and in the verses of Chloe weeping and reproaching him for his inconstancy, where he says, "The God of us versemen, you know, child, the Sun, How, after his journeys, he sets up his rest. If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run, So, when I am wearied with wandering all day, They were but my visits, but thou art my home! If Prior read Horace, did not Thomas Moore study Prior? Love and pleasure find singers in all days. Roses are always blowing and fading,-to-day as in that pretty time when Prior sang of them, and of Chloe lamenting their decay: "She sighed, she smiled, and to the flowers 666 Pointing, the lovely moralist said: 'See, friend, in some few fleeting hours, "Ah me! the blooming pride of May "Such as she is who died to-day, Such I, alas, may be to-morrow: The justice of thy Chloe's sorrow.' Damon's knell was rung in 1721. May his turf lie lightly on him! "Deus sit propitius huic potatori," as Walter de Mapes sang. Perhaps Samuel Johnson, who spoke slightingly of Prior's verses, enjoyed them more than he was willing to own. The old moralist had studied them as well as Mr. Thomas Moore, and defended them and showed that he remembered them, very well too, on an occasion when their morality was called in question by that noted puritan, James Boswell, Esquire, of Auchinleck. In the great society of the wits, John Gay deserved to be a favorite, and to have a good place. In his set |