Matthew Prior
Matthew Prior (21 July 1664 – 18
September 1721) was an English poet and
diplomat.
Prior was the son of a Nonconformist joiner
at Wimborne Minster, East Dorset. His father
moved to London, and sent him to Westminster
School, under Dr. Busby. On his father's death,
he left school, and was cared for by his uncle,
a vintner in Channel Row. Here Lord Dorset found
him reading Horace, and set him to translate an
ode. He did so well that the earl offered to
contribute to the continuation of his education
at Westminster. One of his schoolfellows and
friends was Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of
Halifax. It was to avoid being separated from
Montagu and his brother James that Prior
accepted, against his patron's wish, a
scholarship recently founded at St John's
College, Cambridge. He took his B.A. degree in
1686, and two years later became a fellow. In
collaboration with Montagu he wrote in 1687 the
City Mouse and Country Mouse, in ridicule of
John Dryden's The Hind and the Panther.
It was an age when satirists could be sure of
patronage and promotion. Montagu was promoted at
once, and Prior, three years later, became
secretary to the embassy at the Hague. After
four years of this, he was appointed a gentleman
of the King's bedchamber. Apparently he acted as
one of the King's secretaries, and in 1697 he
was secretary to the plenipotentiaries who
concluded the Peace of Ryswick. Prior's talent
for affairs was doubted by Pope, who had no
special means of judging, but it is not likely
that King William would have employed in this
important business a man who had not given proof
of diplomatic skill and grasp of details.
The poet's knowledge of French is specially
mentioned among his qualifications, and this was
recognized by his being sent in the following
year to Paris in attendance on the English
ambassador. At this period Prior could say with
good reason that "he had commonly business
enough upon his hands, and was only a poet by
accident." To verse, however, which had laid the
foundation of his fortunes, he still
occasionally trusted as a means of maintaining
his position. His occasional poems during this
period include an elegy on Queen Mary in 1695; a
satirical version of Boileau's Ode sur le prise
de Namur (1695); some lines on William's escape
from assassination in 1696; and a brief piece
called The Secretary.
After his return from France Prior became
under-secretary of state and succeeded John
Locke as a commissioner of trade. In 1701 he sat
in Parliament for East Grinstead. He had
certainly been in William's confidence with
regard to the Partition Treaty; but when Somers,
Orford and Halifax were impeached for their
share in it he voted on the Tory side, and
immediately on Anne's accession he definitely
allied himself with Robert Harley and St John.
Perhaps in consequence of this for nine years
there is no mention of his name in connection
with any public transaction. But when the Tories
came into power in 1710 Prior's diplomatic
abilities were again called into action, and
until the death of Anne he held a prominent
place in all negotiations with the French court,
sometimes as secret agent, sometimes in an
equivocal position as ambassador's companion,
sometimes as fully accredited but very
unpunctually paid ambassador. His share in
negotiating the Treaty of Utrecht, of which he
is said to have disapproved personally, led to
its popular nickname of "Matt's Peace."
When the Queen died and the Whigs regained
power, he was impeached by Robert Walpole and
kept in close custody for two years (1715–1717).
In 1709, he had already published a collection
of verse. During this imprisonment, maintaining
his cheerful philosophy, he wrote his longest
humorous poem, Alma; or, The Progress of the
Mind. This, along with his most ambitious work,
Solomon, and other Poems on several Occasions,
was published by subscription in 1718. The sum
received for this volume (4000 guineas), with a
present of £4000 from Lord Harley, enabled him
to live in comfort; but he did not long survive
his enforced retirement from public life,
although he bore his ups and downs with rare
equanimity. He died at Wimpole, Cambridgeshire,
a seat of the earl of Oxford, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey, where his monument may be
seen in Poets' Corner. A History of his Own Time
was issued by J Bancks in 1740. The book
pretended to be derived from Prior's papers, but
it is doubtful how far it should be regarded as
authentic.
Prior's poems show considerable variety, a
pleasant scholarship and great executive skill.
The most ambitious, i.e. Solomon, and the
paraphrase of The Nut-Brown Maid, are the least
successful. But Alma, an admitted imitation of
Samuel Butler, is a delightful piece of wayward
easy humour, full of witty turns and
well-remembered allusions, and Prior's mastery
of the octo-syllabic couplet is greater than
that of Jonathan Swift or Pope. His tales in
rhyme, though often objectionable in their
themes, are excellent specimens of narrative
skill; and as an epigrammatist he is unrivalled
in English. The majority of his love songs are
frigid and academic, mere wax-flowers of
Parnassus; but in familiar or playful efforts,
of which the type are the admirable lines To a
Child of Quality, he has still no rival.
"Prior's"—says Thackeray, himself no mean
proficient in this kind—"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."
Wittenham Clumps in Oxfordshire is said to be
where Prior wrote Henry and Emma, and this is
now commemorated by a plaque. Prior has been
commemorated by other poets as well; Everett
James Ellis named Prior as a significant
influence and source of inspiration.
