I'm weary of conjectures. This must end them. The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds. What means this heaviness that hangs upon me? MATTHEW PRIOR. ever, by afterwards celebrating in verse the battles of Blenheim and Ramilies (1706). When the Whig government was at length overturned, Prior became attached to Harley's administration, and went with Bolingbroke to France in 1711, to negotiate a treaty of peace. He lived in splendour in Paris, was a favourite of the French monarch, and enjoyed all the honours of ambassador. He returned to London in 1715. Queen Anne was then dead (August 1, 1714); and the Whigs being again in office, Prior was committed to custody on a charge of high treason. The accusation against him was, that he had held clandestine conferences with the French plenipotentiary, though, as he justly replied, no treaty was ever made without private interviews and preliminaries. The Whigs were indignant at the disgraceful treaty of Utrecht; but Prior only shared in the culpability of the government. The able but profligate Bolingbroke was the master-spirit that prompted the humiliating concession to France. After two years' confinement, the poet was released without a trial. He had in the interval MATTHEW PRIOR was born at a place called written his poem of Alma; and being now left Abbot Street, one mile from Wimborne-Minster, without any other support than his fellowship of Dorsetshire, on the 21st of July 1664. He was, as St John's College, he continued his studies, and Swift told Stella, of mean birth; but fortunately a produced his Solomon, the most elaborate of his superior education was within his reach. His works. He had also recourse to the publication uncle, Samuel Prior, who kept the Rummer Tavern of a collected edition of his poems (1718), which at Charing Cross, took the charge of bringing up was sold to subscribers for two guineas each copy, his nephew, and he placed him at Westminster and which realised four thousand guineas. An School. It is said he was afterwards taken home equal sum was presented to Prior by the Earl of to assist in the business of the inn, and whilst Oxford, and thus he had laid up a provision for there, was one day seen by the Earl of Dorset old age. He was ambitious only of comfort and reading Horace. The earl generously undertook private enjoyment. These, however, he did not the care of his education; and in his eighteenth long possess; for he died on the 18th of September year, Prior was entered of St John's College, 1721, at Lord Oxford's seat at Wimpole, being at Cambridge. He distinguished himself during the time in the fifty-seventh year of his age. The his academical career, and amongst other copies Duchess of Portland, Lord Oxford's daughter, of verses, produced (1687), in conjunction with said Prior made himself beloved by every living the Honourable Charles Montagu, the City Mouse thing in the house-master, child, and servant, and Country Mouse, in ridicule of Dryden's human creature or animal. He is, however, deHind and Panther. The Earl of Dorset did not scribed as having been fond of low company, and forget the poet he had snatched from obscurity. at the time of his death, was, according to ArbuthHe invited him to London, and obtained for him not, on the point of marrying a certain Bessy Cox, an appointment as secretary to the Earl of Berk- who kept an alehouse in Long Acre. To this eley, ambassador to the Hague. In this capacity, worthless female and to his man-servant, Prior Prior obtained the approbation of King William, left his estate. Arbuthnot, writing to a friend the who made him one of the gentlemen of his bed-month after Prior's death, says: 'We are to have chamber. In 1697, he was appointed secretary a bowl of punch at Bessy Cox's. She would fain to the embassy on the treaty of Ryswick, at the have put it upon Lewis that she was his (Prior's) conclusion of which he was presented with a con- Emma: she owned Flanders Jane was his Chloe.' siderable sum of money by the lords-justices. To this doubtful Chloe some of his happiest effuNext year he was ambassador at the court of sions were devoted. The fairest and most highVersailles. Johnson relates that as the poet was born lady in the land might have envied such one day surveying the apartments at Versailles, complimentary strains as the following: being shewn the victories of Louis 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 everywhere but in his own house.' On his return to England the poet was appointed a Commissioner of Trade. In 1701, he entered the House of Commons as representative for the borough of East Grinstead, and abandoning his former friends, the Whigs, joined the Tories in impeaching Lord Somers. This came with a peculiarly bad grace from Prior, for the charge against Somers was, that he had advised the partition treaty, in which treaty the poet himself had acted as agent. He evinced his patriotism, how What I speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write, shews I court others in verse, but I love thee in prose; To Chloe was inscribed his Henry and Emma, a poem upon the model of the Nut-brown Maid; but Prior, in discarding the rude simplicity of the original, sacrificed a great portion of its charm. The works of Prior range over a variety of styles and subjects-odes, songs, epistles, epigrams, and tales. His longest poem, Solomon, is of a serious character, and was considered by its author to be his best production, in which opinion he is supported by Cowper. It is the most moral, and perhaps the most correctly written; but the tales and lighter pieces of Prior are undoubtedly his happiest efforts. In these he displays that 'charming ease' with which Cowper says he embellished all his poems, added to the lively illustration and colloquial humour of his master, Horace. No poet ever possessed in greater perfection the art of graceful and fluent versification. His narratives flow on like a clear stream, without break or fall, and interest us by their perpetual good-humour and vivacity, even when they wander into metaphysics, as in Alma, or into licentiousness, as in his tales. His expression was choice and studied, abounding in classical allusions and imageswhich were then the fashion of the day-but without any air of pedantry or constraint. Like Swift, he loved to versify the common occurrences of life, and relate his personal feelings and adventures. He had, however, no portion of the dean's bitterness or misanthropy, and employed no stronger weapons of satire than raillery and arch allusion. He sported on the surface of existence, noting its foibles, its pleasures, and eccentricities, but without the power of penetrating into its recesses, or evoking the higher passions of our nature. He was the most natural of artificial poets a seeming paradox, yet as true as the old maxim, that the perfection of art is the art of concealing it. Fierce robbers there are that infest the highway, Epitaph Extempore. Nobles and heralds, by your leave, Here lies what once was Matthew Prior, The son of Adam and of Eve; Can Stuart or Nassau claim higher ? An Epitaph. Interred beneath this marble stone, They walked and ate, good folks: What then? For which they claimed their Sunday's due, No man's defects sought they to know, Nor wished, nor cared, nor laughed, nor cried; 1 To a Child of Quality, Five Years Old, 1704, the Lords, knights, and squires, the numerous band My pen amongst the rest I took, Lest those bright eyes that cannot read Should dart their kindling fires, and look The power they have to be obeyed. Nor quality nor reputation Forbid me yet my flame to tell. For, while she makes her silkworms' beds She may receive and own my flame, For though the strictest prudes should know it, She'll pass for a most virtuous dame, And I for an unhappy poet. Then, too, alas! when she shall hear The lines some younger rival sends ; She'll give me leave to write, I fear, And we shall still continue friends. For, as our different ages move, 'Tis so ordained (would Fate but mend it!) That I shall be past making love, When she begins to comprehend it. Abra's Love for Solomon. Another nymph, amongst the many fair, And watched my eye, preventing my command. Or were remarked but with a common eye; What can thy imagery of sorrow mean? Abashed she blushed, and with disorder spoke : Her rising shame adorned the words it broke : 'If the great master will descend to hear In the king's frown and terror of his eye! "Thou Sovereign Power, whose secret will controls The inward bent and motion of our souls! Still asking where he made his flock to rest at noon; For him at night, the dear expected guest, I had with hasty joy prepared the feast; I should have lulled the lovely youth to rest, Here o'er her speech her flowing eyes prevail. Nor could my soul approve the music's tone, Written in Mezeray's History of France. Yet for the fame of all these deeds, What beggar in the Invalides, With lameness broke, with blindness smitten, Wished ever decently to die, To have been either Mezeray Or any monarch he has written? It's strange, dear author, yet it true is, That down, from Pharamond to Louis, All covet life, yet call it pain; All feel the ill, yet shun the cure. Can sense this paradox endure? Resolve me, Cambray, or Fontaine. The man in graver tragic known (Though his best part long since was done) The Thief and the Cordelier.-A Ballad. To the tune of King John and the Abbot of Canterbury. The fatal retreat of th' unfortunate brave; Derry down, down, hey derry down. There death breaks the shackles which force had put on, And the hangman completes what the judge but begun; There the 'squire of the pad, and the knight of the post, Find their pains no more balked, and their hopes no more crossed. Derry down, &c. Sir Walter Scott, about a year before his death, repeated the above when on a Border tour with Mr Lockhart. They met two beggars, old soldiers, one of whom recognised the baronet, and bade God bless him. The mendicants went on their way, and we stood breathing on the knoll. Sir Walter followed them with his eye, and, planting his stick firmly on the sod, repeated without break or hesitation Prior's verses to the historian Mezeray. That he applied them to himself was touchingly obvious.' "What frightens you thus, my good son?' says the priest; 'You murdered, are sorry, and have been confessed.' 'O father! my sorrow will scarce save my bacon; For 'twas not that I murdered, but that I was taken.' Derry down, &c. 'Pooh, prithee ne'er trouble thy head with such fancies; Rely on the aid you shall have from St Francis ; Derry down, &c. 'That I would,' quoth the father, 'and thank you to boot; But our actions, you know, with our duty must suit ; Then turning about to the hangman, he said: Ode to a Lady: She refusing to Continue a Dispute with me, and leaving me in the Argument. Spare, generous victor, spare the slave, That more than triumphs he might have In the dispute, whate'er I said, My heart was by my tongue belied; And in my looks you might have read How much I argued on your side. You, far from danger as from fear, Why, fair one, would you not rely I must at once be deaf and blind. Alas! not hoping to subdue, I only to the fight aspired; But she, howe'er of victory sure, Contemns the wreath so long delayed; And, armed with more immediate power, Calls cruel silence to her aid. Deeper to wound, she shuns the fight; She drops her arms, to gain the field: Secures her conquest by her flight; And triumphs when she seems to yield. So when the Parthian turned his steed, Theory of the Mind.-From 'Alma. I say, whatever you maintain From hence she sends out those supplies Of food and drink in several nations. As, in a watch's fine machine, From that which simply points the hour; Quare' would not swear, but Quare would say— The watch would still a watch remain : But if the horal orbit ceases, The whole stands still, or breaks to pieces, Is now no longer what it was, And you may e'en go sell the case. So, if unprejudiced you scan The goings of this clockwork, man, You find a hundred movements made But 'tis the stomach's solid stroke And you entirely change the question; REV. JAMES BRAMSTON. Two satirical poems by the Rev. JAMES BRAMSTON (circa 1694-1744), included in Dodsley's Collection, were much admired in their day. These are: The Art of Politics; in imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry, 1729; and The Man of Taste; occasioned by Pope's Epistle on that Subject, 1731. Bramston also wrote an imitation of Philips's Splendid Shilling, entitled The Crooked Sixpence. In 1708, Bramston was admitted at Westminster School; in 1713, he was elected to a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, and in 1725 he became vicar of Harting, in Sussex. His two principal poems are good imitations of the style of Young's and Pope's satires. The following is the conclusion of his Art of Politics: Parliamenteering is a sort of itch, That will too oft unwary knights bewitch. Men that have votes, and women that have none; Of market, university, and court: Thomson, write blank; but know that for that reason, Rhyme binds and beautifies the poet's lays, As London ladies owe their shape to stays. JONATHAN SWIFT. JONATHAN SWIFT, one of the most remarkable men of the age, was born in Dublin, November 30, 1667. He was of English parentage-a fact An undertaker. |