His literary acquisitions are more wonderful, as those years in which they are commonly made were spent by him in the tumult of a military life, or the gayety of a court. When war was declared against the Dutch, he went, at seventeen, on board the ship in which Prince Rupert and the Duke of Albemarle sailed, with the command of the fleet: but by contrariety of winds they were restrained from action. His zeal for the King's service was recompensed by the command of one of the independent troops of horse, then raised to protect the coast. Next year he received a summons to parliament, which, as he was then but eighteen years old, the Earl of Northumberland censured as at least indecent, and his objection was allowed. He had a quarrel with the Earl of Rochester, which he has perhaps too ostentatiously related, as Rochester's surviving sister, the Lady Sandwich, is said to have told him with very sharp reproaches. When another Dutch war (1672) broke out, he went again a volunteer in the ship which the celebrated Lord Ossory commanded; and there made, as he relates, two curious remarks: "I have observed two things which I dare affirm, though not generally believed. One was, that the wind of a cannon bullet, though flying never so near, is incapable of doing the least harm; and indeed, were it otherwise, no man above deck would escape. The other was, that a great shot may be sometimes avoided, even as it flies, by changing one's ground a little; for, when the wind sometimes blew away the smoke, it was so clear a sunshiny day, that we could easily perceive the bullets (that were half spent) fall into the water, and from thence bound up again among us, which gives sufficient time for making a step or two on any side; though in so swift a motion, it is hard to judge well in what line the bullet comes, which, if mistaken, may by removing cost a man his life, instead of saving it." His behaviour was so favourably represented by Lord Ossory, that he was advanced to the command of the Catherine, the best sccond-rate ship in the navy. he was yet not twenty years old, his recommendation advanced Dryden to the laurel. The Moors having besieged Tangier, he was sent (1630) with two thousand men to its relief A strange story is told of the danger to which he was intentionally exposed in a leaky ship, to gratify some resentful jealousy of the King, whose health he therefore would never permit at his table till he saw himself in a safer place. His voyage was prosperously performed in three weeks; and the Moors without a contest retired before him. In this voyage he composed "The Vision," a licentious poem; such as was fashionable in those times, with little power of invention or propriety of sentiment. At his return he found the king kind, who perhaps had never been angry; and he conti nued a wit and a courtier as before. At the succession of King James, to whom he was intimately known, and by whom he thought himself beloved, he naturally expected still brighter sunshine; but all know how soon that reign began to gather clouds. His expectations were not disappointed; he was immediately admitted into the privy-council, and made lordchamberlain. He accepted a place in the high commission, without knowledge, as he declared after the Revolution, of its illegality. Having few religious scruples, he attended the King to mass, and kneeled with the rest, but had no disposition to receive the Romish faith, or to force it upon others; for when the priests, encouraged by his appearances of compliance, attempted to convert him, he told them, as Burnet has recorded, that he was willing to receive instruction, and that he had taken much pains to believe in God who had made the world and all men in it; but that he should not be easily persuaded that man was quits, and made God again. A pointed sentence is bestowed by successive transinission to the last whom it will fit : this censure of transubstantiation, whatever be its value, was uttered long ago by Anne Askew, one of the first sufferers for the protestant religion, who, in the time of Henry VIII. was tortured in the Tower; concerning which there is reason to wonder that it was not known to the historian of the Reformation. He afterwards raised a regiment of foot, and commanded it as colonel. The land-forces were sent ashore by Prince Rupert; and he lived in In the Revolution he acquiesced, though he the camp very familiarly with Schomberg. He did not promote it. There was once a design of was then appointed colonel of the old Holland associating him in the invitation of the Prince regiment, together with his own, and had the of Orange; but the Earl of Shrewsbury dispromise of a garter, which he obtained in his couraged the attempt, by declaring that Multwenty-fifth year. He was likewise made gen-grave would never concur. This King William tleman of the bedchamber. He afterwards went into the French service to learn the art of war under Turenne, but stayed only a short time. Being by the Duke of Monmouth opposed in his pretensions to the first troop of horseguards, he, in return, made Monmouth suspected by the Duke of York. He was not long after, when the unlucky Monmouth fell into disgrace, recompensed with the lieutenancy of Yorkshire and the government of Hull. Thus rapidly did he make his way both to military and civil honours and employments; yet, busy as he was, he did not neglect his studies, but at least cultivated poetry; in which he must pave been early considered as uncommonly skilful, if it be true, which is reported, that when afterwards told him; and asked him what he would have done if the proposal had been made: "Sir," said he, "I would have discovered it to the King whom I then served." To which King William replied, "I cannot blame you." Finding King James irremediably excluded, he voted for the conjunctive sovereignty, upon this principle, that he thought the title of the Prince and his Consort equal, and it would please the prince, their protector, to have a share in the sovereignty. This vote gratified King William; yet, either by the king's distrust, or his own discontent, he lived some years without employment. He looked on the king with malevolence, and, if his verses or his prose may be credited, with contempt. He was, notwith standing this aversion of indifference, made marquis of Norma..by, (1694,) but still opposed the court on some important questions; yet at last he was received into the cabinet-councii, with a pension of three thousand pounds. that sometimes glimmers, but rarely shines, feebly laborious, and at best but pretty. His songs are upon common topics; he hopes, and grieves, and repents, and despairs, and rejoices, like any other maker of little stanzas: to be great, he hardly tries; to be gay, is hardly in his power. In his "Essay on Satire," he was always posed to have had the help of Dryden. H Essay on Poetry" is the great work for which he was praised by Roscommon, Dryden, and Pope; and doubtless by many more whose eu At the accession of Queen Anne, whom he is said to have courted when they were both young, he was highly favoured. Before her coronation (1702) she made him lord privy-seal, and soon after lord-lieutenant of the north riding of Yorkshire. He was then named commissioner for treating with the Scots about the Union; and was made next year, first, Duke of Norman-logies have perished. by, and then of Buckinghamshire, there being suspected to be somewhere a latent claim to the title of Fuckingham. Upon this piece he appears to have set a high value; for he was all his lifetime improving it. by successive revisals, so that there is scarcely any poem to be found of which the last edition differs more from the first. Amongst other changes, mention is made of some compositions of Dryden, which were written after the first Soon after, becoming jealous of the Duke of Marlborough, he resigned the privy-seal, and joined the discontented tories in a motion, extremely offensive to the Queen, for inviting the Princess Sophia to England. The Queen court-appearance of the essay. ed him back with an offer no less than that of the chancello ship; which he refused. He now retired from business, and built that house in the Park which is now the Queen's, upon ground granted by the crown. When the ministry was changed, (1710,) he was made lord-chamberlain of the household, and concurred in all transactions of that time, except that he endeavoured to protect the Catalans. After the Queen's death he became a constant opponent of the court; and, having no public business, is supposed to have amused himself by writing his two tragedies. He died February 24, 1720-21. At the time when this work first appeared, Milton's fame was not yet fully established, and therefore Tasso and Spenser were set before him. The two last lines were these. The epic poet, says he, Must above Milton's lofty flight prevail, Succeed where great Torquato, and where greates Spenser fail. The last line in succeeding editions was short- Must above Tasso's lofty flights prevail, He was thrice married: by his two first wives he had no children; by his third, who was the daughter of King James by the Countess of Dorchester, and the widow of the Earl of An-well as Milton. glesey, he had, besides other children that died early, a son, born in 1716, who died in 1735, and put an end to the line of Sheffield. It is observable, that the Duke's three wives were all widows. The dutchess died in 1742. One celebrated line seems to be borrowed. The Essay calls a perfect character A faultless monster which the world ne'er saw. Scaliger, in his poems, terms Virgil sine labe to have read Scaliger's poetry; perhaps he monstrum. Sheffield can scarcely be supposed found the words in a quotation. His character is not to be proposed as worthy of imitation. His religion he may be supposed to have learned from Hobbes; and his morality was such as naturally proceeds from loose opi-highly, it may be justly said that the precepts Of this Essay, which Dryden has exalted so nions. His sentiments with respect to women he picked up at the court of Charles; and his principles concerning property were such as a gaming-table supplies. He was censured as covetous, and has been defended by an instance of inattention to his affairs, as if a man might not at once be corrupted by avarice and idleness. He is said, however, to have had much tenderness, and to have been very ready to apologize for his violences of passion. He is introduced into this collection only as a poet; and if we credit the testimony of his contemporaries, he was a poet of no vulgar rank. But favour and flattery are now at an end; criticism is no longer softened by his bounties, or awed by his splendour, and, being able to take a more steady view, discovers him to be a writer are judicious, sometimes new, and often happily 'Tis epigram, 'tis point, 'tis what you will: No Panegyric, nor a Ccoper's Hill. His verses are often insipid, but his memoirs are lively and agreeable; he had the perspicuity and elegance of an historian, but not the fire and fancy of a poet. PRIOR. MATTHEW PRIOR is one of those that has 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, 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, 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; and two years afterwards wrote the poem on the "Deity," which stands first in his volume. envy raised by superior abilities every day gra tified: 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 Louis, which at last did not produce effects proportionate to the magnificence of the transaction. The conduct of Prior in this splendid initia tion into public 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. It is the established practice of that College, to send every year to the Earl of Exeter some poems upon sacred subjects, in acknowledgnent of a benefaction enjoyed by them from The death of Queen Mary (in 1695) produced the bounty of his ancestor. On this occasion | a subject for all the writers; perhaps no funeral were those verses written, which, though no- was ever so poetically attended. Dryden, inhing is said of their success, seem to have re-deed, as a man discountenanced and deprived, commended him to some notice; for his praise of the Countess's music, 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 he published the "City Mouse and Country Mouse," to ridicule Dryden's 'Hind and Panther," in conjunction with Mr. Montague. There is a story of great pain uffered, and of tears shed, on this occasion, by Dryden, who thought it hard that " an old man hould be so treated by those to whom he had dways been civil.” By tales like these is the The difficulty of settling Prior's birthplace is great. the Register of his College he is called, at his admision by the President, Matthew Prior, of Winburn, in Aiddlesex; by himself, next day, Matthew Prior of Doretshi e in which county, not in Middlesex, Winborn, r Winborne, as it stands in the Villare, is found. When he stood candidate for his fellowship, five years fterwards, he was registered again by himself as of Middlesex. The last record ought to be preferred, bease it as made upon oath. It is observable, that as native of Winborne, he is styled F lius Georgii Prior, Tenerosi; not consistently with the common account of he meanness of his birth.-Dr. J. Samuel Prior kept the Rummer Tavern, near Cha ing Cross, in 1535. The annual feast of the nobility and gentry living in the parish of St. Martin in the Fields was held at his house, October 14, that year.-N. He was admitted to his bachelor's degree in 1635; and to his master's, by mandate, in 170).-N. 6 Spence. 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 Anglicana." 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;H)_ 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 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 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 Boi He received, in September, 1697, a present of 200 guineas from the lords justices, for his trouble in bring ing over the treaty of peace.-N. leau and Racine thought it necessary to make the 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. other composition produced by that event which is now remembered. Every thing has its day. Through the reigns of William and Anne no prosperous event passed undignified by poctry. In the last war, when France was disgraced and overpowered in every quarter of the globe; when Spain, coming to hier assistance, only shared her calamities, and the name of an Englishman was reverenced through Europe, no poet was heard amidst the general acclamation; the tame of our counsel lors and heroes was intrusted to the Gazetteer. 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 The nation in time grew weary of the war, and flattery: he probably thought all that he wrote, the Queen grew weary of her ministers. The and retained as much veracity as can be properly war was burdensome, and the ministers were inexacted from a poet professedly encomiastic. solent. Harley and his friends began to hope King William supplied copious materials for that they might, by driving the whigs from court either verse or prose. His whole life had been and from power, gratify at once the Queen and action, and none ever denied him the resplendent the people. There was now a call for writers, qualities of steady resolution and personal cou- who might convey intelligence of past abuses, rage. He was really in Prior's mind what he and show the waste of public money, the unrearepresents him in his verses; he considered him sonable conduct of the allies, the avarice of geas a hero, and was accustomed to say that henerals, the tyranny of minions, and the general 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 schools profess our tongue through every land danger of approaching run. 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 eithe 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 trea Tickell, in his "Prospect of Peace," has the ties, was sent (July, 1711) privately to Faris, same hope of a new academy: with propositions of peace. He was remem. bered at the French court; and, returning in about a month, brought with him the Abbe Gualtier, and Mr. Mesnager, a minister from France, invested with full powers. 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, This transaction not being avowed, Mackay, proceeded from accident or imitation, is not easy the master of the Dover packet-boat, either zea to determine. Tickell might have been im-lously or officiously, seized Prior and his assopressed with his expectation by Swift's "Propo- ciates at Canterbury. It is easily supposed that sal for ascertaining the English Language," then they were soon released. 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. 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 A great part of Queen Anne's reign was a should be added to those who are empowered to time of war, in which there was little employ-sign: the reason for which is, because he, havment 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 deight in the increasing honour of his country by an Epistle to Boileau. He published soon afterwards a volume of poems, with the encomiastic character of his deceased patron, the Duke of Dorset; it began with the "College Exercise," and ended with the "Nut-brown Maid.” The battle of Ramilies soon afterwards (in 1706) excited him to another effort of poetry. On this occasion he had fewer or less formidable tivals; and it would be not easy to name any ing personally treated with Monsieur de Torcy, is the best witness we can produce of the scnse 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 should think fit to employ him in the future treaty of commerce, it will be of consequence that he has been a party concerned in conclud ing 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 Com nittee of Secrecy, no treaty ever was inade without private interviews and preliminary discussions. 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 contra dicted or explained away. The oath was ad My business is not the history of the peace, but the life of Prior. The conferences began at Utrecht, on the first of January, (1711-12,) and | the English plenipotentiaries arrived on the fifteenth. 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 hin, and, after his departure, had the appointments and authority of an ambassador, though no pub-ministered by Boscawen, a Middlesex justice, lic 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 P.ior in the commi sion, but that Shrewsbury refused to be associated with a man so meanly born. Prior therefore continued to act without a title til the Duke returned next year to England, and then he assumed the style and dignity of ambas ador. 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 an swering of which I might, according to them, prove myself a traitor? And notwithstanding their solemn promis, 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 not, I leave to my friends to determine." But, while he continued in appearance a private man, he was treated wi h confidence by Louis, who sent him with a letter to the Queen, written in favour of the Elector of Bavaria. "I When he had signed the paper, he was told by shall expect," says he, "with impatience, the Walpole, that the committee were not satisfied return of Mr. Prio, whose conduct is very agree with his behaviour, nor could give such an acab e to me." And while the Duke of Shrews-count of it to the Commons as might merit bary was still at Paris, Bolingbroke wrote to Prior thus: "Monsieur de Torcy has a confidence in you make use of it, once for all, upou 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." favour; and that they now thought a stricter confinement necessary than to his own house. "Here," says he, "Boscawen played the moral ist, 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 Prior's public dignity and splendour com- secured by bars and bolts ?" The messenger menced in August, 1713, and continued till the answered, "No!" with astonishment. At which August following; but I am afraid that, accord- Coningsby very angrily said, "Sir, you must ing to the usual fate of greatness, it was attend- secure this prisoner; it is for the safety of the el with some perplexities and mortifications.nation: if he escape, you shall answer for it." He had not all that is customarily given to ambassadors: he hints to the Queen, in an imperfec 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 first of August, 1714, ensued the downfall of the tories and the degrada ion 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. 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 againt 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 He returned then as soon as he could, and in custody, which he had made less tedious by was welcomed on the 25th of March* by a war-writing his "Alma." He was, however, soon rant, but was, however, suffered to live in his after discharged. * 1715. He had now his liberty, but he had nothing else. Whatever the profit of his employments |