might have been, he had always spent it ; and at the age of fifty-three, was, with all his abilities, in danger of penury, having yet no solid revenue but from the fellowship of his college, which, when in his exaltation he was censured for retaining it, he said, he could live upon at last. Being however generally known and esteemed, he was encouraged to add other poems to those which he had printed, and to publish them by subscription. The expedient succeeded by the industry of many friends, who circulated the proposals, and the care of some, who, it is said, withheld the money from him lest he should squander it. The price of the volume was two guineas; the whole collection was four thousand; to which Lord Harley, the son of the Earl of Oxford, to whom he had invariably adhered, added an equal sum for the purchase of Downhall, which Prior was to enjoy during life, and Harley after his decease. He had now, what wits and philosophers have often wished, the power of passing the day in contemplative tranquillity. But it seems that busy men seldom live long in a state of quiet. It is not unlikely that his health declined. He complains of deafness; "for, says he, "I took little care of my ears while I was not sure if my head was my own." Of any occurrences in his remaining life, I have found no account. In a letter to Swift, "I have," says he, "treated Lady Harriot at Cambridge (a fellow of a college treat!) and spoke verses to her in a gown and cap! What, the plenipotentiary, so far concerned in the damned peace at Utrecht-the man that makes up half the volume of terse prose, that makes up the report of the committee, speaking verses! Sic est, homo sum." He died at Wimpole, a seat of the Earl of Oxford, on the eighteenth of September, 1721, and was buried in Westminster; where, on a monument for which, as the "last piece of human vanity," he left five hundred pounds, is engraven this epitaph: Sui Temporis Historiam meditanti, Diuque ut boni jam omnes sperant duratura,) Cum summa potestate Legatus; MATTHÆUS PRIOR, Armiger: Qui Hos omnes, quibus cumu'atus est, Titulos Humani.atis, Ingeni, Eruditionis laude Superavit ; Cui enim nascenti faci es arriserant Musa, Hunc Puerum Schola lic Regia perpolivit; Juvenem in Collegio Sti Johannis Cantabrigia optimis Scientiis instruxit; Virum denique auxit; et perfecit Maka cum virs Principibus consuetudo; Ita natus, ita institu.tus, A Vatum Choro avelli nunquani potuit, Sed solebat sepe rerum Civilium gravitatem Ameniorum Literarum Studiis condife: Et cum omne adeo Poetices genus Haud infeliciter tentaret, Tum in Fabellis concinnè lepidèque texendis Mirus Artifex Neminem | abunt parem. Hec literalis animi objectamenta, Quam nullo Il i labore constiterint, Facile ii pcrspexere quibus usus est Amich, Apud quos Urbanitatum et Leporum plenus Cum ad rem, qua cunque forte miciderat, Aptè, varie, copiosèque alluderet, Interea nihil quæsitum, nih.l vi expressum Videbatur, Sed omnia ultro effluere, An in Convictu Comes Jucundior. Of Prior, eminent as he was, both by his abili ties and station, very few memorials have been left by his contemporaries; the account therefore must now be destitute of his private character and familiar practices. He lived at a time when the rage of party detected all which it was any man's interest to hide; and, as little ill is heard of Prior, it is certain that not much was known. He was not afraid of provoking censure, for when he forsook the whigs, under whose patro, age he first entered the world, he became a tory so ardent and determinate, that he did not willingly consort with men of different opinions. He was one of the sixteen tories who met weekly, and agreed to address each other by the title of brother; and seems to have adhered, not only by concurrence of political designs, but by peculiar affection, to the Earl of Oxford and his family. With how much confidence he was trusted has been already told. He was, however, in Pope'st opinion, fit only to make verses, and less qualified for business than Addison himself. This was surely said without consideration. Addison, exalted to a high place, was forced into degradation by the sense of his own incapacity; Prior, who was employed by men very capable of estimating his value, having been secretary to one embassy, had, when great abilities were again wanted, the same office another time; and was, after so much experience of his knowledge and dexterity, at last sent to transact a negotiation in the highest degree arduous and important, for which he was qualified, among other requisites, in the opinion of Bolingbroke, by his influence upon the French minister, and by skill in questions of commerce above other men. Of his behaviour in the lighter parts of life, it is too late to get much intelligence. Cne of his answers to a boastful Frenchman has been related; and to an impertinent he made another + Spence has likewise a preface, but of more value than the Tale. "Hans Cravel," not over decent; and "Protogenes and Apelles," an old story, mingled, by an affectation not disagreeable, with modern images. "The young Gentleman in Love" has hardly a just claim to the title of a Tale. I know not whether he be the original author of any tale which he has given us. equally proper. During his embassy, he sat at | grave nor merry. "Paulo Purganti:" which the opera by a man, who, in his rapture, accomunied with his own voice, the principal singer. Prior fell to railing at the performer with all the terms of reproach that he could collect, till the Frenchman, ceasing from his song, began to expostulate with him for his harsh censure of a man who was confessedly the ornament of the stage. "I know all that," says the ambassador, "mais il chante si haut, que je ne sçaurois vous en-adventure of "Hans Cravel" has passed through tendre." In a gay French company, where every one sang a little song or stanza, of which the burden was, "Bannissons la Melancholie:" when it came to his turn to sing, after the performance of a young lady that sat next him, he produced these extemporary lines: Mais cette voix, et ces beaux yeux, The many successions of merry wits; for it is to be found in Ariosto's "Satires," and is perhaps yet older. But the merit of such stories is the art of telling them. In his amorous effusions he is less happy; for they are not dictated by nature or by passion, and have neither gallantry nor tenderness. They have the coldness of Cowley, without his wit, the dull exercises of a skilful versifier, resolved at all adventures to write something about Chloe, and trying to be amorous by dint of study. His fictions therefore are mytholo Tradition represents him as willing to descend from the dignity of the poet and statesman togical. Venus, after the example of the Greek the low delights of mean company. His Chloe probably was sometimes ideal; but the woman with whom he cohabited was a despicable drab* of the lowest species. One of his wenches, perhaps Chloe, while he was absent from his house, stole his plate, and ran away; as was related by a woman who had been his servant. Of this propensity to sordid converse I have seen an account so seriously ridiculous, that it seems to deserve insertion.† "I have been assured that Prior, after having spent the evening with Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope, and Swift, would go and smoke a pipe, and dink a bottle of ale, with a common soldier and his wife, in Long Acre, before he went to bed; not from any remains of the lowness of his original, as one said, but, I suppose, that his faculties, Strain'd to the height, In that celestial colloquy sublime, Dazzled and spent, sunk down, and sought repair." Poor Prior, why was he so strained, and in such want of repair, after a conversation with men, not, in the opinion of the world, much wiser than himself? But such are the conceits of speculatists, who strain their faculties to find in a mine what lies upon the surface. His opinions, so far as the means of judging are left us, seem to have been right; but his life was, it seems, irregular, negligent, and sensual. PRIOR has written with great variety; and his variety has made him popular. He has tried all styles, from the grotesque to the solemn, and has not so failed in any as to incur derision or disgrace. His works may be distinctly considered, as comprising Tales, Love-verses, Occasional Poems, "Alma" and "Solomon." His Tales have obtained general approbation, being written with great familiarity and great sprightliness; the language is easy, but seldom gross, and the numbers smooth, without appearance of care. Of these Tales there are only four. "The Ladle;" which is introduced by a preface, neither necessary nor pleasing, neither Epigram, asks when she was seen naked and bathing. Then Cupid is mistaken; then Cupid is disarmed; then he loses his darts to Ganymede; then Jupiter sends him a summons by Mercury. Then Chloe goes a hunting, with an ivory quiver graceful at her side; Diana mistakes her for one of her nymphs, and Cupid laughs at the blunder. All this is surely despicable; and even when he tries to act the lover, without the help of gods or goddesses, his thoughts are unaffecting or remote. He talks not "like a man of this world." The greatest of all his amorous essays is "Henry and Emma;" a dull and tedious dialogue, which excites neither esteem for the man, nor tenderness for the woman. The example of Emma, who resolves to follow an outlawed murderer wherever fear and guilt shall drive him, deserves no imitation; and the experiment by which Henry tries the lady's constancy, is such as must end either in infamy to her, or in disappointment to himself. His Occasional Poems necessarily lost part of their value, as their occasions, being less remem bered, raised less emotion. Some of them, however, are preserved by their inherent excel lence. Namur has, in some parts, such airiness and The burlesque of Boileau's Ode on levity as will always procure it readers, even among those who cannot compare it with the The poems to the King are now perused only original. The epistle to Boileau is not so happy. by young students, who read merely that they may learn to write; and of the "Carmen Seculare," I cannot but suspect that I might praise detection; for who can be supposed to have or censure it by caprice, without danger of laboured through it? Yet the time has been when this neglected work was so popular, that it was translated into Latin by no common master. His poem on the battle of Ramilies is necessarily tedious by the form of the stanza: an uniform mass of ten lines thirty-five times repeated, inconsequential and slightly connected, His imitation of Spenser, which consists prinmust weary both the car and the understanding cipally in Iween and I weet, without exclusion of later modes of speech, makes his poem neither ancient nor modern. His mention of Mars and Bellona, and his comparison of Marl- Unhappily this pernicious failure is that which borough to the eagle that bears the thunder of an author is least able to discover. We are selJupiter, are all puerile and unaffecting; and yet dom tiresome to ourselves; and the act of com more despicable is the long tale told by Lewis position fills and delights the mind with change in his despair of Erute and Troynovante, and of language and succession of images; every the teeth of Cadmus, with his similics of the couplet when produced is new, and novelty is the raven and eagle, and wolf and lion. By the great source of pleasure. Pe haps no man ever help of such easy fictions, and vulgar topics, thought a line superfluous when he first wiote without acquaintance with life, and without it, or contracted his work till his bullitions of knowledge of art or nature, a poem of any invention had subsided. And even if he should length, cold and lifeless like this, may be easily control his desire of immediate renown, and written on any subject. keep his work nine years unpublished, he will be still the author, and still in danger of deceiv ing himself: and if he consults hi, friends, he will probably find men who have more kindnes than judgment, or more fear to offend than desire to instruct. In his Epilogues to Phadra and to Lucius he is very happily facetious; but in the prologue before the Queen, the pedant has found his way, with Minerva, Perseus, and Andromeda. His epigrams and lighter pieces are, like those of others, sometimes elegant, sometimes trifling, and sometimes dull; among the best are the "Camelion," and the epitaph on John and Joan. Scarcely any one of our poets has written so much and translated so little; the version of Callimachus is sufficiently licentious; the paraphrase on St. Paul's Exhortation to Charity is eminently beautiful. "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 Horace said, when he imitated Lucilius, might be said of Butler by Prior; his numbers were not smooth or neat. Prior excelled him in versification: but he was, like Horace, inventore minor: he had not Butler's exuberance of matter and variety of illustration. The spangles of wit which he could afford he knew how to polish; but he wanted the bullion of his master. Butler pours out a negligent profusion, certain of the weight, but careless of the stamp. Prior has comparatively little, but with that little he makes a fine show. "Alma" has many admirers, and was the only piece among Prior's works, of which Pope said that he should wish to be the author. "Solomon" is the work to which he intrusted the protection of his name, and which he expect ed 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 in o 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 excellencies, and did not discover that it wanted that without which all others are of small avail, the power of engaging attention and alluring curiosity. The tediousness of this poem proceeds not from the uniformity of the subject, for it is sufficiently diversified, but from the continued tenor of the narration; in which Solomon relates the successive vicissitudes of his own mind, without the intervention of any other speaker, or the mention of any other agent, unless it be Abra; the reader is only to learn what he thought, and to be told that he thought wrong. The event of every experiment is foreseen, and therefore the process is not much regarded. 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. If Prior's poetry be generally considered, his praise will be that of correctness and industry, rather than of compass, of comprehension, or activity of fancy. He never made any effort of invention: his greater pieces are only tissues of common thoughts; and his smaller, which consist of light images or single conceits, are not always his own. I have traced him among the French epigrammatists, and have been informed that he poached for prey among obscure authors. The "Thief and Cordelier" is, I suppose, generally considered as an original production; with how much justice this epigram may tell, which was written by Georgius Sabinus, a poet now little known or read, though once the friend of Luther and Melancthon : De Sacerdote Furem consolante. Quidam sacrificus furem comitatus euntem Huc ubi dat soutes carnificina neci, Ne sis mastus, at; summi conviva Tonantis Jam cum cœlitibus (si modo credis) eris. Ille gemens, si vera mihi solatia præbes, Hospes apud superos sis meus ro, refert Sacrificus contra; mihi non convivia fas est Ducere, jejunans hac edo luce nihil. What he has valuable he owes to his diligence and his judgment. His diligence has justly placed him among the most correct of the Eng. fish poets; and he was one of the first that resoTediousness is the most fatal of all faults: lutely endeavoured at correctness. He never negligences or errors are single and local, but sacrifices accuracy to haste, nor indulges himself tediousness pervades the whole; other faults are in contemptuous negligence, or impatient idlecensured and forgotten, but the power of tedi-ness: he has no careless lines, or entangled senousness propagates itself. He that is weary the first hour, is more weary the second; as bodies forced into motion contrary to their tendency pass more and more slowly through every successive interval of space. timents: his words are nicely selected, and his thoughts fully expanded. If this part of his character suffers an abatement, it must be from the disproportion of his rhymes, which have not always sufficient consonance, and from the nd 158 mission of broken lines into his "Solomon ;" | blance he has formed his new stanza to that of but perhaps he thought, like Cowley, that his master, these specimens will show; hemistichs ought to be admitted into heroic poetry. He had apparently such rectitude of judgment as secured him from every thing that approached to the ridiculous or absurd; but as laws operate in civil agency not to the excitement of virtue, but the repression of wickedness, so judgment in the operations of intellect can hinder faults, but not produce excellence. Prior is never low, nor very often sublime. It is said by Longinus of Euripides, that he forces himself sometimes into grandeur by violence of effort, as the lion kindles his fury by the lashes of his own tail. Whatever Prior obtains above mediocrity seems the effort of struggle and of toil. He has many vigorous, but few happy lines; he has every thing by purchase, and nothing by gift; he had no nightly visitations of the muse, no infusions of sentiment or felicities of fancy. SPENSER. She flying fast from Heaven's hated face, To rest themselves, and weary pow'rs repair, PRIOR. To the close rock the frighted raven flies, By this new structure of his lines he has avoided difficulties; nor am I sure that he has lost any of the power of pleasing: but he no His diction, however, is more his own than of any among the successors of Dryden; he borrows no lucky turns, or commodious modes of language from his predecessors. His phrases are original, but they are sometimes harsh: as he inherited no elegances, none has he bequeath-longer imitates Spenser. ed. 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. In his greater compositions there may be found more rigid stateliness than graceful dignity. Some of his poems are written without regularity of measure; for, when he commenced poet, he had not recovered from our Pindaric infatuation; but he probably lived to be convinced, that the essence of verse is order and consonance. His numbers are such as mere diligence may attain; they seldom offend the ear, and seldom Of versification he was not negligent; what soothe it; they commonly want airiness, lighthe received from Dryden he did not lose; nei-ness, and facility: what is smooth is not soft. ther did he increase the difficulty of writing by His verses always roll, but they seldom flow. unnecessary severity, but uses triplets and Alex- A survey of the life and writings of Prior andrines without scruple. In his preface to "So- may exemplify a sentence which he doubtless lomon" he proposes some improvements, by ex-understood well, when he read Horace at his tending the sense from one couplet to another, with variety of pauses. This he has attempted, but without success; his interrupted lines are unpleasing, and his sense as less distinct is less striking. uncle's; "the vessel long retains the scent which it first receives." In his private relaxation he revived the tavern, and in his amorous pedantry he exhibited the college. But on higher occasions, and nobler subjects, when habit was overpowered by the necessity of reflection, he wanted not wisdom as a statesman, or elegance as a He has altered the stanza of Spenser, as a house is altered by building another in its place of a different form. With how little resem-poet. CONGREVE. WILLIAM CONGREVE descended from a family | in Staffordshire, of so great antiquity that it claims a place among the few that extend their line beyond the Norman Conquest; and was the son of William Congreve, second son of Richard Congreve, of Congreve and Stratton. He visited, once at least, the residence of his ancestors; and, I believe, more places than one are still shown, in groves and gardens, where he is reiated to have written his "Old Bachelor." Neither the time nor place of his birth is cer tainly known: if the inscription upon his monument be true, he was born in 1672. For the place, it was said by himself, that he owed his nativity to England, and by every body else, that he was born in Ireland. Southern mentioned him, with sharp censure, as a man that meanly disowned his native country. The biographers assign his nativity to Bardsa, near Leeds, in Yorkshire, from the account given by himself, as they suppose, to Jacob. To doubt whether a man of eminence has told Few plays have ever been so beneficial to the writer; for it procured him the patronage of Halifax, who immediately made him one of the commissioners for licensing coaches, and soon after gave him a place in the Fipe-office, and another in the Customs of six hundred pounds a-year. Congreve's conversation must surely have been at least equally pleasing with his writings. the trt th about his own birth, is, in appearance, to be very deficient in candour; yet, nobody can live long without knowing that falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil inmediately visible ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered; and, once uttered, are sullenly supported. Boileau, who desired to be thought a rigorous and steady moralist, having told a petty lie to Louis the Fourteenth, continued it Such a comedy, written at such an age, reafterwards by false dates; thinking himself ob- quires some consideration. As the lighter speliged in honour, says his admirer, to maintain cies of dramatic poetry professes the imitation what, when he said it, was so well received. of common life, of real manners, and daily inWherever Congreve was born, he was edu- cidents, it apparently pre-supposes a familiar cated first at Kilkenny, and afterwards at Dub-knowledge of many characters, and exact cblin, his father having some military employment servation of the passing world; the difficulty that stationed him in Ireland; but, after having therefore is, to conceive how this knowledge can passed through the usual preparatory studies, as be obtained by a boy. may be reasonably supposed, with great celerity But if "The Old Bachelor" be more nearly and success, his father thought it proper to as-examined, it will be found to be one of those sign him a profession by which something might be gotten; and, about the time of the Revolution, sent him, at the age of sixteen, to study law in the Middle Temple, where he lived for several years, but with very little attention to statutes or reports. His disposition to become an author appeared very early, as he very early felt that force of imagination, and possessed that copiousness of sentiment, by which intellectual pleasure can be given. His first performance was a novel, called "Incognita, or Love and Duty reconciled:" it is praised by the biographers, who quote some part of the preface, that is, indeed, for such a time of life, uncommonly judicious. I would rather praise it than read it. His first dramatic labour was "The Old Bachelor;" of which he says, in his defence against Collier, "that comedy was written, as several know, some years before it was acted. When I wrote it, I had little thoughts of the stage; but did it to amuse myself in a slow recovery from a fit of sickness. Afterwards, through my indiscretion, it was seen, and, in some little time more, it was acted; and I, through the remainder of my indiscretion, suffered myself to be drawn into the prosecution of a difficult and thankless study, and to be involved in a perpetual war with knaves and fools." There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done every thing by chance. "The Old Bachelor" was written for amusement in the languor of convalescence. Yet it is apparently composed with great elaborateness of dialogue, and incessant ambition of wit. The age of the writer considered, it is, indeed, a very wonderful performance: for, whenever written, it was acted (1693) when he was not more than twenty-one years old; and was then recommended by Mr. Dryden, Mr. Southern, and Mr. Mainwaring. Dryden said, that he never had seen such a first play; but they found it deficient in some things requisite to the success of its exhibition, and, by their greater experience, fitted it for the stage. Southern used to relate of one comedy, probably of this, that, when Congreve read it to the players, he pronounced it so wretchedly, that they had almost rejected it; but they were afterwards so well persuaded of its excellence, that, for half a year before it was acted, the manager allowed its Author the privilege of the house. comedies which may be made by a mind vigor ous and acute, and furnished with comic cha racters by the perusal of other poets, without much actual commerce with mankind. The dia logue is one constant reciprocation of conceits, or clash of wit, in which nothing flows necessarily from the occasion, or is dictated by nature. The characters, both of men and women, are either fictitious and artificial, as those of Heartwell and the ladies; or easy and common, as Wittol, a tame idiot, Bluff, a swaggering coward, and Fondlewife, a jealous puritan; and the catastrophe arises from a mistake not very probably produced, by marrying a woman in a mask. Yet this gay comedy, when all these deduc tions are made, will still remain the work of very powerful and fertile faculties; the dialogue is quick and sparkling, the incidents such as seize the attention, and the wit so exuberant, that i "o'er-informs its tenement." Next year he gave another specimen of his abilities in "The Double Dealer,” which was not received with equal kindness. He writes to his patron, the Lord Halifax, a dedication, in which he endeavours to reconcile the reader to that which found few friends among the audience. These apologies are always useless: "de gustibus non est disputandum;" men may be convinced, but they cannot be pleased against their will. But, though taste is obstinate, it is very variable; nd time often prevails when arguments have failed. Queen Mary conferred upon both those plays the honour of her presence; and when she died, soon after, Congreve testified his gratitude by a despicable effusion of elegiac pastoral; a composition in which all is unnatural, and yet nothing is new. In another year (1695) his prolific pen produced "Love for Love," a comedy of nearer alliance to life, and exhibiting more real manners than either of the former. The character of Foresight was then common. Dryden calculated nativities; both Cromwell and King William had their lucky days; and Shaftesbury himself, though he had no religion, was said to regard predictions. The Sailor is not accounted very natural, but he is very pleasant. With this play was opened the New Theatre, under the direction of Betterton, the tragedian; where he exhibited, two years afterwards, (1687,) |