Matthew Prior (21 July 1664 – 18 September 1721) was an English poet and diplomat. He
is also known as a contributor to The Examiner.
Prior was probably born in Middlesex. He 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, avintner 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." Prior is also known as a contributor to The Examiner newspaper.
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, Cambridge shire,
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 Oxford shire 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.
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