could puzzle him, which is, that though Ratisbon may not want a resident, his Secretary at the Hague will soon want a residence; and though His Majesty have small use for a scribbling servant, I have great occasion for the bounty of a Royal Master. Wherever he pleases to send me, I am ready to go; where, if there be not much business, I shall apply myself to those studies that may make me capable of doing his business when there is any; and when there is nothing to be written for his service in prose, I will write his conquests and glories in verse. A resident or envoy may in some small time be sent to Venice, another to Florence; be it at either of these two places, at Ratisbon, Berlin (where, may be, His Majesty may send rather a resident than an envoy), at Stockholm, Copenhagen, or even Moscow, it is well, provided I may serve my King, my hero and my master; but it is a sad reflection for me to think of going home as if I were disgraced, after having served here five years with some credit, and spent my little all in order to my being fit for something hereafter; and I take the boldness to protest to you I cannot think of returning to my College, and being useless to my country, to make declamations and theses to doting divines there, having drawn up memorials to the States General in the name of the greatest king in Europe.'*

But Prior was not to be sent to represent his king in any of the more distant courts of Europe; still less was he to be gently laid on the shelf in England. The new ambassador spoke on his behalf to William, who had a very good opinion of Prior, with the result that the poet, who in spite of his worries wrote at this time his highspirited parody of Boileau's Taking of Namur,' was to keep his secretaryship until something better was found for him. There was, moreover, some talk of doubling his allowance of 20s. a day; but this the King vetoed. These matters were settled in the autumn of 1695. A year later, negotiations for a peace were being talked of; and Prior was appointed secretary to the English ambassadors. He announces this fact, and that of the King's continued satisfaction with his services, in a letter to his friend Charles Montagu, which also furnishes another striking picture of the straits to which he was reduced in trying to uphold the credit of England on a pound a day and reasonable extraordinaries.'

* Aug. 3 (n.s.), 1695. Longleat мss, iii, 61.

'As no man ever had so good a patron, so certainly no man had ever such occasion for him as I at this time. My tallies I cannot sell under thirty per cent. loss; my aunt will not send me one farthing; the chain and medal the States gave me is at pawn; I have but two pistoles in the house or (to say plainly) in the world, and I have every morning a levée (God be thanked for the respite of Sunday) of postmen, stationers, tailors, cooks and wine-merchants, who have not been paid since last December. This is the state of the matter; there needs no great oratory to engage your affections and raise your compassion. If you can get me any ready money, it would be more charity than to give an alms to the poorest dog that ever gave you a petition; if not, patience is a virtue, and a scrap or two of Horace must be my consolation. It is as good starving in employment as out, so I have used my friends' interest to get to be Secretary to the Embassy to this Peace of which we are all talking; and I have got it with the advantage of having the King say that he was satisfied with my service, and thought my requests reasonable. I am infinitely obliged to my Lord Duke of Shrewsbury in this affair, and I wish you, dear Master, would let His Grace know as much.'

Prior was now busy enough; and his letters to the Secretaries of State and to his friends are both important and entertaining. As the negotiations, however, seemed to be drawing to a close, the fear of unemployment again came over him. Sir James Rushout, the envoy at Lisbon, was moved to Constantinople and Prior thought that he might learn Portuguese, and get two thousand pounds in three years.'† The idea attracted him, but, before he had seriously pursued it, something which appeared even better fell to his lot. Villiers, his chief and his very good friend, was made a justice of Ireland, and used his influence to get Prior appointed secretary to himself and his colleagues in that office. This meant 10007. a year and a couple of visits to England; and the poet, exiled seven years at The Hague, was delighted. He did not know that the post was to prove both fruitful of vexation and disappointing as regarded profit.

This vexation and disappointment arose from the fact

Sept. 1696. Longleat Mss, iii, 86. For correspondence between Shrewsbury and Prior at this time, see Hist. Mss Comm. Buccleuch MSS (Montagu House), ii, 391–409.

† To Charles Montagu, May 3 (n.s.), 1697. Longleat мss, iii, 113.

that he could not at once enter into his new duties. He was obliged to stay at The Hague until the treaty had been signed; and his work in Dublin had to be done by a deputy. His appointment dated from May 1697; and it was not until September that he was sent to England with the treaty. On September 14 he was reported on his way; ten days later there was a rumour that he had had to go back for the rectification of an error; but eventually he arrived, stayed in London twenty-four hours, received 200 guineas out of the secret service money for his pains, and returned to The Hague.* There, after some red-tape difficulties, the peace was signed; and Prior at last left the scene of his seven years' labours. Anxious to make a dignified exit, as he had always been anxious to keep up appearances, he wrote to William Blathwayt, who was Secretary at War, but always acted as the King's secretary when he was in Flanders, as follows.

'I am to add a word to my letter on my own behalf, and I hope you will think I request a thing reasonable. By a letter from you to the Pensioner in his Majesty's name, dated the 16th of June, 1694, I was recommended to the States as His Majesty's Secretary, and have ever since been used by them with all kindness: the favour I desire of you is to move his Majesty that you may by his order write a like letter to the Pensioner or President of the week, when His Majesty pleases that I should leave Holland, that I may have occasion to take my leave and thank them for their favours; which is but just to go off as I came on, and would let the States see I was not wholly forgotten by my Master, and entitle me to a medal.' †

To Lord Townshend he wrote in a less severe strain.

'What a cursed thing, my Lord, is this! a secretary to be writing till midnight without having time to say one word to those whom he respects most or loves best. No matter; I shall see you within this fortnight, and in that thought adieu all the melancholy reflections that can be inspired by a huge bundle of papers without any method, or an ambassador without anything but method!

'Who would (says Dryden) drink this draught of life
Blended with bitter woes and tedious strife

* Welbeck Mss, ii, 587, 588.

† Oct. 30 (n,s.), 1697. Longleat мss, iii, 183,

But that an angel in some lucky hour
Does healing drops into the goblet pour?
When wearied I would spill the baleful cup,
Some sparkling bubble of delight springs up.
My sovereign or my friend was heard to tell
I served him faithfully, or loved him well:
Then easy hope deceives my flattered taste,
One joy atones ten thousand evils past;
New scenes of thought I from this model frame,
Consent to live that I my part may claim

In Townshend's friendship or in William's fame.*

'I bronche [stumble], i' faith, and can no more rise in poetry than B in prose. I hope the Hoop in Fish Street will give me some spirits, and cure an ill habit of mind contracted by a thick air of conversation. Dr Sherrard, you know, said I had no need of anti-scorbutics to help my eyes; may be he will think I have no occasion for good company to cure my ideas. I'll try so good a dose of it by his favour as soon as I get to England as-may set me right for a year or two at least. In the meantime I thank you for Dr English's letter to me and will not say one word how very much I love you, or which is rarer, how very much you deserve to be loved, till I see you. Amo te: fac me ames. Vale!'†

But Prior was destined to go neither to London nor to Dublin. He accompanied Portland to Paris, whither the favourite was sent as ambassador. And at Paris he remained until the end of August 1699. His letters from Paris are, as Mr Rigg, the editor of the Longleat papers, justly says, 'in a literary sense the cream of the collection.' When he first arrived at the French capital he was ill'at death's door,' by his own accounts. But he recovered, was soon well enough to look after the ladies,' and began to cast his satirical eye round him. At The Hague he had been kept busy, but here he had plenty of time to himself. 'I have little more to do,' he writes, than to make a leg thrice a day for my chocolate, my dinner and my supper, and run about the rest of my time as fast as two lean nags can carry me like Bartholomew Coates to gape or to buy, and pay my respects to rare company, monks, poets, tailors, academicians, nuns, seamstresses, booksellers and players.' Of his witty observation only an

Mr Waller, who has been so assiduous in collecting every authentic scrap of Prior's verse, has missed these lines.

Nov. 5 (n.s.), 1697. Longleat мss, iii, 185.
To Jersey, Feb. 4-14, 1697-8. Ib. iii, 190.

example or two can here be given. He was much impressed by the influence of Madame de Maintenon, to whose credit he placed the Treaty of Ryswick (1697).

'Madame Maintenon' (he writes) 'is our friend and will keep the Peace, if possible, as she made it, not out of any kindness she has to us, but from a notion that the King's engaging in business impairs his health. "Tis incredible the power that woman has; everything goes through her hands, and Diana made a less figure at Ephesus.'*

For the exiled Stuarts he shows the contempt of a good Whig.

'I faced old James and all his Court the other day at St Cloud. Vive Guillaume! you never saw such a strange figure as the old bully is, lean, worn and riv'led, not unlike Neal the projecter; the Queen looks very melancholy, but otherwise well enough; their equipages are all very ragged and contemptible.' †

Nevertheless, the 'old bully' was on the best of terms with his host, the Grand Monarque.'

'Our friends of St Germains shine extremely at Fontainebleau ; all the court is made to Queen Mary; everybody is at her toilette in the morning, from whence the King of France leads her to chapel; the two Kings and the Queen in the midst sit at the head of the table at dinner with equal marks of distinction and sovereignty, and "à boire pour le Roi d'Angleterre !" ou "pour la Reine" is spoke as loud and with the same ceremony as "pour le Roi" when they mean their own King.' ‡

Meanwhile Prior's own affairs were as desperate as ever, and he wrote urgently and often to England for money. The profits on his office in Ireland fell short of his expectations. His salary was now 40s. a day, but life in Paris was expensive.

'Dear Horace! I have a sentence of him upon most occasions, but I find nothing in him applicable to staying at Paris upon 408. a day, where one's coach costs one louis and one's lodging another, before I or mine have eat or drank.' §

* To Charles Montagu, April 10 (n.s.), 1698. Longleat Mss, iii, 204.

+ To the same, Aug. 30 (n.s.), 1698. Ib. iii, 259.

To James Vernon, Oct. 18 (n.s.), 1698. Ib. iii, 277.

§ To Montagu, May 21 (n.s.), 1698. Ib. iii, 216.