were pleased to confer the office. Ends more noble, or success more glorious than his, cannot well be imagined. He was really in the mind, what he was pronounced in the verses, of the poet. Prior, justly, considered him as a hero; and was accustomed to say, that ́he praised others in compliance with the fashion, but in celebrating William he followed his inclinations.'

In the parliament, which met in 1701, he was chosen Representative of East Grinstead, in Essex. His election was followed by a change of his politics; for he joined the Tories in voting for the impeachment of Lord Somers and the other Lords charged with having advised the Partition Treaty, in which he himself had been ministerially employed! By thus abandoning the Whigs, with whom he had hitherto avowedly acted upon principle, and to whom he owed his promotion, he incurred a charge of inconsistency, which ingenuity has laboured in vain to repel. But whatever might be the cause of his apostasy, with the ordinary zeal of a convert he stuck at nothing to serve his new friends. So ardent, indeed, was his youthful Toryism, that he did not willingly associate with men of his ancient party.

After the accession of Queen Anne, he exerted his poetical talents in honour of his country, in his 'Letter to Boileau on the Victory of Blenheim in 1704;' upon which occasion, he had two rivals in Addison and Philips.

About this period, likewise, he published a volume of poems, introduced by a dedication to Lionel Earl of Dorset and Middlesex. It began with the College-Exercises,' and ended with Henry and Emma.” As no prosperous event of that reign passed undig

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nified by poetry, the battle of Ramilies soon afterward excited him to another poetical effort, in the stanza of Spenser, in honour of his country, entitled An Ode on the Glorious Success of her Majesty's Arms in 1706.'

In 1710, he was supposed to have written some papers in The Examiner;' particularly, the criticism upon a poem addressed by Dr. Garth to the Earl of Godolphin.* Godolphin being now defeated by Oxford, and the Tories (long eclipsed by the lustre of Marlborough) beginning again to show their heads, Prior and Garth espoused opposite interests; the first for, and the latter against, the court. The Doctor did not desert his patron in distress: and his verses, addressed to him during the depression of his party, whatever may be their literary character, bear the more honourable stamp of grateful and persevering attachment.

Thus early initiated in public affairs, and involved in their perplexities for many years, that Prior should have found any opportunities of cultivating his poetical talents, is not a little surprising. In the preface to his Poems, he says, that poetry was only the product of his leisure-hours; that he had commonly business enough upon his hands, and (as he modestly adds) that he was only a poet by accident.'†

* This was answered by Addison, in the Whig Examiner.' The other contributors to the Examiner' (stating the grossness of ministerial abuses, the avarice of commanders, the tyranny of favourites, and the general danger of approaching ruin) were King, Swift, and occasionally Mrs. Manley.

+ From a Manuscript however left by him, containing an Essay on learning, the following curious passage relating to himself appears to deserve transcription: "I remember nothing farther in life, than that I made verses: I chose Guy Earl of Warwick for my first hero, and killed Colborne the giant, before

By Lord Bolingbroke, who notwithstanding the gross imperfections of his character is allowed to have been an accomplished judge of fine talents, he was always held in the highest esteem. In a letter addressed to him in 1712, while he was resident at the court of France, this nobleman pays him the following compliment: "For God's sake, Matt, 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."-" It is near three o'clock in the morning. I have been hard at work all day, and am not yet enough recovered to bear much fatigue; excuse therefore the confusedness of this scroll, which is only from Harry to Matt, and not from the Secretary to the Minister."

Soon afterward, the Duke of Shrewsbury went on a formal embassy to Paris. By Boyer it is said, that 'he refused to be associated with Prior, on account of

I was big enough for Westminster School. But I had two accidents in youth, which hindered me from being quite possessed with the Muse. I was bred in a college, where prose was more in fashion than verse; and as soon as I had taken my first degree, I was sent the King's Secretary to the Hague. There I had enough to do in studying French and Dutch, and altering my Terentian and Virgilian stile into that of articles and conventions: so that poetry, which by the bent of my mind might have become the business of my life, was by the happiness of my education only the amusement of it; and in this too, having the prospect of some little fortune to be made and friendships to be cul-tivated with the great men, I did not launch much into Satire, which (however agreeable, for the present, to the writers and encouragers of it) does in time do neither of them good-considering the uncertainty of fortune, and the various changes of ministry, and that every man as he resents may punish in his turn of greatness and power."

By some mistake of the Queen's orders, the court of France, it appears, had been disgusted,

the meanness of his birth.' It was not, therefore, till his Grace's return home in the ensuing year, that the latter was enabled to assume the stile and dignity of Embassador. But, while he continued in appearance a private man, he was treated with great attention by Louis XIV., who pronounced his conduct very agreeable to him;' and M. de Torcy placed in him his particular confidence.

Prior is represented, by contemporary writers, as having united the elegance of the courtier with the erudition of the scholar and the fancy of the man of genius. This representation, in general, may be just ; yet is it frequently true that they, who have risen from the lower ranks of life, still retain some traces of their humble original. In one particular, this was strikingly verified in Prior. could charm the waiter, still over the embassador. His Chloe,' it seems, was a butcher's wife, a woman in his own original station; and, in the height of his promotions, he never forsook her!

The same woman, who maintained her dominion

He was next appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of France, to negotiate the peace of Utrecht; and he remained there upon it's conclusion, under the character of British Embassador (though attended with some perplexities and mortifications *) from August, 1713, till some months after the accession of George I., when he was superseded by the Earl of Stair. The state of affairs was now

* He hints to the Queen, in an unfinished poem, that he had no service of plate; and from the debts, which he was compelled to contract, and for some time detained to discharge, we may infer that his remittances were not made with much punctuality.

greatly changed at home; the peace incurred loud condemnation, and Prior upon his arrival in London March 25, 1715, was arrested by a warrant from the House of Commons; shortly after which, he underwent a strict examination before a Committee of the Privy Council. His political friend Lord Bolingbroke, foreseeing a storm, had taken shelter in France.

On the tenth of June, Mr. Walpole moved the House for an impeachment against him on a charge of high treason, for holding clandestine conferences with the French Plenipotentiary; and on the seventeenth he was ordered into close custody, no person being admitted to see him without leave from the Speaker.*

In 1717, an Act of Grace was passed in favour of those who had opposed the Hanoverian Succession, as well as of those who had openly rebelled against it'; but Mr. Prior was, by name, excepted from it's operation. At the close of the year, however, he was discharged out of custody, and retired from all public employment. On his release, he rejoiced that he had never resigned his fellowship, which in his exaltation he had been censured for retaining, but which he always said he could live upon at last.' He had too correct a view of political contingency, to expect his party to remain permanently triumphant; and he was still less disposed to anticipate a revenue from his rhymes.

* For the detail of this procedure of the parliament, against both Prior and several other public functionaries of the preceding reign, the histories of the time must be consulted. During his confinement, to while away his prison-hours,' he wrote his Alma, or the Progress of the Mind.'

His having anxiously screened Stanley, on his examination, is said to have been the cause of this continued severity.