BOOKS.

THE POETICAL WORKS OF MATTHEW PRIOR.* Atniouou Prior held a conspicuous position among the wits of his age, and was engaged in the public service of his country, we know comparatively little about him. What we do know beyond the bare facts of his diplomatic career is gathered incidentally from the remarks of contemporaries. His origin was obscure, and his uncle, who kept the Rummer Tavern, at Charing Cross, after giving him a classical education at Westminster, employed him as his tapster. From this uncongenial position he was removed by the Earl of Dorset, who sent him to St. John's College, Cambridge (Wordsworth's college), where he soon acquired friends and fame. It is well known how he was sent to the Congress at the Hague as Secretary to the Embassy ; how King William made him one of the Gentlemen of his Bedchamber; how he was again employed as Secretary at the Treaty of Ryswick ; how he became for a brief period Under-Secretary of State ; how, like Swift, he changed his party ; how he was sent by the Tories as an Ambassador to the French Court ; how, upon their downfall in 1714 he lost not only his office, but his liberty ; how at last he was compelled to live upon his fellowship and his poetry, and dying at the age of fifty- seven, was buried in Westminster Abbey, having left 2,500 in his will for a monument and epitaph.

Incidentally, however, we know a little more of the poet than can be learnt from this barren record of his official life. It is significant, for instance, that he called himself " Matt," and that his friends spoke of him and wrote to him under that familiar abbreviation. There might have been a want of dignity in Prior, but there was no lack of kindliness (we are told that when living at Lord Oxford's he made himself beloved by every living thing); and that his conduct was marked by good breeding is evi- dent from the fact that Louis XIV. warmly praised his manners and conversation, He must, indeed, have been a gentleman, as well as a man of spirit and ready wit, who made the celebrated answer to the inquiry whether Kensington Palace could boast such pictures as those which-recorded Louis's exploits at Versailles :— "No, Sir! The memorials of the great things which my master has done are to be seen in many places, but not in his own house." The man who could speak thus was not likely to bring disgrace upon his official calling, and one remembers with a like pleasure his asser- tion that he would "rather he thought a good Englishman than the best poet or greatest scholar that ever wrote." The traditions that exist as to Prior's loose manner of living are, we suspect, not inaccurate. The easy laxity of the age was congenial to him. If Cabinet ministers got drunk, why not Matt Prior ? if some of the highest personages in the land led an openly immoral life, was it likely that an easy-going bachelor poet would set them a better example ? Prior was emphatically a man of the world, and in his age such a man was not likely to be exempt from the grosser vices tolerated in society. His character is, in this respect, very frankly written in his poetry. Dr. Johnson, who reproved Hannah More for reading Tom Jones, said that Prior was a lady's poet, and that his verses contain nothing improper ; a strange assertion, truly, to make about a writer whose tales are more immoral, because more witty, than those of Somervile or Gay.

As a poet, Prior has been underrated by Johnson, and perhaps, though we would not speak confidently, overrated by Thackeray. He wrote a great deal of tedious rubbish in the shape of congra- tulatory and elegiac odes, poems in honour of King William and of Queen Anne, poems to commemorate national victories and to deplore national bereavements ; be wrote a very serious and heavy poem called "Solomon," a Hudibrastic poem of which Pope said he should like to have been the author ; and a sickly poem called "henry and Emma," familiar to the young ladies of seventy years since. Cowper, it is fair to add, called this an "enchanting piece ; " but there are few readers now-a-days who • Thu Pottfcal Work' of diatfliao Prior. 2 vole. London: Bell and Liddy. would not find it tedious, and be repelled by its tawdry sentiment. Prior wrote songs too, to be set to music, and strange to say, con- sidering the character of his genius, he failed in these also. They are essentially corn ran-place, but in one or two instances thet reader will note a conceit which has been stolen by Thomas Moore.. For a specimen of Prior's skill, or rather lack of skill, as a song- writer take the following stanzas :—

" Whilst others proclaim

His nymph or that swain,

Dearest Nelly the lovely I'll sing; She shall grace every verse,

I'll her beauties rehearse,—

Which lovers can't think an ill thing.

"Her eyes shine as bright As the stars in the night, Her complexion divinely is fair ; Her lips, rod as a cherry, Would a hermit make merry, And black as a coal is her hair.

"Her breath like a rose Its sweets does disclose, Whenever you ravish a kiss ; Like ivory enchited, Her tooth are well plac'd, An exquisite beauty she is.

"She's blooming as May, Brisk, lively, and gay, The Graces play all round about her ; She's prudent and witty, Sings wondrously pretty, And there is no living ,without her.''

Such versifying as this requires only a knack in stringing rhymes. together, and if Prior had done nothing better, he would not deserve to be remembered as a poet. His ability, however, in

another direction is very great indeed, and if we cannot fully sub- scribe to Mr. Thaakeray's opinion that Prior's "are among the

easiest, the richest, and the most charmingly humorous of English lyrical poems," it must be allowed that many of his pieces have a liveliness and sportive fancy, a felicity of language, and a grace of expression which deserve no niggard praise. As a writer of

occasional verses Prior excels, and some of his epigrams are admirable. So easy, too, is his style, that it is difficult sometimes to believe that be was born more than two centuries ago. One piece, quoted in Mr. Thackeray's lectures, in which the poet ad- dresses his jealous Cloe, is so similar to Thomas Moore in style, that if, like Sir Walter Scott, that poet sometimes forgot his own

poetry, he might readily have fathered Prior's lines upon himself. We quote only three stanzas :— " What I speak, my fair Clop, and what I wish, shows The difference there is betwixt nature and art I court others in versa ; but I love thee in prose,

And they have my whimsies, but thou haat my heart.

"The god of us verso-mon (you know, child), the sun, How after his journeys ho sets up his rest, If at morning o'er earth 'tie his fancy to run, At night he declines on his Thetis's breast.

"So when I am wearied with wandering all day, To thee, my delight, in the evening I come; No matter what beauties I saw in my way, They wore but my visits, but thou art my homo."

Notwithstanding Dr. Johnson's assertion that Prior's works are fit for a lady's library, many of his most vivacious poems are too free in expression to allow of quotation in a modern journal. The following short poem, however, a favourable specimen of Prior's style as an amatory poet, may pass muster:—

A LOVER'S ANGER.

"As Cleo came into the room tether day,

I peevish began,—, Whore so long could you stay?

In your life-time you never regarded your hour,— You promised at two, and (pray look, child) 'tis four. A lady's watch needs neither figures nor wheels,

'Tis enough that'tia loaded with bawhles and seals.

A temper so heedless no mortal can bear.'

Thus far I wont on with a resolute air.

Lord bless me !' said she, let a body but speak ; Here's an ugly hard rose-bud fsll'n into my neck ;

It has hurt me and vexed me to such a degree,—

See here I for you never believe me ; pray see, On the loft side my breast what a mark it has made I

So saying, her bosom she careless displayed:

That seat of delight I with wonder surveyed, And forgot every word I design'd to have said."

Here are some lines addressed to a five-years-old "Child of Quality," when the author was forty, which Thackeray must have enjoyed, and might have written. We commence our quotation at the third stanza :—

" Nor quality, nor reputation, Forbid me yet my flame to toll, Dear five-years-old befriends my passion, And I may write till she can spell.

'For, while elae makes her silkworms' beds With all the tender things I swear ; Whilst all the house my passion reads, In papers round her baby's hair ; "She may receive and own my flame, For though the strictest prudes should know it, She'll pass for a most virtuous dame, And I for an unhappy poet.

"Then too, alas! when she shall hoar The lines some younger rival sends ; She'll give me leave to write, I fear,

And we ahu.11 still continuo friends.

"For, as our different agog move, Tis so ordain'd (would Fate but mend it!) That I shall be past making love, When slio begins to comprehend it."

If space allowed, we should like to have quoted the ode "To a Lady," commencing,— " Spare, gon'rous Victor, spare the slave 1" We must find room, however, for the lines addressed to the French historian Mezeray, not only because they are good in themselves and worthy of transcription, but because they possess an additional interest in having been quoted and pathetically applied to himself by Sir Walter Scott when he felt his strength and memory failing. Lockhart relates that on a Scotch tour Sir Walter repeated several striking passages both of Prior's " Alma " and of his "Solomon." On meeting some beggars, one of them recognized the poet, and bade God bless him :-

"The mendicants went on their way, and we stood breathing on the knoll. Sir Walter followed them with his eye, and planting his stick firmly on the sod, repeated, without break or hesitation, Prior's verses to the historian Mezeray. That he applied them to himself was touchingly obvious :—

" 'Whate'er thy countrymen havo done By law and wit, by sword and gun, In thee is faithfully recited ; And all the living world that view Thy work, give thee the praises due, At once instructed and delighted.

"'Yet for the fame of all these deeds,

What beggar in the Invalides'

With lameness broke, with blindness smitten, Wish'd ever decently to die, To have been either Mozeray Or any monarch he has written?

"'It strange, dear author, yet it true is, That down, from Pharamond to Louis,

All covet life, yet call it pain ; All feel the ill, rat shun the cure. Can sense this paradox endure ?

Resolve me, Cambray, or Fontaine.

"'The man in graver tragic known (Though his best part long since was done)

Still on the stage desires to tarry ; And he who play'd the Harlequin, After the jest still loads the scene, Unwilling to retire, though weary."

These are happy specimens of Prior's skill as a "verse-man." He has none of the higher attributes of the poet. Noble imagination, creative power, strong passion, are all lacking in Prior ; but he has some humour and more wit, a fancy which, although rarely poetical, possesses the sportiveneas required in vers de socidle, and a felicity of expression which has preserved many of his lines in the memory. Men who have never read Prior's poetry will be, nevertheless, familiar with the following lines or couplets :— " The strength of every other member Is founded on your belly-timber."

" Bo to her virtues very kind ; Be to her faults a little blind."

"Fine by degrees and beautifully loss."

"0 I save us still ; still bless us with thy stay ; 01 want thy Heaven, till we have learnt the way."

"From ignorance our comfort flows, Tim only wretched are the wise."

"For hope is but the dream of those that wake."

As an epigrammatist, Prior is often very successful, and if he sometimes borrows from others, he knows how to make their thoughts his own. The following possess the brevity and point essential to this kind of composition :— "I sent for Ratcliffe ; was so ill, That other doctors gave mo over : He felt my pulse, prescribed his pill, And I was likely to recover.

"But when the wit began to wheeze, And wine had warm'd the politician : Cur'd yesterday of my disease, I died last night of my physician." "Yes, every poot is a fool, By demonstration Ned can show it : Happy could Ned's inverted rule Prove every fool to be a poet " "Nobles and heralds, by your leave,

Here lies what once was Matthew Prior ; The son of Adam and of Eve,—

Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher ?"

We have only space to add that the two volumes of Prior's worke which have given occasion to those remarks belong to the re-issuer of the Aldine edition, the cheapest and best reprint that we know of, even in this age of cheap literature.