Lives of the Poets | Page 6

quaesitum,
nihil vi expressum
Videbatur,
Sed omnia ultro effluere,

Et quasi
jugi e foote affatim exuberare,
Ita suos tandem dubios reliquit,

Essetne in Scriptis, Poeta Elegantior,
An in Convictu, Comes
Jocundior.
Of Prior, eminent as he was, both by his abilities 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 patronage 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's 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
own 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. One of his answers to a boastful Frenchman has been
related; and to an impertinent he made another equally proper. During
his embassy he sat at the opera by a man who, in his rapture,
accompanied 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 scaurois vous entendre."
In a gay French company, where every one sang a little song or stanza,
of which the burden was "Bannissons la Melancolie," 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,
Font Cupidon trop dangereux,


Et je suis triste quand je crie
Bannissons la Melancolie."
Tradition represents him as willing to descend from the dignity of the
poet and statesman to 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 his
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
drink 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 -
"'--strained 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,