Chapter XII

LAST YEARS AND DEATH

HE treatment meted out to Prior by the govern

ment was more than harsh. Gaultier wrote: "Vous méritiez un meilleur traitement après les grands services que vous avez rendus à votre patrie1." Stratford in 1720 described his treatment as "unjust and barbarous2," and spoke appreciatively of his behaviour under it. Swift, of course, spoke out plainly:

I believe he is the first person in any Christian country that ever was suffered to starve after having been in so many great employments. But amongst the Turks and Chineses it is a very frequent case, and those are the properest precedents for us at this time3.

During the months of confinement he busied himself with his poem, Alma, or the progress of the mind. In 1717 an act of grace was passed, extending an amnesty to political offenders; but such was the fury of the Whigs against Prior, that he was excepted. Why they were so rancorous it is difficult to say. A guess, however, may be hazarded, that the springs of their action may be found in the disappointment Prior had given them in not revealing more of the "Tory plot" to overthrow the Protestant succession. He was a free man, however, by the middle of August, for we find him writing to

1 Bath Papers, III. 462, Gaultier to Prior, Paris, Oct. 20, 1718.

2 Hist. MSS. Comm. Portland Papers, vII. 281, E. Stratford to Lord Harley, Nov. 2, 1710.

3 Ibid. v. 561, Swift to Lord Harley, Dublin, May 17, 1718. 4"A loose and hasty scribble, to relieve the hours of my imprisonment."

L. P.

17

Swift from Heythrop1, where he paid a visit to the Duke of Shrewsbury, who seems to have chivalrously rewarded Prior's services to him in Paris by friendship in the time of need. But though free, he was penniless. Lord Harley, Oxford's eldest son, did something for the poor poet by sending the hat round. Swift, over in Ireland, collected what he could. "I have sent Mr Prior all the money which this hedge country would afford, which for want of a better solicitor is under £2002." Even earlier, steps had been taken to collect money for the great edition of the Poems on several occasions that was to appear in 1719. A list of subscribers was drawn up and passed by Prior in 17173, and in 1718 he was busy all the year with printer's proofs:

Dear Sir,

A pretty kind of amusement I have been engaged in: commas, semicolons, italics, and capitals, to make nonsense more pompous, and furbelow bad poetry with good printing. My friends' letters, in the mean time, have lain unanswered; and the obligations I have to them, on account of the very book itself, are unacknowledged. This is not all; I must beg you once more to transfer to us an entire list of my subscribers, with their distinct titles, that they may, for my honour, be printed at the beginning of my book...4.

Four weeks later, and we get the same refrain:

I have received yours of the 6th, with the list corrected. I have two colon and comma men. We correct, and design to publish, as fast as the nature of this great or sorry work, as you call it, will bear; but we shall not be out before Christmas, so that our friends abroad may complete their collection till Michaelmas, and be

1 Swift's Works, ed. Walter Scott, Edinburgh, 1814, xvI. 326, Prior to Swift, Heathrop, August 24, 1717.

2 Hist. MSS. Comm. Portland Papers, v. 561, Swift to Lord Harley, Dublin, May 17, 1718.

3 Swift's Works, ut sup., ibid.

4 Ibid. 330, Prior to Swift, May 1, 1718.

returned soon enough to have their names printed and their books got ready for them. I thank you most heartily for what you have been pleased to do in this kind. Give yourself no farther trouble; but if any gentleman, between this and Michaelmas, desires to subscribe, do not refuse it. I have received the money of Mr Mitford.

I am going to-morrow morning to the Bath, to meet Lord Harley there. I shall be back in a month.

The Earl of Oxford is still here. He will go into Herefordshire some time in June1. He says he will write to you himself. Am I particular enough? Is this prose? And do I distinguish tenses? I have nothing more to tell you, but that you are the happiest man in the world; and if you are once got into la bagatelle, you may despise the world. Besides contriving emblems, such as cupids, torches, and hearts for great letters, I am now unbinding two volumes of printed heads, to have them bound together in better order than they were before. Do not you envy me? For the rest, matters continue sicut olim. I will not tell you how much I want you, and I cannot tell you how much I love to me, my dear dean, and give my service to all our friends.

Yours ever,

M. Prior2.

you.

Write

The reason why matters advanced so slowly was doubtless the magnificence of Prior's ideas about the edition, which were not unworthy of Poseidon Hicks. He evidently intended at first to have it printed on vellum, but was forced to abandon the plan in favour of "paper imperial, and the largest in England3." The frontispiece was to be on a scale proportionate to the book.

Morley was with me this morning madder than ever about Fiske the apothecary and his copper-plate. Tonson and Drift

1 It is characteristic of Oxford's dilatory habits that in September Prior wrote and told Swift that Oxford was still "going into Herefordshire," having been in London all summer.

2 Swift's Works, ut sup. 331, Prior to Swift, May 29, 1718.

3 Bath Papers, III. 450, Prior to Lord Harley, Duke Street, Nov. 30/ Dec. 11, 1717.

have a little appeased him, and we shall have a plate as big as has been formed since the days of Alexander the Coppersmith1.

The following letters give us a glimpse of Prior wrestling with those problems of typography which are the price every author has to pay for independence of the printer's devil:

Dear Mr Wanley,

5 April 1718.

I torment you before my appointed time finding this sheet at home: as soon as you have looked it over it may be carried immediately to the Printer: I will trouble you to-morrow morning for the sheet which you have: it is Compliment in the most refined French Dictionaries but I submit it to you as I ought with great reason to do everything concerning Literature. Yours ever,

My good and kind Wanley,

M. Prior2.

I send you these sheets as looked over first by Mr Bedford, and then by myself. I have made great letters at Ye, Me and emphatical words, that this may answer to the tenor of the other poems: But if in the old it be otherwise printed, or you please to alter any thing, you know, and may use your dictatorial power. In a book called The Custume [?] of London, a folio printed, I think, in Harry the Eighth's time, which I gave our well-beloved Lord Harley, you will find this poem.

I hope soon to see you at dinner at Mr Black's and am always Your obliged and faithful servant

Thursday noon.

11 April 1718.

M. P.3

1 Bath Papers, 111, 450. Prior to Lord Harley, Duke Street, Nov. 30/ Dec. 11, 1717.

2 B.M. Harl. 3780, fo. 342. He had been in the habit of spelling it Complement, as may be seen from his despatches.

3 Ibid. fo. 344.

Still the work went on, and in September he wrote

to Swift that he had

now made an end of what you in your haughty manner, have called wretched work. My book is quite printed off; and if you are as much upon the bagatelle as you pretend to be, you will find more pleasure in it than you imagine. We are going to print the subscribers' names....I cough, but I am otherwise well; and, till I cease to cough, i.e. to live, I am, [etc.]1

The book, however, did not appear till early in 1719, and this third letter to Wanley probably marks the eve of the publication.

Dear Wanley,

I must beg the continuance of your care in the names of the subscribers, as you have given it to me in the printing of the books. I send you my Phiz, pray give my service to Mrs Wanley, desiring her to accept it, and assuring her that no one loves or esteems her husband and my friend more than Yours M. Prior2.

Jan. 8. 1718/19.

His relations with Lord Harley and his family form one of the brightest and most pleasing features of his life. To them he probably owed the re-establishment of his fortune, so that he could live on a scale not unworthy of a retired diplomat. He was a great favourite at Wimpole, Lord Harley's seat, where Lord Harley's daughter, later Duchess of Portland, said he "made himself beloved by every living thing in the house-master, child and servant, human creature or animal3." And his affection for them shines out clearly from his correspondence. His favourite was obviously the daughter

1 Swift's Works, ibid. 335, Prior to Swift, London, Sept. 25, 1718. 2 B.M. Harl. MS. 3780, fo. 346.

3 Works of Alexander Pope, ed. Elwin and Courthope, viп. 193 n.