kindness of all these in you, which throws me at your feet to beg at once your blessing and assistance, and that, since your indulgence has set me safe from shore, you would not let me perish in the ocean1. From this letter it is clear that Prior was receiving his education, partially at any rate, from the kindness of his uncle, and this gives colour to the story that by following Charles Montagu to Cambridge and refusing to go to Christ Church, Oxford, he temporarily alienated the sympathies of his patron, Lord Dorset. Though deprived of this powerful support during his years at Cambridge, Prior succeeded in enhancing his own reputation. His facility for making verse, both in English and Latin, became greater, and we find him addressing a Pastoral dialogue2 to Mrs Katharine Prior, the wife of Arthur Prior, and apologising to her for neglect in writing to her3. This apology is accompanied by some more verses, which have been preserved1. Various College exercises also have survived, such as the odes at Longleat on the subjects of "Charity never faileth5," "There be those that leave their names behind them," "Many daughters have done well, but thou excellest them all?," the two latter being effusions in praise of the Lady Margaret, the foundress of St John's. Of the same character is the ode on the coronation of James II8. These compositions, however, brought no kudos to Prior from the outside world, nor can it honestly be said that they merited much distinction, and it was not until 1687 that the London public began 1 Hist. MSS. Comm. Bath Papers, III. 1. 2 Matthew Prior, Dialogues of the Dead and other works in Prose and Verse, ed. A. R. Waller, Cambridge University Press, 1907, p 272. 3 Hist. MSS. Comm. Bath Papers, III. 1. She died on March 21/31, 1698/9. (Ibid. III. 330.) 5 Ibid. p. 274. to hear of him. In that year, jointly with Charles Montagu, he wrote and published a burlesque on Dryden's Hind and the Panther, entitled The Hind and the Panther transvers'd to the story of the Country-mouse and the City-mouse. This famous parody, which, in pungency of wit and keenness of satire, falls lamentably short of its model, The Rehearsal, was judged at the time to have "ruined the reputation of the divine, as the 'Rehearsal' ruined the reputation of the poet1," and is reported with no great probability to have so affected Dryden himself that he wept and said it was a shame that an old man should be thus treated. Prior's share in the work has been variously estimated; James Montagu, who was in a very good position to judge, gives the following account of the composition: The first fruit of this intimacy [between Charles Montagu and Prior] was no less beneficial to the public than to themselves, for about this time came out the celebrated poem of the Hind and Panther, written by Mr Dryden, who had then professed himself of the Romish religion, and that poem being very much cried up for a masterpiece of a great poet, it created great dissatisfaction to all who opposed the bringing in of popery by King James, and it was the wish of many that the same should be answered by an ingenious pen, but it is not certain that either Mr Montagu or Mr Prior at first resolved to undertake the doing of it, but the book which came afterwards out by the name of the City Mouse, and the Country Mouse, which was allowed by all persons to be the most effectual answer to that poem of Mr Dryden's, and which was composed by Mr Montagu and Mr Prior together, happened to owe its birth more to accident than to design: for the Hind and Panther, being at that time in everybody's hands, Mr Prior accidentally came one morning to make Mr Montagu a visit at his brother's chambers in the Middle Temple, London, where the said Mr Montagu lodged when he 1 Preface to the Second Part of "The Reasons of Mr Bayes' changing his Religion." was in London, and the poem lying upon the table Mr Montagu took it up, and read the first four lines in the poem of the Hind and the Panther, which are these: A milk white Hind, immortal and unchanged, She feared no danger for she knew no sin. Where stopping, he took notice how foolish it was to commend a four-footed beast for not being guilty of sin, and said the best way of answering that poem would be to ridicule it by telling Horace's fable of the City Mouse, and the Country Mouse in the same manner, which being agreed to, Mr Prior took the book out of Mr Montagu's hands, and in a short time after repeated the first four lines, which were after printed in the City Mouse, and Country Mouse, viz. A milk white mouse, immortal and unchanged, She feared no danger for she knew no gin. The repeating of these lines set the company in laughter, and Mr Montagu took up the pen by him, and wrote on a loose piece of paper, and both of them making several essays to transverse, in like manner, other parts of the poem gave a beginning to that work, which was afterwards published to the great satisfaction of many people, and though no name was set to the book, yet it was quickly known who were the authors of it, and as the reputation Mr Montagu got thereby was the foundation of his being taken notice of, so it contributed not less to the credit of Mr Prior, who became thereby reconciled to his first patron, the Earl of Dorset1. Peterborough's evidence is to the effect that Prior had a large hand in composing the burlesque, for to an enquirer who asked whether Halifax "did not write the Country Mouse with Mr Prior,' he replied, 'Yes, just as if I was in a chaise with Mr Cheselden here, 1 Quoted in A. Dobson's Selected Poems of Matthew Prior, p. 214. drawn by his fine horse, and should say: "Lord, how finely we draw this chaise1!"'" But if the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse assisted the fortunes of Prior in 1687, the burlesque (if he really did compose most of it) is scarcely of sufficient excellence on which to base a reputation as a wit at the present day. The first four lines which are indisputably his, are by far the best in the whole wearisome compilation. In another way the year 1687 proved critical to Prior, for his uncle died, and though he left Matthew £1002, his death was a very serious loss to the young man. So it was fortunate that Matthew's talent in writing verse earned for him that refuge of destitute students, a tutorship, which, Whig though he was, drew him into a society not far removed from the Jacobites. On April 5, 1688, he was admitted a Fellow of his College, and was appointed to write the ode which the College presented every year to one of its benefactors, the Earl of Exeter. The Country Mouse and the City Mouse, together possibly with this new gift, which has as text, "I am that I am," won him the patronage of Lord Exeter, and his appointment as tutor to Lord Exeter's sons. During the few months that he held this post, he wrote the poems addressed to Lady Exeter; and one, a second epistle to Fleetwood Shephard, dated May 14, 1689, gives us a passing glimpse of his manner of life in the country at Burleigh: As soon as Phoebus' Rays inspect us, I sometimes study, sometimes Eat. 1 Joseph Spence, Anecdotes, London, J. R. Smith, 1858, p. 102. 2 See his will printed below in Appendix A. 3 Dialogues of the Dead, ut sup. p. 386. "The Credit it happened to gain at L.[ondon] was indifferent until my L.[ord] of Ex.[eter] was pleased not to discommend it at Burleigh." Thus of your Heroes and brave Boys, Are, that They did their Work, and din'd. The Books of which I'm chiefly fond, That rob in Clans, like Men o' th' Highland; Of Apes that storm, or keep a Town, Elks, Mermaids, Mummies, Witches, Satyrs, Which, tho' they're things I've no Concern in, Criticks I read on other Men, And Hypers upon Them again; From whose Remarks I give Opinion On twenty Books, yet ne'er look in One. And then for his real diversion: Sometimes I climb my Mare, and kick her 'Squire Shephard's Health-With all my heart1. This quiet easy life, however, was not for long, for soon after William's accession Lord Exeter broke up his home, and retired abroad. As for Prior, he was by this time known in the literary world, and he enjoyed the friendship of Charles Montagu, who had immediately been taken into William's favour, of Fleetwood Shephard, and also of Lord Dorset, whose high 1 Poems upon Several Occasions, ed. A. R. Waller, p. 14. |