The Dial (Third Series)/Volume 75/Matthew Prior
MATTHEW PRIOR
MATTHEW PRIOR was undoubtedly one of the principal precursors of the Augustan age of English poetry; however, born as he was in 1664, his lighter verses are redeemed somewhat from the tedious classical anaesthesia that we associate with the eighteenth century by the fact that they still carry with them a suggestion of the delightful sophisticated levity which belonged to the Caroline epoch.
Matthew Prior, so we are assured by Dr Johnson, was "one of those that have burst out from an obscure original to great eminence." Whether or not the ancient county of Dorset is justified in claiming Wimborne Minster as the place of his actual birth, it is clear that it was from the immediate vicinity of that old-world country town that his progenitors sprang. Indeed it is within the memory of our own generation that the last of the family, Martha Prior, daughter of a simple shepherd, died at Godmanston.
The first authentic glimpse we get of the young poet is as a wine carrier in his uncle's tavern in London. It was here that Lord Dorset discovered him, Horace in hand, and with that generous munificence, so characteristic of the restoration, paid for his schooling at Westminster and later for his entrance to St John's College, Cambridge. Matthew Prior it is quite evident made the best of his opportunities. He had a good "sense of direction," if we may be permitted to use that invidious modern phrase, and cultivated with the utmost zeal useful friendships. In London during the vacations he sought the company of the wits and was one of those who frequented Wills' Coffee-House and who during the long drawn-out evenings of the late summer would sit on the balcony of that famous resort "proud to dip a finger and thumb into Mr Dryden's snuff-box." This privilege, however, in no way prevented him from cleverly parodying in his City Mouse and Country Mouse the famous pro-Catholic poem of the Poet Laureate. It was, in fact, upon this undergraduate exercise that his future career was founded. He became secretary to the Ambassador at the Hague and, because of a series of chances, remained for several years as England's chief representative "at this central cogwheel of the cumbrous engine" of the Coalition.
From a pecuniary point of view the berth was not as satisfactory as it might have been, and Prior's letters from now on are filled with fretful references to the inadequacy of the Government's payment of twenty shillings a day with an allowance for "reasonable extraordinaries." He was never tired of deploring the fact that his creditors, as he put it, "were brisker in business than the Treasury." "Who has ever heard," he exclaimed, "of a professed panegyric poet that was able to advance two guineas to the public?" In vain he pointed out to the preoccupied authorities at home "that a little house, this winter, would be convenient in so cold a country as Holland." His agitated pleas were greeted with evasions and procrastinations and the poet-diplomatist was left "to scramble at ordinaries with Switzers or French Protestants." One of his own poems suggests, however, that his time was not entirely occupied with his ambassadorial duties. He too had, we may assume, as well as another, his margins, his moments, his golden week-ends when it mattered not a rush to him whether or no the "disaffected" reached the shores of England.
"In a little Dutch-chaise on a Saturday night
On my left hand my Horace, a Nymph on my right."
As the years passed his financial straits were considerably relieved by a sinecure secretaryship in Dublin, from which he drew for several years, though never setting foot in the Island, remuneration to the tune of nearly £1000 a year.
From the Hague he was eventually transferred to Paris. His letters from that capital are full of entertaining gossipy information. He was shown over the royal palace and as he viewed Le Brun's gorgeous pictures representing the victories of Louis XIV was asked whether Hampton Court could be said to rival such a display. "The monuments of my master's actions" he replied appositely enough, "are to be seen everywhere but in his own house." He visited the court of the exiled King of England and though the account he gives of that fallen monarch was not exactly in the best of taste it has its own interest: "I faced old James the other day at St Cloud. Vive Guillaume! You never saw such a strange figure as the old bully is, lean, worn and riv'led."
On his return to England he abandons his friends the Whigs and turns Tory, actually for a short time gaining a seat in the House of Commons, for which act of treachery, on the death of Queen Anne and the return of the opposition, he is held in custody for two years and is, so he fancies, in no small danger of losing his life.
But even so he is still full of resource. He conceives the fortunate idea of issuing a "tall folio" of his poems done on "paper imperial and the largest in England." He manages to interest innumerable people in his project: Jonathan Swift even exerts himself and extracts not less than £200 from what he called the "hedge country" of his residence. The volumes are sold for two guineas each and Matthew Prior is soon rewarded by having four thousand pounds in his fob and this with an equal sum which he owed to the generosity of Lord Oxford and with the money due to him from his fellowship at John's ensures the poet "his bread and butter at the last." And yet when one looks over this famous collection of poems how few of them seem to us at this later date worthy of preservation. How weary one grows of his Cupids and Chloes and how truly gross and artificial so many of his poems appear! Their only redeeming quality lies, it would seem, in a certain airy amorousness which sometimes, but by no means always, carries with it a happy distinctive tone derived, we may perhaps be justified in surmising, from those wanton digressions in his private life which were to be afterwards so deplored by Samuel Johnson. For there can be small doubt that this "ambassador of meane extraction" as Queen Anne used to call him, this "creature" of Dorset's, was extremely addicted to the pursuit of the not altogether intangible delights which come to those who indulge in what the Elizabethans were wont to name as the pastime of "wenching."
Mat Prior was in fact a most incorrigible amorist. He would spend an evening with Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope, and Swift and then go off gay and incontinent to this or that little midnight drab.
"Fair Thames she haunts, and every neighbouring grove
Sacred to soft recess, and gentle love."
"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 were but my visits, but thou art my home."
However much one may regret in his poems the presence of a certain note of hard artificial and insensitive cynicism, one cannot but accede that he is able in his own facile way better almost than any other English poet to indicate the unwisdom of putting too high a value upon the ungenerous temptation of inordinate chastity. The iniquity of thus capriciously damming up one of the main streams of human happiness seems to have lodged itself very firmly in this Dorset man's brain. And he was at pains to whisper his perilous convictions into the pretty conch-like ears of every young girl he had to do with.
"Never fancy time's before you,
Youth, believe me, will away;
Then alas! who will adore you
Or to wrinkles tribute pay.
All the swains on you attending
Show how much your charms deserve;
But, miser-like, for fear of spending,
You amidst your plenty starve.
While a thousand freer lasses,
Who their youth and charms employ,
Though your beauty theirs surpasses,
Live in far more perfect Joy."
His frolic philosophy shows scant respect even towards the state of Holy Matrimony. It would seem that his profligate mind could find an excuse to justify the most reprehensible indulgence. His reasoning on this head cannot but be painful reading for married ears! What home would be safe if punishment were made to fit the crime at this rate?
"Since we your husband daily see
So jealous out of season
Phyllis, let you and I agree
To make him so with reason."
But it would be a mistake to think that Matthew Prior was altogether incapable of writing in a more moral vein. His book of poems ends with the epitaph he composed for the tomb of Sir Thomas Powys.
"Here lies Sir Thomas Powys Knight. . . .
What by example he taught throughout his life
At his death he recommended to his family and friends:
'To fear God, and live uprightly'
Let who ever reads this stone
Be wise, and be instructed."
It is, however, unlikely that the author of the inscription, gave, if the truth were known, very much attention to this death-bed exhortation, any more, with shame be it spoken, than does up to the present time the author of this Essay—the humblest and least punctilious of the large and graceless brood which owes its existence to the pious and potent loins of the Knight of Lilford Hall.
"To the grave with the dead
And the living to the bread."
With the money he derived from his book and with the gift of the house in Essex that he had from Lord Oxford, Matthew Prior proposed to spend the last years of his life happily enough. He had grown a little deaf for no other reason, as he explained, than that "he had not thought of taking care of his ears, while not sure of his head." But apparently this slight physical handicap in no way interfered with his relish for life. We hear of him planting quincunxes in the garden of his manor, or spending long happy months at Wimple, Oxford's country seat, delighted as much by the grace of the little Lady Margaret as he had before been by the manners "wild as colt untam'd" of the high-spirited Kitty, afterwards to become the famous Duchess of Queensbury whom Beau Nash is said to have treated so roughly and who living to the latter end of the eighteenth century died, at last, characteristically enough, from a surfeit of cherries!
It was at Wimple that Matthew Prior himself ended his life on September 18, 1721. His will was found to contain a legacy to a woman whom Dr Johnson does not hesitate to describe as "a despicable drab of the lowest species."
In a letter written at the time we read:
"I find poor Prior's will makes noise in town much to his disadvantage. Some malicious fellows have had the curiosity to go and inquire of the ale-house woman what sort of conversation Prior had with her. The ungrateful strumpet is very free of telling it and gives such accounts as afford much diversion."
Also from Arbuthnot we get a suggestive glimpse of this side of the poet's life, which was, after all, so singularly removed from the stately quincunxes, round which on August evenings "My noble, lovely little Peggy" was wont to play and trip it. "We are to have a bowl of punch at Bessy Cox's. She would fain have put it upon
Lewis that she was his Emma; she owned Flanders Jane was his Chloe."
Matthew Prior had long had Westminster Abbey "in his eye" and in the end he indulged "a last piece of human vanity" by bequeathing five hundred pounds towards the erection of the preposterous monument which now stands above his grave.
The actual place of his burial is at the feet of Edmund Spenser in the poet's corner.
It must be confessed there appears something curiously incongruous about a trick of fortune which could cause the wanton paramour of Mistress Besse Cox to lie down in the dust, head to heel, with none other than the fastidious author of the Faerie Queene.