In the parliament that met in 1701, he was chosen representative of East Grinstead. Perhaps it was about this time that he changed his party; for he voted for the impeachment of those lords who had persuaded the king to the partition-treaty, a treaty in which he had himself been ministerially employed.
A great part of queen Anne’s reign was a time of war, in which there was little employment for negotiators, and Prior had, therefore, leisure to make or to polish verses. When the battle of Blenheim called forth all the versemen, Prior, among the rest, took care to show his delight in the increasing honour of his country, by an epistle to Boileau.
He published, soon afterwards, a volume of poems, with the encomiastick character of his deceased patron, the duke of Dorset: it began with the College Exercise, and ended with the Nut-brown Maid.
The battle of Ramilles soon afterwards, in 1706, excited him to another effort of poetry. On this occasion he had fewer or less formidable rivals; and it would be not easy to name any other composition produced by that event which is now remembered.
Everything has its day. Through the reigns of William and Anne no prosperous event passed undignified by poetry. In the last war, when France was disgraced and overpowered in every quarter of the globe, when Spain, coming to her assistance, only shared her calamities, and the name of an Englishman was reverenced through Europe, no poet was heard amidst the general acclamation; the fame of our counsellors and heroes was entrusted to the Gazetteer.
The nation, in time, grew weary of the war, and the queen grew weary of her ministers. The war was burdensome, and the ministers were insolent. Harley and his friends began to hope that they might, by driving the whigs from court and from power, gratify, at once, the queen and the people. There was now a call for writers, who might convey intelligence of past abuses, and show the waste of publick money, the unreasonable conduct of the allies, the avarice of generals, the tyranny of minions, and the general danger of approaching ruin.
For this purpose a paper, called the Examiner, was periodically published, written, as it happened, by any wit of the party, and sometimes, as is said, by Mrs. Manley. Some are owned by Swift; and one, in ridicule of Garth’s verses to Godolphin upon the loss of his place, was written by Prior, and answered by Addison, who appears to have known the author either by conjecture or intelligence.
The tories, who were now in power, were in haste to end the war; and Prior, being recalled, 1710, to his former employment of making treaties, was sent, July, 1711, privately to Paris with propositions of peace. He was remembered at the French court; and, returning in about a month, brought with him the abbé Gaultier, and M. Mesnager, a minister from France, invested with full powers.
This transaction not being avowed, Mackay, the master of the Dover packet-boat, either zealously or officiously, seized Prior and his associates at Canterbury. It is easily supposed that they were soon released.
The negotiation was begun at Prior’s house, where the queen’s ministers met Mesnager, September 20,1711, and entered privately upon the great business. The importance of Prior appears from the mention made of him by St. John in his letter to the queen.
“My lord treasurer moved, and all my lords were of the same opinion, that Mr. Prior should be added to those who are empowered to sign; the reason for which is, because he, having personally treated with monsieur de Torcy, is the best witness we can produce of the sense in which the general preliminary engagements are entered into: besides which, as he is the best versed in matters of trade of all your majesty’s servants who have been trusted in this secret, if you shall think fit to employ him in the future treaty of commerce, it will be of consequence that he has been a party concerned in concluding that convention, which must be the rule of this treaty.”
The assembly of this important night was, in some degree, clandestine, the design of treating not being yet openly declared, and, when the whigs returned to power, was aggravated to a charge of high treason; though, as Prior remarks in his imperfect answer to the report of the committee of secrecy, no treaty ever was made without private interviews and preliminary discussions.
My business is not the history of the peace, but the life of Prior. The conferences began at Utrecht on the st of January, 1711-12, and the English plenipotentiaries arrived on the th. The ministers of the different potentates conferred and conferred; but the peace advanced so slowly that speedier methods were found necessary; and Bolingbroke was sent to Paris to adjust differences with less formality; Prior either accompanied him or followed him, and, after his departure, had the appointments and authority of an ambassador, though no publick character.
By some mistake of the queen’s orders, the court of France had been disgusted; and Bolingbroke says in his letter, “Dear Mat, hide the nakedness of thy country, and give the best turn thy fertile brain will furnish thee with to the blunders of thy countrymen, who are not much better politicians than the French are poets.”
Soon after, the duke of Shrewsbury went on a formal embassy to Paris. It is related by Boyer, that the intention was to have joined Prior in the same commission, but that Shrewsbury refused to be associated with a man so meanly born. Prior, therefore, continued to act without a title, till the duke returned, next year, to England, and then he assumed the style and dignity of ambassador.
But, while he continued in appearance a private man, he was treated with confidence by Lewis, who sent him with a letter to the queen, written in favour of the elector of Bavaria. “I shall expect,” says he, “with impatience, the return of Mr. Prior, whose conduct is very agreeable to me.” And while the duke of Shrewsbury was still at Paris, Bolingbroke wrote to Prior thus: “Monsieur de Torcy has a confidence in you; make use of it, once for all, upon this occasion, and convince him thoroughly, that we must give a different turn to our parliament and our people, according to their resolution at this crisis.”
Prior’s publick dignity and splendour commenced in August, 1713, and continued till the August following; but I am afraid that, according to the usual fate of greatness, it was attended with some perplexities and mortifications. He had not all that is customarily given to ambassadors; he hints to the queen, in an imperfect poem, that he had no service of plate; and it appeared, by the debts which he contracted, that his remittances were not punctually made.
On the st of August, 1714, ensued the downfal of the tories, and the degradation of Prior. He was recalled; but was not able to return, being detained by the debts which he had found it necessary to contract, and which were not discharged before March, though his old friend Montague was now at the head of the treasury.
He returned then as soon as he could, and was welcomed, on the th of March, 1715, by a warrant, but was, however, suffered to live in his own house, under the custody of the messenger, till he was examined before a committee of the privy council, of which Mr. Walpole was chairman, and lord Coningsby, Mr. Stanhope, and Mr. Lechmere, were the principal interrogators; who, in this examination, of which there is printed an account not unentertaining, behaved with the boisterousness of men elated by recent authority. They are represented as asking questions sometimes vague, sometimes insidious, and writing answers different from those which they received. Prior, however, seems to have been overpowered by their turbulence; for he confesses that he signed what, if he had ever come before a legal judicature, he should have contradicted or explained away. The oath was administered by Boscawen, a Middlesex justice, who, at last, was going to write his attestation on the wrong side of the paper.
They were very industrious to find some charge against Oxford; and asked Prior, with great earnestness, who was present when the preliminary articles were talked of or signed at his house? He told them, that either the earl of Oxford or the duke of Shrewsbury was absent, but he could not remember which; an answer which perplexed them, because it supplied no accusation against either. “Could any thing be more absurd,” says he, “or more inhuman, than to propose to me a question, by the answering of which I might, acc
ording to them, prove myself a traitor? And notwithstanding their solemn promise, that nothing which I could say should hurt myself, I had no reason to trust them; for they violated that promise about five hours after. However, I owned I was there present. Whether this was wisely done or no, I leave to my friends to determine.”
When he had signed the paper, he was told by Walpole, that the committee were not satisfied with his behaviour, nor could give such an account of it to the commons as might merit favour; and that they now thought a stricter confinement necessary than to his own house. “Here,” says he, “Boscawen played the moralist, and Coningsby the Christian, but both very awkwardly.” The messenger, in whose custody he was to be placed, was then called, and very decently asked by Coningsby, “if his house was secured by bars and bolts?” The messenger answered, “No,” with astonishment. At which Coningsby very angrily said, “Sir, you must secure this prisoner; it is for the safety of the nation: if he escape, you shall answer for it.”
They had already printed their report; and in this examination were endeavouring to find proofs.
He continued thus confined for some time; and Mr. Walpole, June 10, 1715, moved for an impeachment against him. What made him so acrimonious does not appear: he was by nature no thirster for blood. Prior was, a week after, committed to close custody, with orders that “no person should be admitted to see him without leave from the speaker.”
When, two years after, an act of grace was passed, he was excepted, and continued still in custody, which he had made less tedious by writing his Alma. He was, however, soon after discharged.
He had now his liberty, but he had nothing else. Whatever the profit of his employments might have been, he had always spent it; and, at the age of fifty-three, was, with all his abilities, in danger of penury, having yet no solid revenue but from the fellowship of his college, which, when in his exaltation he was censured for retaining it, he said, he could live upon at last.
Being, however, generally known and esteemed, he was encouraged to add other poems to those which he had printed, and to publish them by subscription. The expedient succeeded by the industry of many friends, who circulated the proposals, and the care of some, who, it is said, withheld the money from him, lest he should squander it. The price of the volume was two guineas; the whole collection was four thousand; to which lord Harley, the son of the earl of Oxford, to whom he had invariably adhered, added an equal sum for the purchase of Downhall, which Prior was to enjoy during life, and Harley after his decease.
He had now, what wits and philosophers have often wished, the power of passing the day in contemplative tranquillity. But it seems that busy men seldom live long in a state of quiet. It is not unlikely that his health declined. He complains of deafness; “for,” says he, “I took little care of my ears while I was not sure if my head was my own.”
Of any occurrences in his remaining life I have found no account. In a letter to Swift, “I have,” says he, “treated lady Harriot at Cambridge, (a fellow of a college treat!) and spoke verses to her in a gown and cap! What, the plenipotentiary, so far concerned in the damned peace at Utrecht! the man that makes up half the volume of terse prose, that makes up the report of the committee, speaking verses! Sic est, homo sum.”
He died at Wimpole, a seat of the earl of Oxford, on the th of September, 1721, and was buried in Westminster; where, on a monument, for which, as the “last piece of human vanity,” he left five hundred pounds, is engraven this epitaph:
Sui temporis historiam meditanti,
Paulatim obrepens febris
Operi simul et vitæ filum abrupit,
Sept. 18, An. Dom. 1721. Ætat. 57.
H.S.E.
Vir eximius
Serenissimis
Regi Gulielmo, reginæque MARIÆ,
In congressione fœderatorum
Hagæ anno 1690 celebrata;
Deinde Magnæ Britanniæ legatis;
Tum iis,
Qui anno 1697 pacem Ryswicki confecerunt;
Tum iis,
Qui apud Gallos annis proximis legationem obierunt;
Eodem etiam anno, 1697, in Hibernia
Secretarius;
Nee non in utroque honorabili consessu
Eorum,
Qui anno 1700 ordinandis commercii negotiis,
Quique anno 1711 dirigendis portorii rebus,
Præsidebant,
Commissionarius;
Postremo
Ab Anna,
Felicissinæ memoriæ regina,
Ad Ludovicum XIV. Galliæ regem
Missus anno 1711
De pace stabilienda,
(Pace etiamnum durante
Diuque ut boni jam omnes sperant duratura)
Cum summa potestate legatus;
12 MATTHÆUS PRIOR, armiger:
Qui
Hos omnes, quibus cumulatus est, titulos
Humanitatis, ingenii, eruditionis laude
Superavit;
Cui enim nascenti faciles arriserant musæ.
Hune puerum schola hie regia perpolivit;
Juvenem in collegio S’ti Johannis
Cantabrigia optimis scientiis instruxit;
Virum denique auxit; et perfecit.
Multa cum viris principibus consuetudo;
Ita natus, ita institutus,
A vatum chioro avelli nunquam potuit,
Sed solebat sæpe rerum civilium gravitatem
Amœniorum literarum studiis condire:
Et cum omne adeo poetices genus
Haud infeliciter tentaret,
Tum in fabellis concinne lepideque texendis
Mirus artifex
Neminem habuit parem.
Hæc liberalis animi oblectamenta,
Quam nullo illi labore constiterint,
Facile ii perspexere, quibus usus est amici;
Apud quos urbanitatum et leporum plenus
Cum ad rem, quæcunque forte inciderat,
Apte varie copioseque alluderet,
Interea nihil quæsitum, nihil vi expressum
Videbatur,
Sed omnia ultro effluere,
Et quasi jugi e fonte afiatim exuberare,
Ita suos tandem dubios reliquit,
Essetue in scriptis, poeta elegantior,
An in convictu comes jucundior.
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 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 i
mpertinent 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 saurais vous entendre.”
In a gay French company, where every one sang a little song or stanza, of which the burden was, “Bannissons la mélancolie;” 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 mélancolie.
Tradition represents him as willing to descend from the dignity of the poet and the 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 this 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,
“Strain’d 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.
Complete Works of Samuel Johnson Page 465