Among the advantages to arife from the future years of William's reign, he mentions Societies for ufeful Arts, and among them

Some that with care true eloquence fhall teach,

And to just idioms fix our doubtful fpeech;

That from our writers diftant realms may

know

The thanks we to our monarch owe,

And schools profess our tongue through

every land,

That has invok'd his aid, or bless'd his hand.

Tickell, in his Profpect of Peace, has the fame hope of a new academy:

In

In happy chains our daring language

bound,

Shall sport no more in arbitrary found.

Whether the fimilitude of those paffages which exhibit the fame thought on the fame occafion proceeded from accident or imitation, is not eafy to determine. Tickell might have been impreffed with his expectation by Swift's Propofal for afcertaining the English Language, then lately published.

In the parliament that met in 1701, he was chofen representative of East Grinstead. Perhaps it was about this time that he changed his party; for he voted for the impeachment of thofe lords who had perfuaded the king to the Par

tition

tition-treaty, a treaty in which he had himself been minifterially 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 leifure to make or to polish verses. When the battle of Blenheim called forth all the verse-men, Prior, among the reft, took care to fhew his delight in the increafing honour of his country by an Epiftlé to Boileau.

He publifhed foon afterwards a volume of poems, with the encomiaftick character of his deceafed patron the duke of Dorset: it began with the College Exercife, and ended with the Nutbrown Maid.

The

The battle of Ramillies foon afterwards (in 1706) excited him to another effort of poetry. On this occafion he had fewer or less formidable rivals; and it would be not easy to name any other compofition produced by that event which is now remembered.

Every thing has its day. Through the reigns of William and Anne no profperous event paffed undignified by poetry. In the laft war, when France was difgraced and overpowered in every quarter of the globe, when Spain coming to her affiftance only fhared her calamities, and the name of an Englishman was reverenced through Europe, no poet was heard amidst the general acclamation;

the

the fame of our counsellors and heroes

was intrufted to the Gazetteer.

The nation in time grew weary of

the war, and the queen grew weary of her minifters. The war was burden

fome, and the minifters were infolent. 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 paft abuses, and fhew 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