תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

forward his affairs became complicated with those of the Peace of Utrecht, of which he could say, "Magna pars fui." Appointed our public minister in France-veering between London and Paris as a residence, surrounded by innumerable intrigues, and fascinated by the "fell genius" of Bolingbroke-his situation was, for some years, most uneasy and unhappy. He saw a tempest approaching, and had not the resolution or energy to prepare for it. His motives, nevertheless, were disinterested. His salary was ill-paid, his private fortune was insecure, and he knew that his party was tottering; yet he continued true to their interests, and was soon called to suffer in their cause. Returning home on the 25th of March 1715, he found an order of Council, which committed him to custody, waiting as his salutation. An examination before the Privy Council, an impeachment at the instance of Walpole, close imprisonment, and, in 1717, an exception from the Act of Grace, all followed in succession; and some probably expected that the author of the "Thief and the Cordelier" was to share the fate of his famous hero. Suddenly, however, and unaccountably, he was discharged. It is significant, that one of the principal accusations brought against him and Bolingbroke was, that they had been unseasonably witty during the most important and solemn negotiations. We believe the ruling passion would have been as strong at death with them as during negotiation; and that if tried for their lives and condemned, even as Danton and Camille Desmoulins, in similar circumstances, amused themselves with throwing paper pellets at their judges, Prior and Bolingbroke would have covered their everlasting retreat amidst a shower of word and wit missiles.

He was now at large, but it was for some time the liberty of a beggar. During his immersion in public life he had never altogether neglected literature. A good many years before this, he had published a collection of his "Poems," beginning with his "College Exercises," and ending with the "Nut-brown Maid." When reduced to his own resources, he sought to aid himself by collecting all his poems, and publishing them by subscription. The volume included

"Solomon," which was newly written, and was issued at two guineas. It produced for him, in all, the large amount of £4000. Lord Harley, at the same time, expended an equal sum in purchasing Down Hall, a villa in Essex, and munificently bestowed it on the Poet. He had, besides, the proceeds of his fellowship. And now, arrived at a mature but not very advanced age, possessed of a moderate competence, and with all his faculties in complete preservation, he was preparing to write a history of his own times, which would have been an exceedingly interesting as well as instructive work, when he was cut off by a slow fever, September 18, 1721. He was a month or two beyond fifty-seven years. He died at Wimple, near Cambridge, then the seat of the Earl of Oxford. He desired to be buried in Westminster Abbey, and left £500 to defray the expenses of a monument to his memory; and there, accordingly, he lies, beneath a bust by Coriveaux, and a long bad Latin inscription by an anonymous friend.

[ocr errors]

Not very much is known of the private life and manners of this Poet, and what is known is not very favourable. He excelled, indeed, in conversation, and especially in repartee; but his tastes, in certain directions, were coarse. He was never married; and except Mrs Rowe, the only objects-so far as we know-of his tenderness were quite unworthy of him. The one whom he called his Chloe was the widow of a little alehouse-keeper, and, after Prior's death, she married a cobbler. Her sobriquet was Flanders Jane. AnotherElizabeth Cox-whom, when he died, he had been about to marry, and who thought herself his Emma, is characterised by Dr Arbuthnot, in terms too coarse to be quoted, as a very worthless character. Pope says, "Prior was not a right good. man;" and Richardson states that he would leave the company of Pope and Swift, and smoke a pipe with a common soldier and his wife in Longacre; yet by Harley and Bolingbroke he was loved, trusted, and esteemed. Of his personal habits little else is recorded, except, incidentally by Swift, "that he walked to make himself fat, and was generally troubled with a cough, which he called only a cold."

His writings have been accurately and comprehensively divided by Dr Johnson into his "Tales," his "Occasional Poems," ""Alma," and "Solomon." His "Tales" are, so far as the incidents are concerned, in general, borrowed, but the handling is Prior's own. They are sprightly and amusing, and have been compared to the productions of that "fable tree," Fontaine. He that touches pitch must run his chance of being defiled, but Prior carries away less of it from his rather ticklish themes than might have been expected. Should any one insist that two or three of these stories are blots, he must, at the same time, admit that they are small in size; that they bear no proportion to the mass of his poetry; and that, as compositions, they are too clever and characteristic to be omitted. His "Occasional Poems" are of unequal merit. His love verses are often graceful and often very trifling. His translations from Callimachus are called by Johnson "licentious "-i. e., too free in their rendering and by other critics, stiff and hard. To us they read very much like a portion of Cowper's "Homer," and, like it, are full of a grave and true, if somewhat faint and sluggish, fire. His war poetry is, to a great extent, spoiled by its classical allusions, which are dragged in as by cart-ropes, instead of flowing naturally from the poet's memory or imagination. Johnson calls his "Henry and Emma a "dull and tedious dialogue," and by doing so has subjected himself to the poetical anathema of Cowper. Certainly, as compared with the ancient ballad of the "Nut-brown Maid," "Henry and Emma" is artificial and poor; but this arises not from the subject, but from Prior's treatment of it. There is no task more difficult, and few more invidious, than that of modernising an ancient and favourite poem. It may be doubted if any one save Dryden has fully succeeded in it. Pope, in his "Temple of Fame," certainly has not; nor has "Henry and Emma," in which, if the numbers are smoother than in the ancient poem, much of the race, and freshness, and the wild woodland charm, is lost. We cannot but count Johnson's criticism exceedingly prosaic and hypercritical, when he says, "The example of Emma, who resolves to fol

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Prior, in

[ocr errors]

low an outlawed murderer wherever fear and guilt shall drive him, deserves no imitation; and the experiment, by which Henry tries the lady's constancy, is such as must end either in infamy to her or in disappointment to himself." We suspect none ever thought that the Poet meant to recommend Emma's conduct as a model, and few were likely to follow it even though he had. The story is simply an ingenious artifice, such as Malcolm, in Macbeth, employs in blackening his own character to Macduff; and the object of the Poet is to shew how love, in certain circumstances, spurns the bounds of prudence, and sets "infamy" at defiance.

"Alma" is said, by Johnson, to be imitated from Butler's "Hudibras," although Cowper, on the contrary, says, "They were both favourites of mine, and I often read them, but never saw in them the least resemblance to each other; nor do I now, except that they are composed in the same measure. "Hudibras" has a story, although a very slight one, and one that fades away and is lost in the thick umbrage of the wit and learning. "Alma" has none. "Hudibras" laughs at religion at least, the religion of the Puritans. turns philosophy into ridicule. pack down his enormous mass Prior manages, by spreading his seem greater than in reality it is. gent profusion, certain of the weight, but careless of the stamp. Prior has comparatively little, but with this little he makes a fine show." The two poems resemble each other more in their faults than in their merits. Both are often obscure and recondite in their allusions, and sometimes offensively coarse in their language. Next to his "Tales," however, "Alma" has been the most popular of Prior's works. It is ever lively, discursive, and entertaining.

"Alma" Butler has to repress and of learned allusions, while knowledge thin, to make it "Butler pours out a negli

We are, perhaps, singular in our opinion; but we cannot help, along with Prior himself, preferring "Solomon," to all his other productions. Heavy in parts, and in construction rather a planless paraphrase than a well-arranged story, with some broken lines and one egregiously absurd passage, in which Solomon is made to predict and describe the glories

of Great Britain, it is a grave, high-toned, and majestic poem. Its versification is in general rotund and rollingits moral excellent-and its descriptions terse and graphic. The whole story of Abra is admirable, and has touches of nature in it little inferior to Shakspeare, as in that exquisite line

"When I called another, Abra came."

In no poem, and in no prose work, we believe, has so much justice ever been done to the character of Israel's "Grand Monarque" the most splendid of sensualists - the most gorgeous of love poets-the most amiable of despots-the most sententious of moralists-whose magnificent wealth, commercial enterprise, love of peace and of pomp, wondrous wisdom, and, for his age, universal knowledge, errors, and faults, which, like his merits and virtues, were on a colossal scale, and were gilded, though not redeemed, by the gusto with which he entered on them-whose fame, as the builder of the temple and of the forest palace of Lebanon, as the husband of Pharaoh's daughter, as the admired of the magnificent Queen of Sheba-whose memorable estrangement from God, and still more memorable return, recorded by himself in the Book of Ecclesiastes, all taken together, rendered him, if not the most consistent or lovely, certainly the greatest, broadest, and most brilliant of Israel's monarchs; so that in the lustre of the glory of Solomon, that of the deep-hearted David, the holy Hezekiah, and the pious and ardent Josiah, fades and dwindles away. Nowhere, save in his own page, is this extraordinary person pictured in such life-like and vivid colours as in Prior's "Solomon."

This production is one of the best of a particular, and we may add, a very ambitious class of poems-those, namely, founded on Scripture history or Scripture song. Such, besides many others, are Cowley's "Davideis," Giles Fletcher's "Christ's Victory," Young's "Paraphrase of the Book of Job," Smart's "David," Moore's and Byron's "Hebrew Melodies," Croly's "Scenes from Scripture," and Thomas Aird's "Nebuchadnezzar," and "Demoniac." These, while all belonging to one class of poetry, and attesting one primal

« הקודםהמשך »