Books: Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope
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Samuel Johnson >> Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope
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14 Transcribed from the 1891 Cassell and Company edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
THE LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS: PRIOR, CONGREVE, BLACKMORE AND POPE
INTRODUCTION
When, at the age of sixty-eight, Johnson was writing these "Lives of
the English Poets," he had caused omissions to be made from the
poems of Rochester, and was asked whether he would allow the
printers to give all the verse of Prior. Boswell quoted a censure
by Lord Hailes of "those impure tales which will be the eternal
opprobrium of their ingenious author." Johnson replied, "Sir, Lord
Hailes has forgot. There is nothing in Prior that will excite to
lewdness;" and when Boswell further urged, he put his questionings
aside, and added, "No, sir, Prior is a lady's book. No lady is
ashamed to have it standing in her library." Johnson distinguished
strongly, as every wise man does, between offence against
convention, and offence against morality.
In Congreve's plays he recognised the wit but condemned the morals,
and in the case of Blackmore the regard for the religious purpose of
Blackmore's poem on "The Creation" gave to Johnson, as to Addison,
an undue sense of its literary value.
With his "Life of Pope," which occupies more than two-thirds of this
volume, Johnson took especial pains. "He wrote it," says Boswell,
"'con amore,' both from the early possession which that writer had
taken of his mind, and from the pleasure which he must have felt in
for ever silencing all attempts to lessen his poetical fame. . . . I
remember once to have heard Johnson say, 'Sir, a thousand years may
elapse before there shall appear another man with a power of
versification equal to that of Pope.'"
Pope's laurel, since Johnson's days, has flourished, without showing
a dead bough, for all the frosts of hostile criticism.
H. M.
PRIOR
Matthew Prior is one of those that have burst out from an obscure
original to great eminence. He was born July 21, 1664, according to
some, at Wimborne, in Dorsetshire, of I know not what parents;
others say that he was the son of a joiner of London: he was
perhaps willing enough to leave his birth unsettled, in hope, like
Don Quixote, that the historian of his actions might find him some
illustrious alliance. He is supposed to have fallen, by his
father's death, into the hands of his uncle, a vintner near Charing
Cross, who sent him for some time to Dr. Busby, at Westminster; but,
not intending to give him any education beyond that of the school,
took him, when he was well advanced in literature, to his own house,
where the Earl of Dorset, celebrated for patronage of genius, found
him by chance, as Burnet relates, reading Horace, and was so well
pleased with his proficiency, that he undertook the care and cost of
his academical education. He entered his name in St. John's
College, at Cambridge, in 1682, in his eighteenth year; and it may
be reasonably supposed that he was distinguished among his
contemporaries. He became a Bachelor, as is usual, in four years,
and two years afterwards wrote the poem on the Deity, which stands
first in his volume.
It is the established practice of that College to send every year to
the Earl of Exeter some poems upon sacred subjects, in
acknowledgment of a benefaction enjoyed by them from the bounty of
his ancestor. On this occasion were those verses written, which,
though nothing is said of their success, seem to have recommended
him to some notice; for his praise of the countess's music, and his
lines on the famous picture of Seneca, afford reason for imagining
that he was more or less conversant with that family.
The same year he published "The City Mouse and Country Mouse," to
ridicule Dryden's "Hind and Panther," in conjunction with Mr.
Montague. There is a story of great pain suffered, and of tears
shed, on this occasion by Dryden, who thought it hard that "an old
man should be so treated by those to whom he had always been civil."
By tales like these is the envy raised by superior abilities every
day gratified. When they are attacked every one hopes to see them
humbled; what is hoped is readily believed, and what is believed is
confidently told. Dryden had been more accustomed to hostilities
than that such enemies should break his quiet; and, if we can
suppose him vexed, it would be hard to deny him sense enough to
conceal his uneasiness.
"The City Mouse and Country Mouse" procured its authors more solid
advantages than the pleasure of fretting Dryden, for they were both
speedily preferred. Montague, indeed, obtained the first notice
with some degree of discontent, as it seems, in Prior, who probably
knew that his own part of the performance was the best. He had not,
however, much reason to complain, for he came to London and obtained
such notice that (in 1691) he was sent to the Congress at the Hague
as secretary to the embassy. In this assembly of princes and
nobles, to which Europe has perhaps scarcely seen anything equal,
was formed the grand alliance against Louis, which at last did not
produce effects proportionate so the magnificence of the
transaction.
The conduct of Prior, in this splendid initiation into public
business, was so pleasing to King William, that he made him one of
the gentlemen of his bedchamber; and he is supposed to have passed
some of the next years in the quiet cultivation of literature and
poetry.
The death of Queen Mary (in 1695) produced a subject for all the
writers--perhaps no funeral was ever so poetically attended.
Dryden, indeed, as a man discountenanced and deprived, was silent;
but scarcely any other maker of verses omitted to bring his tribute
of tuneful sorrow. An emulation of elegy was universal. Mary's
praise was not confined to the English language, but fills a great
part of the Musae Anglicanae.
Prior, who was both a poet and a courtier, was too diligent to miss
this opportunity of respect. He wrote a long ode, which was
presented to the king, by whom it was not likely to be ever read.
In two years he was secretary to another embassy at the Treaty of
Ryswick (in 1697), and next year had the same office at the court of
France, where he is said to have been considered with great
distinction. As he was one day surveying the apartments at
Versailles, being shown the "Victories of Louis," painted by Le
Brun, and asked whether the King of England's palace had any such
decorations: "The monuments of my master's actions," said he, "are
to be seen everywhere but in his own house."
The pictures of Le Brun are not only in themselves sufficiently
ostentatious, but were explained by inscriptions so arrogant, that
Boileau and Racine thought it necessary to make them more simple.
He was in the following year at Leo with the king, from whom, after
a long audience, he carried orders to England, and upon his arrival
became Under Secretary of State in the Earl of Jersey's office, a
post which he did not retain long, because Jersey was removed, but
he was soon made Commissioner of Trade.
This year (1700) produced one of his longest and most splendid
compositions, the "Carmen Seculare," in which he exhausts all his
powers of celebration. I mean not to accuse him of flattery; he
probably thought all that he writ, and retained as much veracity as
can be properly exacted from a poet professedly encomiastic. King
William supplied copious materials for either verse or prose. His
whole life had been action, and none ever denied him the resplendent
qualities of steady resolution and personal courage. He was really
in Prior's mind what he represents him in his verses; he considered
him as a hero, and was accustomed to say that he praised others in
compliance with the fashion, but that in celebrating King William he
followed his inclination. To Prior, gratitude would dictate praise,
which reason would not refuse.
Among the advantages to arise from the future years of William's
reign, he mentions a Society for Useful Arts, and among them:-
"Some that with care true eloquence shall teach,
And to just idioms fix our doubtful speech;
That from our writers distant realms may know
The thanks we to our monarchs owe,
And schools profess our tongue through every land
That has invoked his aid, or blessed his hand."
Tickell, in his "Prospect of Peace," has the same hope of a new
academy:-
"In happy chains our daring language bound,
Shall sport no more in arbitrary sound."
Whether the similitude of those passages, which exhibit the same
thought on the same occasion, proceeded from accident or imitation,
is not easy to determine. Tickell might have been impressed with
his expectation by Swift's "Proposal for Ascertaining the English
Language," then lately published.
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
himself had 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 verse-men, 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 encomiastic character of his deceased patron, the
Earl of Dorset. It began with the College exercise, and ended with
the "Nutbrown Maid."
The Battle of Ramillies 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 public
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 Abbe 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 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 treaty 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 1st of January (1711-12),
and the English plenipotentiaries arrived on the 15th. 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 public 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 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 Louis, 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 public 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 1st of August, 1714, ensued the downfall 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 25th of
March 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 anything be more absurd," says he, "or more inhuman,
than to propose to me a question, by the answering of which I might,
according to them, prove myself a traitor? And notwithstanding
their solemn promise that nothing which I should 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
indecently 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 Down Hall, 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 of his remaining life I have found no account.
In a letter to Swift, "I have," says he, "treated Lady Harriet, 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 18th 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 Vitae filum abrupit,
Sept. 18. An. Dom. 1721. AEtat. 57.
H.S.E.
Vir Eximius Serenissimis
Regi GULIELMO Reginaeque MARIAE
In Congressione Foederatorum
Hagae anno 1690 celebrata,
Deinde Magnae Britanniae Legatis
Tum iis,
Qui anno 1697 Pacem RYSWICKI confecerunt,
Tum iis,
Qui apud Gallos annie proximis Legationem obierunt
Eodem etiani anno 1657 in Hibernia
SECRETARIUS;
Necnon in utroque Honorabili consessu
Eorum,
Qui anno 1700 ordinandis Commercii negotiis,
Quique anno 1711 dirigendis Portorii rebus,
Praeidebant,
COMMISSIONARIUS;
Postremo ab ANNA,
Felicissimae memoriae Regina,
Ad LUDOVICUM XIV. Galliae Regem
Missus anno 1711
De Pace stabilienda
(Pace etiam num durante
Diuque ut boni jam omnes sperant duratura),
Cum sunma potestate Legatus;
MATTHAES PRIOR Armiger
Qui
Hos omnes, quibus cumulates est, Titulos
Humanitatis, Ingenii, Ereditionis laude
Superavit;
Cui enim nascenti faciles arriserant Mesae.
Hunc Puerum Schola hic Regia perpolivit;
Jevenem in Collegio S'ti Johannis
Cantabrigia optimis Scientiis instruxit;
Virum denique auxit, et perfecit,
Multa cum viris Principibus censuetudo;
Ita natus, ita institutus,
A Vatam Choro avelli numquam potuit,
Sed solebat saepe rerum civilium gravitatem
Amoeniorum Literarum Studiis condire:
Et cum omne adeo Poetices genus
Haud infeliciter tentaret,
Tum in Fabellis concinne lepideque texendis
Mirus Artifex
Neminem habuit parem.
Haec liberalis animi oblectamenta:
Quam nullo illi labore constiterint,
Facile ii perspexere, quibus usus est Amici;
Apud quos Urbanitatem et Leporum plenus
Cum ad rem, quaecunque forte inciderat,
Apte varie copioseque alluderet,
Interea nihil quaesitum, nihil vi expressum
Videbatur,
Sed omnia ultro effluere,
Et quasi jugi e foote affatim exuberare,
Ita suos tandem dubios reliquit,
Essetne in Scriptis, Poeta Elegantior,
An in Convictu, Comes Jocundior.
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 own 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 impertinent 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 scaurois
vous entendre."
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