Prior, MATTHEW, was born 21st July 1664. Some doubt prevails as to his birthplace; but the bulk of the evidence points to Wimborne Minster in East Dorset. His father is said to have been a joiner, who, coming to London, probably to educate his son, took up his abode in Stephen's Alley, Westminster. Young Prior went to Westminster School, then under the redoubtable Dr Busby. His father died, and, his mother being unable to pay his school-fees, he fell into the care of his uncle, a vintner in Channel (now Cannon) Row, who took him into the bar to keep accounts. Here his familiarity with Horace and Ovid attracted the attention of Charles, Earl of Dorset, and other visitors to the Rhenish Wine House, with the result that he returned to Westminster, his uncle finding him in clothes, and Dorset in books. At Westminster he formed a lifelong friendship with the two sons of the Honourable George Montague, the elder of whom afterwards became Earl of Halifax. In order to follow his friends to Cambridge, Prior, against Lord Dorset's wish, accepted a scholarship from the Duchess of Somerset at St John's College. He was admitted Bachelor in 1686, and in the following year wrote with Charles Montague the clever parody of Dryden, entitled The Hind and the Panther transvers'd to the Story of the Country-mouse and the City-mouse, which, according to tradition, greatly annoyed Dryden. In April 1688 Prior obtained a fellowship; and his composition of the yearly college tribute to the Exeter family, a rhymed excursus upon Exodus, iii. 14, led to his going to Burleigh as tutor to Lord Exeter's sons. Lord Exeter shortly afterwards removed to Italy, and Prior applied (through Fleetwood Shepherd) to his former patron Dorset for advancement. He was, being then twenty-six, made secretary to Lord Dursley, afterwards Earl of Berkeley, then going as ambassador to the Hague. In Holland Prior remained some years, finding especial favour with King William. In 1697 he brought over the Articles of Peace at the treaty of Ryswick; and, after being nominated Secretary of State for Ireland, he was made secretary in 1698 to the Earl of Portland's embassy to France, continuing this office under the Earl of Jersey. In this capacity he found favour both with Anne and Louis XIV. In 1699 he became an under-secretary of state, the university of Cambridge made him an M.A., and he succeeded Locke as commissioner of trade and plantations. In 1701 he entered parliament as member for East Grinstead. Under Anne he joined the Tories, and in 1711 was employed in the preliminaries of the peace of Utrecht, going to Paris as ambassador in the following year. With the queen's death in 1714 came the triumph of the Whigs, and in 1715 Prior, returning to England, was impeached and imprisoned. In 1717 he was excepted from the Act of Grace, but was, none the less, subsequently discharged. The remainder of his life was passed chiefly at Down-Hall in Essex, a country-house purchased partly with the profits of a subscription edition of his poems and partly with the assistance of his friend Lord Harley, at whose seat of Wimpole he died, 18th September 1721, being then in his fifty-eighth year. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, under a monument decorated with his bust by Antoine Coysevox, given to him by Louis XIV. His portrait was painted by Richardson (National Portrait Gallery), by Belle (St John's College), Kneller, Dahl, and others.
Of Prior's abilities as a diplomatist there are diverse opinions. Pope sneered at them. But Bolingbroke and Swift extolled them; and it is stated that the archives at Paris show him to have been far abler and more resourceful than is generally supposed. As a poet, in which capacity he is now remembered, he holds a unique position. Without much real sentiment or humanity, his verses have a wit, a grace, a neatness and a finish, which link him to the lighter Latin poets on the one hand, and to the best French writers of familiar verse on the other. Cowper praised his 'easy jingle,' Thackeray 'his good sense, his happy easy turns and melody.' He collected his poems, described by himself as consisting of 'Publick Panegyrics, Amorous Odes, Serious Reflexions, or Idle Tales' (many of which had been contributed to Dryden's and other miscellanies), in 1709, and again, in extended form, in 1718. By this latter issue he made £4000. His more ambitious pieces, Solomon on the Vanity of the World and a paraphrase of the old ballad of the Nut Brown Maid, are not now thought to be his best, although they had considerable popularity with the readers of the 18th century. But a third long poem, Alma; or, the Progress of the Mind, an imitation of Butler, is full of wit and waywardness. His Tales resemble the French contes too much in their objectionable qualities to be palatable to the English taste. He survives mainly by his purely playful efforts, his lyrics and his epigrams, not a few of which are unsurpassable. In the kind of piece known to the French as vers d'occasion he is unrivalled, and his beautiful stanzas to A Child of Quality have been as fortunate as Gray's Long Story in setting the tune to a host of versifiers. In 1740, long after his death, two volumes were published, one containing alleged Memoirs, in which there is little of his, and the other a number of posthumous verses, among which are some of his best. These are included in Evans's two-volume edition of 1779. Thackeray wrote admirably of Prior in his English Humourists (1853). See his Selected Poems, edited by the writer of this notice (Parchment Library, 1889); an article by Mr G. A. Aitken in the Contemporary Review for May 1890; and the edition of Prior's works by R. Brimley Johnson (2 vols. 1892).