then recently established at St. John's College, Cambridge, by the Duchess of Somerset. Being the only Westminster boy at St. John's, he attracted exceptional notice; but for the time he alienated his patron.
In 1686 he took his bachelor's degree, and in the following year made his first literary essay, a reply to Dryden's ‘Hind and Panther.’ This was entitled ‘The Hind and the Panther transvers'd to the Story of the Country-Mouse and the City-Mouse.’ His ostensible collaborator in this satire, which had small literary merit but gave much satisfaction to the ‘no popery’ party, was Charles Montagu; but it is probable that Prior was the active partner (cf. Spence, Anecdotes, ed. Singer, 1858, p. 102; Beljame, Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre, p. 195). In April 1688 Prior obtained a fellowship, and composed the annual poetical tribute which St. John's College paid to one of its benefactors, the Earl of Exeter. This was a rhymed exercise, in the Cowley manner, upon Exodus iii. 14, and is preserved in Prior's poems. One of its results was that Prior became tutor to Lord Exeter's sons. His office, however, was of brief duration, for Lord Exeter broke up his household after the revolution and went to Italy. Thereupon Prior applied to his old patron, Lord Dorset, and ultimately, probably by the good offices of Fleetwood Sheppard, was appointed secretary to Lord Dursley (afterwards Earl of Berkeley), then starting as King William's ambassador to the Hague. This appointment is usually regarded as a reward of literary merit; but apart from his share in the ‘Town and Country Mouse,’ the interest of which was mainly political, Prior had at this date produced nothing of importance, and his post might have been given to any other university man of promise who could command the patronage of Dorset. In Holland he stayed for several years, being made in the interim gentleman of the bedchamber to King William, with whom he found considerable favour, especially during the great congress of 1691. He also at this time wrote several court poems, notably a ‘Hymn to the Sun,’ 1694; memorial verses on Queen Mary's death, 1695; and an admirable ballad paraphrase of Boileau's pompous ‘Ode sur la Prise de Namur,’ which stronghold, it will be remembered, had fallen to the French in 1692, only to be retaken by the English three years later. This last jeu d'esprit was published anonymously in September 1695. Another metrical tribute to William followed the assassination plot of 1696, to which year, in addition, belongs the clever little occasional piece, not printed until long after its author's death, entitled ‘The Secretary,’ and describing his distractions while in Holland.
Throughout all this period, Prior was acting diligently as a diplomatist. It has sometimes been considered that his qualifications in this way were slight; but his unprinted papers completely negative this impression. He had the good fortune to please both Anne and Louis XIV, as well as William; and the fact that Swift and Bolingbroke later acknowledged his business aptitude and acquaintance with matters of trade may fairly be set against any contention to the contrary on the part of political opponents.
In 1697 he was employed as secretary in the negotiations at the treaty of Ryswick, for bringing over the articles of peace in connection with which, ‘to their Excellencies the Lords Justicies,’ he received a gratuity of two hundred guineas. Subsequently he was nominated secretary of state in Ireland, and then, in 1698, he went to Paris as secretary to the embassy, serving successively under the Earl of Portland and the Earl of Jersey, with the latter of whom he returned to England. But he went again to Paris for some time with the Earl of Manchester, and then, after ‘a very particular audience’ with his royal master, in August 1699, at Loo in Holland, was sent home in the following November with the latest tidings of the pending partition treaty. His old master, Lord Jersey, was secretary of state, and Prior became an under-secretary. In the winter of 1699 he produced his ‘Carmen Seculare for the Year 1700,’ a glorification of the ‘acts and gests’ of ‘the Nassovian.’ The university of Cambridge made him an M.A., and upon the retirement of John Locke, invalided, he became a commissioner of trade and plantations, afterwards entering parliament as member for East Grinstead. His senatorial career was but short, as the parliament in which he sat only lasted from February to June 1701. In the impeachment by the tories of Somers, Orford, and Halifax for their share in framing the partition treaty, Prior followed Lord Jersey in voting against those lords; but it is alleged that neither he nor Jersey had ever favoured the negotiation, although they considered themselves bound to obey the king's orders, and this, as far as Prior is concerned, receives support from his own words in the later poem of ‘The Conversation,’ 1720:
Matthew, who knew the whole intrigue,
Ne'er much approv'd that mystic league.
The explanation given by his friend, Sir James Montagu—namely, that he had to
