MATTHEW PRIOR
MATTHEW PRIOR was undoubtedly one of the principal precursors of the Augustan age of English poetry; however, born as he was in 1664, his lighter verses are redeemed somewhat from the tedious classical anaesthesia that we associate with the eighteenth century by the fact that they still carry with them a suggestion of the delightful sophisticated levity which belonged to the Caroline epoch.
Matthew Prior, so we are assured by Dr Johnson, was "one of those that have burst out from an obscure original to great eminence." Whether or not the ancient county of Dorset is justified in claiming Wimborne Minster as the place of his actual birth, it is clear that it was from the immediate vicinity of that old-world country town that his progenitors sprang. Indeed it is within the memory of our own generation that the last of the family, Martha Prior, daughter of a simple shepherd, died at Godmanston.
The first authentic glimpse we get of the young poet is as a wine carrier in his uncle's tavern in London. It was here that Lord Dorset discovered him, Horace in hand, and with that generous munificence, so characteristic of the restoration, paid for his schooling at Westminster and later for his entrance to St John's College, Cambridge. Matthew Prior it is quite evident made the best of his opportunities. He had a good "sense of direction," if we may be permitted to use that invidious modern phrase, and cultivated with the utmost zeal useful friendships. In London during the vacations he sought the company of the wits and was one of those who frequented Wills' Coffee-House and who during the long drawn-out evenings of the late summer would sit on the balcony of that famous resort "proud to dip a finger and thumb into Mr Dryden's snuff-box." This privilege, however, in no way prevented him from cleverly parodying in his City Mouse and Country Mouse the famous pro-Catholic poem of the Poet Laureate. It was, in fact, upon this undergraduate exercise that his future career was founded. He became secretary to the Ambassador at the Hague and, be-
