ter end of the eighteenth century died, at last, characteristically enough, from a surfeit of cherries!
It was at Wimple that Matthew Prior himself ended his life on September 18, 1721. His will was found to contain a legacy to a woman whom Dr Johnson does not hesitate to describe as "a despicable drab of the lowest species."
In a letter written at the time we read:
"I find poor Prior's will makes noise in town much to his disadvantage. Some malicious fellows have had the curiosity to go and inquire of the ale-house woman what sort of conversation Prior had with her. The ungrateful strumpet is very free of telling it and gives such accounts as afford much diversion."
Also from Arbuthnot we get a suggestive glimpse of this side of the poet's life, which was, after all, so singularly removed from the stately quincunxes, round which on August evenings "My noble, lovely little Peggy" was wont to play and trip it. "We are to have a bowl of punch at Bessy Cox's. She would fain have put it upon
Lewis that she was his Emma; she owned Flanders Jane was his Chloe."
Matthew Prior had long had Westminster Abbey "in his eye" and in the end he indulged "a last piece of human vanity" by bequeathing five hundred pounds towards the erection of the preposterous monument which now stands above his grave.
The actual place of his burial is at the feet of Edmund Spenser in the poet's corner.
It must be confessed there appears something curiously incongruous about a trick of fortune which could cause the wanton paramour of Mistress Besse Cox to lie down in the dust, head to heel, with none other than the fastidious author of the Faerie Queene.
