on a Saturday night; on his left hand his Horace, and a friend on his right," going out of town from the Hague to pass that evening and the ensuing Sunday, boozing at a Spiel-haus with his companions, perhaps bobbing for perch in a Dutch canal, and noting down, in a strain and with a grace not unworthy of his Epicurean master, the charms of his idleness, his retreat, and his Batavian Chloe. A vintner's son in Whitehall, and a distinguished pupil of Busby of the Rod, Prior attracted some notice by writing verses at St. John's College, Cambridge, and, coming up to town, aided Montague[1] in an attack on the noble old English
- ↑ "They joined to produce a parody, entitled the 'Town and Country Mouse,' part of which Mr. Bayes is supposed to gratify his old friends Smart and Johnson, by repeating to them. The piece is therefore founded upon the twice-told jest of the 'Rehearsal' . . . There is nothing new or original in the idea . . . In this piece, Prior, though the younger man, seems to have had by far the largest share."—Scott's Dryden, vol i. p. 330.
best poets in England, but very factious in conversation. A thin, hollow-looked man, turned of 40 years old. This is near the truth."
His virtues and vices were as other men's are,
High hopes he conceived and he smothered great fears,
In a life party-coloured—half pleasure, half care.
He strove to make interest and freedom agree;
In public employments industrious and grave,
And alone with his friends, Lord, how merry was he!
Both fortunes he tried, but to neither would trust;
And whirled in the round as the wheel turned about,
He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust."
Prior's Poems. [For my own monument.]
