Thou, fair dissembler, dost but thus Would'st rather force mankind to bow, One hour of love's delight outweighs Gives truer joys than crowds refus'd. For what does youth and beauty serve? Why more than all your sex deserve? Why such soft alluring arts To charm our eyes, and melt our hearts? ON THE TIMES. SINCE in vain our parsons teach, Vice has lost its very name, Skill and cozenage thought the same; Foul contrivances we see Call'd but ingenuity: Ample fortunes often made Where mama's intrigues are shown, By worse hypocrites than men, All our wit but party-mocks, Sinking side, or falling friend. Prais'd and wounded, he may starve: Like inventing loyal lies. We, whose ancestors have shin'd In arts of peace, and fields of fame, Now are grown a public shame. Which produc'd our civil war! SONG. FROM all uneasy passions free, I fear'd no griefs, but then I found no joys. Amidst a thousand kind desires, Which beauty moves, and love inspires; Such pangs I feel of tender fear, No heart so soft as mine can bear. Such are your charms, Tis worth a life to die within your arms. MATHEW PRIOR was born in 1664; the place of his birth is disputed; the honour having been given to London, and also to Winbourne in Dorsetshire. His parents were of humble condition; but on the death of his father, he was adopted by an uncle, a vintner in Charing Cross, who, although he designed his nephew for his own business, sent him to Westminster School. While residing with this uncle, there chanced one of those singular incidents which determine the fate of genius; great minds will, it is true, almost invariably work their way to distinction; but how many obstacles may be removed by a single favourable circumstance. The Earl of Dorset being with other gentlemen sitting in the house, a dispute arose relative to a passage in Horace, when one of the party affirmed that "there was a young fellow there who could set them all right." The lad was sent for, and Mathew Prior explained away the difficulty so easily and with so much modesty, that the earl became his patron, and soon afterwards sent him to St. John's College, Cambridge; where he was admitted to a fellowship in 1686. He was first known publicly by his poem of the Country Mouse and City Mouse ;a poem avowedly written in ridicule of Dryden's Hind and Panther. It was printed in 1687. But he soon became distinguished as a Diplomatist, was Under Secretary of State, and took an active part in all the events of the time. About the year 1701, however, he deserted the Whigs, with whom he had previously acted; on their return to power in 1714, they punished him for his defection; Walpole moved an impeachment against him on a charge of High Treason, grounded upon the part he had taken at the congress at Utrecht, and after remaining two years in close custody, he was discharged without having been brought to trial. He died at Wimpole, the seat of Lord Oxford, on the 18th of September, 1721;-and was interred in Westminster Abbey, where a monument was erected to his memory,— the Poet having left by will the sum of five hundred pounds to defray the expenditure which human vanity suggested. Prior, though he had held several lucrative appointments, found himself compelled, after his disgrace, to print his poems by subscription-his friends, however, having undertaken to conduct the publication in such a manner that "the dignity of a minister in disgrace should not be injured by it." The sum thus procured, together with the income derived from his fellowship, which he had prudently retained, “every thing he had besides being precarious," enabled him to pass the later portion of his life in ease and comfort. His principal poems are "Solomon," "Alma, or the Progress of the Mind," and "Henry and Emma." Solomon is doubtless the most meritorious; it is full of fine thoughts, easy and correct in its versification and abundant in imagery—but it is tedious. "Alma" he has himself described as "a loose and hasty scribble, written to relieve the tedious hours of imprisonment." Henry and Emma, the most popular of his works, is but the remodelling of an ancient Ballad-the Not-browne Mayde. The subject is one of an unpleasing nature. It describes a lover as making trial of his mistress's affections, by declaring himself guilty of every vice-and finding her cling to him though she believes him leprous with sin. His minor poems are very numerous; some of them are full of grace and wit. They consist of "public panegyrics, amorous odes, serious reflections or idle tales," and embrace every species of composition from the grotesque to the solemn-in none of which, according to the faint praise of Johnson, has the Poet "failed so as to incur derision or disgrace." Such restrained commendation is not justice to the memory of Mathew Prior. We are not disposed to place him very high in the list of British Poets; but his works abound in humour; many of his "Tales" are admirably and gracefully told; and the more ambitious of his compositions contain passages that startle by their point and beauty; while the language is always polished, and the descriptions natural and fine. His muse however must bear the stigma that "Want of decency is want of sense," and according to the accounts of some of his contemporaries his habits as well as his thoughts were debased by low dissipation. He was a sensualist, who knew not the true passion of love:-his poems afford abundant proof that he had never felt its elevating nature. A FALCONER Henry is, when Emma hawks: With her of tarsels and of lures he talks. Upon his wrist the towering merlin stands, Practis'd to rise, and stoop at her commands. And when superior now the bird has flown, And headlong brought the tumbling quarry down; With humble reverence he accosts the fair, And with the honour'd feather decks her hair. Yet still, as from the sportive field she goes, His down-cast eye reveals his inward woes; And by his look and sorrow is exprest, A nobler game pursued than bird or beast. A shepherd now along the plain he roves; And, with his jolly pipe, delights the groves. The neighbouring swains around the stranger throng, While with soft sorrow he renews his lays, A frantic gipsey now, the house he haunts, eyes; But, when bright Emma would her fortune know, THIS Abra then FROM SOLOMON. I saw her; 'twas humanity; it gave Whene'er I revell'd in the women's bowers (For first I sought her but at looser hours) |