opponent of the Court; and, having no public business, is supposed to have amused himself by writing his two tragedies. He died February 24, 1720-21. He was thrice married; by his two first wives he had no children by his third, who was the daughter of King James by the Countess of Dorchester, and the widow of the Earl of Anglesey, he had, besides other children that died early, a son born in 1716, who died in 1735, and put an end to the line of Sheffield. It is observable that the Duke's three wives were all widows. The Duchess died in 1742. His character is not to be proposed as worthy of imitation. His religion he may be supposed to have learned from Hobbes and his morality was such as naturally proceeds from loose opinions. His sentiments with respect to women he picked up in the court of Charles, and his principles concerning property were such as a gaming-table supplies. He was censured as covetous, and has been defended by an instance of inattention to his affairs, as if a man might not at once be corrupted by avarice and idleness. He is said, however, to have had much tenderness, and to have been very ready to apologise for his violences of passion. He is introduced into the late collection only as a poet; and if we credit the testimony of his contemporaries, he was a poet of no vulgar rank. But favour and flattery are now at an end; criticism is no longer softened by his bounties or awed by his splendour, and, being able to take a more steady view, discovers him to be a writer that sometimes glimmers, but rarely shines, feebly laborious, and at best but pretty. His songs are upon common topics; he hopes, and grieves, and repents, and despairs, and rejoices, like any other maker of little stanzas: to be great, he hardly tries; to be gay, is hardly in his power. In the Essay on Satire, he was always supposed to have had the help of Dryden. His Essay on Poetry is the great work, for which he was praised by Roscommon, Dryden, and Pope, and doubtless by many more whose eulogies have perished. Upon this piece he appears to have set a high value; for he VOL. II. H was all his life improving it by successive revisals, so that there is scarcely any poem to be found of which the last edition differs more from the first. Amongst other changes, mention is made of some compositions of Dryden, which were written after the first appearance of the Essay. At the time when this work first appeared, Milton's fame was not yet fully established, and therefore Tasso and Spenser were set before him. The last two lines were these. The Epic Poet, says he, 'Must above Milton's lofty flights prevail, Succeed where great Torquato, and where greater Spenser fail.' The last line in succeeding editions was shortened, and the order of names continued; but now Milton is at last advanced to the highest place, and the passage thus adjusted, 'Must above Tasso's lofty flights prevail, Succeed where Spenser, and ev'n Milton fail.' Amendments are seldom made without some token of a rent: lofty does not suit Tasso so well as Milton. One celebrated line seems to be borrowed. The Essay calls a perfect character, 'A faultless monster which the world ne'er saw. Scaliger in his poems terms Virgil sine labe monstrum. Sheffield can scarcely be supposed to have read Scaliger's poetry; perhaps he found the words in a quotation. Of this Essay, which Dryden has exalted so highly, it may be justly said that the precepts are judicious, sometimes new, and often happily expressed; but there are after all the emendations many weak lines, and some strange appearances of negligence; as, when he gives the laws of elegy, he insists upon connection and coherence; without which, says he, ''Tis epigram, 'tis point, 'tis what you will; Who would not suppose that Waller's Panegyric and Denham's Cooper's Hill were Elegies? His verses are often insipid; but his memoirs are lively and agreeable; he had the perspicuity and elegance of an historian, but not the fire and fancy of a poet. PRIOR MATTHEW PRIOR is one of those that have burst out from an obscure original to great eminence. He was born July 21, 1664, according to some, at Winburne in Dorsetshire, of I know not what parents; others say that he was the son of a Joiner of London: he was perhaps willing enough to leave his birth unsettled,1 in hope, like Don Quixote, that the historian of his actions might find him some illustrious alliance. He is supposed to have fallen, by his father's death, into the hands of his uncle, a vintner near Charing Cross, who sent him for some time to Dr. Busby at Westminster; but, not intending to give him any education beyond that of the school, took him, when he was well advanced in literature, to his own house; where the Earl of Dorset, celebrated for patronage of genius, found him by chance, as Burnet relates, reading Horace, and was so well pleased with his proficiency, that he undertook the care and cost of his academical education. He entered his name in St. John's College at Cambridge in 1682, in his eighteenth year; and it may be reasonably supposed that he was distinguished among his contemporaries. He became a Bachelor, as is usual, in four years; and two years 1 The difficulty of settling Prior's birthplace is great. In the register of his College he is called, at his admission by the President, Matthew Prior of Winburn in Middlesex; by himself next day, Matthew Prior of Dorsetshire, in which county, not in Middlesex, Winborn, or Wimborne, as it stands in the Villare, is found. When he stood candidate for his fellowship, five years afterwards, he was registered again by himself as of Middlesex. The last record ought to be preferred, because it was made upon oath. It is observable, that, as a native of Winborne, he is styled Filius Georgii Prior generosi ; not consistently with the common account of the meanness of his birth. |