Soon after, the Duke of Shrewsbury went on a formal embassy to Paris.  It is related by Boyer that the intention was to have joined Prior in the commission, but that Shrewsbury refused to be associated with a man so meanly born.  Prior therefore continued to act without a title till the duke returned next year to England, and then he assumed the style and dignity of ambassador.  But while he continued in appearance a private man, he was treated with confidence by Louis, who sent him with a letter to the queen, written in favour of the Elector of Bavaria.  “I shall expect,” says he, “with impatience, the return of Mr. Prior, whose conduct is very agreeable to me.”  And while the Duke of Shrewsbury was still at Paris, Bolingbroke wrote to Prior thus:—“Monsieur de Torcy has a confidence in you; make use of it, once for all, upon this occasion, and convince him thoroughly that we must give a different turn to our Parliament and our people according to their resolution at this crisis.”

Prior’s public dignity and splendour commenced in August, 1713, and continued till the August following; but I am afraid that, according to the usual fate of greatness, it was attended with some perplexities and mortifications.  He had not all that is customarily given to ambassadors: he hints to the queen in an imperfect poem that he had no service of plate; and it appeared by the debts which he contracted that his remittances were not punctually made.

On the 1st of August, 1714, ensued the downfall of the Tories and the degradation of Prior.  He was recalled, but was not able to return, being detained by the debts which he had found it necessary to contract, and which were not discharged before March, though his old friend Montague was now at the head of the Treasury.  He returned, then, as soon as he could, and was welcomed on the 25th of March by a warrant, but was, however, suffered to live in his own house, under the custody of the messenger, till he was examined before a committee of the Privy Council, of which Mr. Walpole was chairman, and Lord Coningsby, Mr. Stanhope, and Mr. Lechmere were the principal interrogators, who, in this examination, of which there is printed an account not unentertaining, behaved with the boisterousness of men elated by recent authority.  They are represented as asking questions sometimes vague, sometimes insidious, and writing answers different from those which they received.  Prior, however, seems to have been overpowered by their turbulence; for he confesses that he signed what, if he had ever come before a legal judicature, he should have contradicted or explained away.  The oath was administered by Boscawen, a Middlesex justice, who at last was going to write his attestation on the wrong side of the paper.  They were very industrious to find some charge against Oxford, and asked Prior, with great earnestness, who was present when the preliminary articles were talked of or signed at his house?  He told them that either the Earl of Oxford or the Duke of Shrewsbury was absent, but he could not remember which, an answer which perplexed them, because it supplied no accusation against either.  “Could anything be more absurd,” says he, “or more inhuman, than to propose to me a question, by the answering of which I might, according to them, prove myself a traitor?  And notwithstanding their solemn promise that nothing which I should say should hurt myself, I had no reason to trust them, for they violated that promise about five hours after.  However, I owned I was there present.  Whether this was wisely done or no I leave to my friends to determine.”  When he had signed the paper, he was told by Walpole that the committee were not satisfied with his behaviour, nor could give such an account of it to the Commons as might merit favour; and that they now thought a stricter confinement necessary than to his own house.  “Here,” says he, “Boscawen played the moralist, and Coningsby the Christian, but both very awkwardly.”  The messenger, in whose custody he was to be placed, was then called, and very indecently asked by Coningsby “if his house was secured by bars and bolts.”  The messenger answered, “No,” with astonishment.  At which Coningsby very angrily said, “Sir, you must secure this prisoner; it is for the safety of the nation: if he escape, you shall answer for it.”

They had already printed their report; and in this examination were endeavouring to find proofs.

He continued thus confined for some time; and Mr. Walpole (June 10, 1715) moved for an impeachment against him.  What made him so acrimonious does not appear; he was by nature no thirster for blood.  Prior was a week after committed to close custody, with orders that “no person should be admitted to see him without leave from the Speaker.”  When, two years after, an Act of Grace was passed, he was excepted, and continued still in custody, which he had made less tedious by writing his “Alma.”  He was, however, soon after discharged.  He had now his liberty, but he had nothing else.  Whatever the profit of his employments might have been, he had always spent it; and at the age of fifty-three was, with all his abilities, in danger of penury, having yet no solid revenue but from the fellowship of his college, which, when in his exaltation he was censured for retaining it, he said he could live upon at last.  Being, however, generally known and esteemed, he was encouraged to add other poems to those which he had printed, and to publish them by subscription.  The expedient succeeded by the industry of many friends, who circulated the proposals, and the care of some who, it is said, withheld the money from him lest he should squander it.  The price of the volume was two guineas; the whole collection was four thousand; to which Lord Harley, the son of the Earl of Oxford, to whom he had invariably adhered, added an equal sum for the purchase of Down Hall, which Prior was to enjoy during life, and Harley after his decease.  He had now, what wits and philosophers have often wished, the power of passing the day in contemplative tranquillity.  But it seems that busy men seldom live long in a state of quiet.  It is not unlikely that his health declined, he complains of deafness; “for,” says he, “I took little care of my ears while I was not sure if my head was my own.”

Of any occurrences of his remaining life I have found no account.  In a letter to Swift, “I have,” says he, “treated Lady Harriet, at Cambridge (a Fellow of a College treat!) and spoke verses to her in a gown and cap!  What, the plenipotentiary, so far concerned in the damned peace at Utrecht; the man that makes up half the volume of terse prose, that makes up the report of the committee, speaking verses!  Sic est, homo sum.”

He died at Wimpole, a seat of the Earl of Oxford, on the 18th of September, 1721, and was buried in Westminster; where on a monument, for which, as the “last piece of human vanity,” he left five hundred pounds, is engraven this epitaph:—

Sui Temporis Historiam meditanti,

Paulatim obrepens Febris

Operi simul et Vitæ filum abrupit,

Sept. 18.  An. Dom. 1721.  Ætat. 57

H.S.E

Vir Eximius Serenissimis

Regi Gulielmo Reginæque Mariæ

In Congressione Fœderatorum

Hagæ anno 1690 celebrata,

Deinde Magnæ Britanniæ Legatis

Tum iis,

Qui anno 1697 Pacem Ryswicki confecerunt,

Tum iis,

Qui apud Gallos annie proximis Legationem obierunt

Eodem etiani anno 1657 in Hiberniâ

Secretarius;

Necnon in utroque Honorabili consessu

Eorum,

Qui anno 1700 ordinandis Commercii negotiis,

Quique anno 1711 dirigendis Portorii rebus,

Præidebant,

Commissionarius;

Postremo ab Anna,

Felicissimæ memoriæ Reginâ,

Ad Ludovicum XIV. Galliæ Regem

Missus anno 1711

De Pace stabiliendâ

(Pace etiam num durante

Diuque ut boni jam omnes sperant duraturâ),

Cum sunmâ potestate Legatus;

MATTHÆS PRIOR Armiger

Qui

Hos omnes, quibus cumulates est, Titulos

Humanitatis, Ingenii, Ereditionis laude

Superavit;

Cui enim nascenti faciles arriserant Mesæ

Hunc Puerum Schola hîc Regia perpolivit;

Jevenem in Collegio S’ti Johannis

Cantabrigia optimis Scientiis instruxit;

Virum denique auxit, et perfecit,

Multa cum viris Principibus censuetudo;

Ita natus, ita institutus,

A Vatam Choro avelli numquam potuit,

Sed solebat sæpe rerum civilium gravitatem

Amœniorum Literarum Studiis condire:

Et cum omne adeo Poeticës genus

Haud infeliciter tentaret,

Tum in Fabellis concinne lepideque texendis

Mirus Artifex

Neminem habuit parem

Hæc liberalis animi oblectamenta:

Quam nullo illi labore constiterint,

Facile ii perspexêre, quibus usus est Amici;

Apud quos Urbanitatem et Leporum plenus

Cum ad rem, quæcunque forte inciderat,

Aptè varie copiosèque alluderet,

Interea nihil quæsitum, nihil vi expressum

Videbatur,

Sed omnia ultro effluere,

Et quasi jugi è foote affatim exuberare,

Ita suos tandem dubios reliquit,

Essetne in Scriptis, Poeta Elegantior,

An in Convictu, Comes Jocundior

Of Prior, eminent as he was, both by his abilities and station, very few memorials have been left by his contemporaries; the account, therefore, must now be destitute of his private character and familiar practices.  He lived at a time when the rage of party detected all which it was any man’s interest to hide; and, as little ill is heard of Prior, it is certain that not much was known.  He was not afraid of provoking censure; for when he forsook the Whigs, under whose patronage he first entered the world, he became a Tory so ardent and determinate, that he did not willingly consort with men of different opinions.  He was one of the sixteen Tories who met weekly, and agreed to address each other by the title of Brother; and seems to have adhered, not only by concurrence of political designs, but by peculiar affection, to the Earl of Oxford and his family.  With how much confidence he was trusted has been already told.

He was, however, in Pope’s opinion, fit only to make verses, and less qualified for business than Addison himself.  This was surely said without consideration.  Addison, exalted to a high place, was forced into degradation by the sense of his own incapacity; Prior, who was employed by men very capable of estimating his value, having been secretary to one embassy, had, when great abilities were again wanted, the same office another time; and was, after so much experience of his own knowledge and dexterity, at last sent to transact a negotiation in the highest degree arduous and important, for which he was qualified, among other requisites, in the opinion of Bolingbroke, by his influence upon the French minister, and by skill in questions of commerce above other men.

Of his behaviour in the lighter parts of life, it is too late to get much intelligence.  One of his answers to a boastful Frenchman has been related; and to an impertinent he made another equally proper.  During his embassy he sat at the opera by a man who, in his rapture, accompanied with his own voice the principal singer.

Prior fell to railing at the performer with all the terms of reproach that he could collect, till the Frenchman, ceasing from his song, began to expostulate with him for his harsh censure of a man who was confessedly the ornament of the stage.  “I know all that,” says the ambassador, “mais il chante si haut, que je ne sçaurois vous entendre.”

In a gay French company, where every one sang a little song or stanza, of which the burden was “Bannissons la Mélancolie,” when it came to his turn to sing, after the performance of a young lady that sat next him, he produced these extemporary lines:—

 
“Mais cette voix, et ces beaux yeux,
Font Cupidon trop dangereux,
Et je suis triste quand je crie
Bannissons la Mélancolie.”
 

Tradition represents him as willing to descend from the dignity of the poet and statesman to the low delights of mean company.  His Chloe probably was sometimes ideal: but the woman with whom he cohabited was a despicable drab of the lowest species.  One of his wenches, perhaps Chloe, while he was absent from his house, stole his plate and ran away, as was related by a woman who had been his servant.  Of his propensity to sordid converse, I have seen an account so seriously ridiculous, that it seems to deserve insertion.

“I have been assured that Prior, after having spent the evening with Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope, and Swift, would go and smoke a pipe and drink a bottle of ale with a common soldier and his wife in Long Acre before he went to bed, not from any remains of the lowness of his original, as one said, but I suppose that his faculties—

 
“‘—strained to the height,
In that celestial colloquy sublime,
Dazzled and spent, sunk down, and sought repair.’”
 

Poor Prior; why was he so strained, and in such want of repair, after a conversation with men not, in the opinion of the world, much wiser than himself?  But such are the conceits of speculatists, who strain their faculties to find in a mine what lies upon the surface.  His opinions, so far as the means of judging are left us, seem to have been right; but his life was, it seems, irregular, negligent, and sensual.

Prior has written with great variety, and his variety has made him popular.  He has tried all styles, from the grotesque to the solemn, and has not so failed in any as to incur derision or disgrace.  His works may be distinctly considered as comprising Tales, Love Verses, Occasional Poems, “Alma,” and “Solomon.”