his mother being no
longer able to pay the school fees, Prior was placed with an uncle who
kept the Rhenish Wine Tavern in Westminster. His seat was in the bar,
and there the Earl of Dorset (1637-1705-6), a small poet, but a generous
patron of poets, found the youth reading Horace, and, pleased with his
'parts,' sent him back to Westminster, whence he went up to Cambridge as
a scholar at St. John's, the college destined a century later to receive
one of the greatest of English poets.

Charles Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax (1661-1715), the son of a
younger son of a nobleman, was also a Westminster scholar. He entered
Trinity College in 1679, and like Prior appears to have owed his good
fortune to the rhymer's craft. 'At thirty,' writes Lord Macaulay, 'he
would gladly have given all his chances in life for a comfortable
vicarage and a chaplain's scarf. At thirty-seven he was First Lord of
the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a Regent of the Kingdom.'
The literary history of the Queen Anne age has many associations with
his name. He proved a liberal patron of the wits, and of Pope among
them, by subscribing largely to his _Homer_; but the poet's memory was
stronger for imaginary injuries than for real benefits, and because
Halifax had patronized Tickell, he figures in the Prologue to the
Satires as 'full-blown Bufo, puffed by every quill.'

Prior and Montague began their rhyming career early, and a partnership
production, entitled the _Hind and Panther, transversed to the story of
the Country Mouse and the City Mouse_ (1687), a parody of Dryden's
famous poem published in the same year, brought both authors into
notice. At the age of twenty-six Prior, who had previously obtained a
fellowship, was appointed Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague. After
that he rose steadily to eminence, became Secretary of State in Ireland,
and was finally appointed Ambassador at the French Court. High office
brings its troubles, and in those days was not without its perils. In
1711 Prior was sent secretly to Paris to negotiate a peace, for which,
when the Whigs came again into power, he was imprisoned and expected to
lose his head. While in prison, where he remained for two years
(1715-1717), the poet wrote _Alma_, a humorous and speculative poem on
the relations of the soul and body, and when released published his
_Poems_ by subscription in a noble folio, said to be the largest-sized
volume in the whole range of English p