oetry. He gained 4,000 guineas by
the publication, and with that sum and an estate purchased for him by
Lord Harley, Prior was able to live in comfort. He died in September,
1721, in his fifty-eighth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey,
under a monument for which he had had the vanity to pay five hundred
pounds.

The peculiar merit of Prior is better understood in our day than it was
in his own. We read his poems solely for the sake of the 'lighter
pieces,' which Johnson despised. The poet thought _Solomon_ his best
work, but no one who toils through the three books which form that poem
is likely to agree with this estimate. Dulness pervades the work like an
atmosphere, but it had its admirers in the last century, and among them
was John Wesley, who, in reply to Johnson's complaint of its
tediousness, said he should as soon think of calling the Second or Sixth
AEneid tedious. In the preface to the poem Prior declares that he "had
rather be thought a good Englishman than the best poet or greatest
scholar that ever wrote," a passage which does more honour to the poet
than any in the text. A far more popular piece was _Henry and Emma_,
which even so fine a judge of poetry as Cowper called 'inimitable.'
Tastes change, let us hope for the better, and possibly none but the
greatest poets remain unaffected by time. Assuredly Prior does not, and
_Henry and Emma_ affords a striking illustration of the contrast between
the poetical spirit of Prior's age and that which influences ours. The
poem is founded on the fine ballad of the _Nut-Browne Maide_. The story,
as originally told, is homely and quaint, written without apparent
effort and told in 360 lines. Prior requires considerably more than
twice that number, and his maid and her lover, instead of using the
simple language befitting the theme, employ the conventional machinery
of the age, and bring Jove and Mars, Cupid and Venus upon the scene,
with allusions to Marlborough's victories and to 'Anna's wondrous
reign.'

_Alma_, a poem written in Hudibrastic verse, which shows that Prior had
in a measure caught the vein of Butler, has some couplets familiar in
quotations. He won, too, not a little contemporary reputation for his
tales in verse, which are singularly coarse; but an age that tolerated
Mrs. Manley and read the plays and novels of Aphra Behn was not likely
to object to the grossness of Prior. Dr. Johnson would not admit that
his poems were unfit for a lady's ta