ble, and Wesley, who appears to have
been strangely oblivious to Prior's moral delinquencies, observes that
his tales are the best told of any in the English tongue. Cowper praised
him for his 'charming ease,' and this gift enabled him to write some of
the most delightful occasional verses produced in the century. There is
nothing more exquisite of its kind than his address, _To a Child of
Quality_, written when the child was five years old and the poet forty,
and one is not surprised to learn that Prior was admired by Thomas
Moore, who more than once caught his note. A reader familiar with Moore
and ignorant of Prior would without hesitation attribute the following
stanzas, from the _Answer to Chloe Jealous_, to the Irish poet:

'The god of us versemen (you know, Child), the sun,
How after his journeys he sets up his rest;
If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run,
At night he declines on his Thetis's breast.

'So when I am wearied with wandering all day,
To thee, my delight, in the evening I come;
No matter what beauties I saw in my way;
They were but my visits, but thou art my home.

'Then finish, dear Cloe, this pastoral war,
And let us, like Horace and Lydia, agree;
For thou art a girl as much brighter than her
As he was a poet sublimer than me.'

"The grammatical lapse in these last two lines," says Mr. Austin Dobson,
"perhaps calls for correction, but many readers will probably agree with
Moore (_Diary_, November, 1818), 'that it is far prettier as it is.'
'Nothing,' he says truly, 'can be more gracefully light and gallant than
this little poem.'"

It was fancy and not imagination which conceived the following lines,
but how charming is the fancy! The poem, which is given in a slightly
abridged form, is addressed

'TO A LADY: SHE REFUSING TO CONTINUE A DISPUTE WITH ME, AND LEAVING ME
IN THE ARGUMENT.

'In the dispute whate'er I said,
My heart was by my tongue belied;
And in my looks you might have read
How much I argued on your side.

'You, far from danger as from fear,
Might have sustained an open fight;
For seldom your opinions err;
Your eyes are always in the right.

'Alas! not hoping to subdue,
I only to the fight aspired;
To keep the beauteous foe in view
Was all the glory I desired.

'But she, howe'er of victory sure,
Contemns the wreath too long delayed;