Prior, Matthew 1664-1721
English poet and diplomat

Born in Wimborne, Dorset, the son of a joiner, he was sent to Westminster School under the patronage of Lord Dorset, and from there he went with a scholarship from the Duchess of Somerset to St John's College, Cambridge. He was first employed as secretary to the ambassador to The Hague. In Queen Anne's time he turned Tory, and was instrumental in bringing about the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), for which dubious service he was imprisoned for two years (1715-17) after the queen's death. His Tory friends recouped his fortunes by subscribing handsomely to a folio edition of his works (1719). Prior was a master of neat, colloquial and epigrammatic verse. His first work, a collaboration with Charles Montagu (Lord Halifax), was The Hind and the Panther Transvers' to the story of the Country and the City Mouse (1687), a witty satire on Dryden's Hind and the Panther (1685). His political verse, with the exception of his brilliant burlesque of Nicolas Boileau's �p�tre au roi (c.1669, An English Ballad on the Taking of Namur), is now of historical interest only. He is best known as a poet of light occasional verse - mock-lyrics such as A Better Answer (to Chloe Jealous), and more seriously, Lines Written in the Beginning of M�zeray's History of France, a favourite with Sir Walter Scott.

Bibliography: F Bickley, Matthew Prior (1914)