Yet counting as far as to fifty his years,
His virtues and vices were as other men's are,
High hopes he conceived and he smothered great fears,
In a life party-coloured—half pleasure, half care.
Not to business a drudge, nor to faction a slave,
He strove to make interest and freedom agree,
In public employments industrious and grave,
And alone with his friends, Lord, how merry was he!
Now in equipage stately, now humbly on foot,
Both fortunes he tried, but to neither would trust;
And whirled in the round as the wheel turned about,
He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust.
Prior's Poems. [“For my own monument.”]
“He was to have been in the same commission with the Duke of Shrewsbury, but that that nobleman,” says Johnson, “refused to be associated with one so meanly born. Prior therefore continued to act without a title till the duke's return next year to England, and then he assumed the style and dignity of ambassador.”
He had been thinking of slights of this sort when he wrote his Epitaph:—
Nobles and heralds by your leave,
Here lies what once was Matthew Prior,
The son of Adam and of Eve;
Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher?
But, in this case, the old prejudice got the better of the old joke.
His epigrams have the genuine sparkle:
The Remedy worse than the Disease.