80 THE BIRTHPLACE OF MATTHEW PRIOR. 



where his son Matthew was born.* Very likely Matthew 

 received the rudimen'.s of his education at the Wimborne 

 Grammar School, but his father, when the boy was quite 

 young, moved to London. Here his uncle Arthur appears to 

 have taken notice of him and to have sent him to Westminster 

 School. 



To this uncle he refers in a second " Epistle to Fleetwood 

 Shepherd " : 



My uncle, rest his soul, when living, 

 Might have contrived me ways of thriving ; 

 Taught me with cyder to replenish 

 My vats, or ebbing tide of Rhenish. 

 So when for hock I drew prick't white-wine, 

 Swear't had the flavour and was right wine. 

 &c., &c. 



After some little time had been spent at school, his uncle, 

 finding him useful, took him to be his assistant in the wine 

 shop. Here the Earl of Dorset and his friends used to resort, 

 and there one day they found young Matthew with a " Horace" 

 in his hand, and, after asking him some questions, set him to 

 translate an Ode into English. He did it in verse, and so well 

 was his task accomplished, that it became a favourite amuse- 

 ment with visitors to the house to get the boy to translate 

 passages from Ovid and Horace. At Lord Dorset's suggestion, 

 and at his cost, he went back to school, probab'y about the 

 year 1680 ; and a year later, in 1681, was elected King's 

 Scholar ; another Dorset lad, Thomas Dibben, who translated 

 the " Carmen Seculare " into Latin, being one of his school- 

 fellows. But his chief friends at Westminster were Charles 

 and James Montagu, sons of the Hon. Charles Montagu, 

 who lived in a large mansion opposite his uncle's house. In 

 1683 Prior was elected to a scholarship at St. John's College, 

 Cambridge. Perhaps it was his false shame with respect to 



* But in consequence of his parents being Dissenters (and at this time one 

 of the Nonconforming Religious Bodies in Wimborne was an Anabaptist 

 one), the child's name does not appear in the Church Registers. 



