rniNSKP, JAMES. 



PRIOR, MATTHEW. 



(light abrasion of tba part. This slight abrasion seems to have 

 produced consumption, and hi* medical advisers informed liim that 

 removal to a warmer climate afforded the only chance of saying hit 

 life. He was prei*ring to return to the Cape, and had actually engaged 

 passage for himself, his wife, and her sister, when an attack of 

 diarrhn-a, operating upon his weak state of body, occasioned his death, 

 December 5, 1831. 



The greater part of Fringle's works probably consist of fugitive 

 pieces written during the time when he was secretary to the Antl- 

 Slavery Society ; but his reputation as an author depends mainly on 

 his ' Narrative and his ' Poems.' His ' Narrative ' is very entertaining ; 

 somewhat diffuse perhaps, but simple, distinct, and effective, inter- 

 spersed with passages of picturesque power and beauty, and charac- 

 terised throughout by the appearance of undeviating truth. Be 

 published also an 'Account of English Settlers in Albany, South 

 Africa,' 12tuo. His poetry has great merit. It is distinguished by 

 elegance rather tlun strength, but he has many forcible passages. The 

 versification is sweet, the style simple and free from all superfluous 

 epithets and the descriptions are the result of his own observations. 

 His 'African Sketches,' which consist of poetical exhibitions of the 

 scenery, the characteristic habits of animals, and the modes of native 

 life in South Africa, are alone sufficient to entitle him to no mean rank 

 s a poet 



(The Poetical Worlx of Thomai Pringlt, viith a Sketch of hit Life, by 

 Li-itch Ritchie.) 



PRINSEP, JAMES, was descended from a family of Swiss extrac- 

 tion which had been some time settled in England. He was born in 

 the year 1800, and went out to the East Indies at an early age in the 

 service of the East India Company in the Hint department. On his 

 arrival in India he was appointed assay-master at Benares, whore he 

 remained about ten years. Here he collected the materials of his 

 'Sketches of Benares,' which perhaps give some of the best representa- 

 tions of Indian life yet published. He planned and constructed many 

 works of public utility, and engaged in a valuable series of statistical 

 inquiries connected with Benares. At this time he wrote on elaborate 

 memoir on the mode of determining accurately the point at which the 

 precious metals fuse, which was published in tho ' Philosophical 

 Transactions.' Subsequently he was elected a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society. 



When the Benares mint was abolished, Prinsep was transferred to 

 that at Calcutta. He had previously contributed to the ' Gleanings of 

 Science,' conducted by Captain Herbert, and on the departure of that 

 gentleman from Calcutta he became the secretary to the physical class 

 of the Asiatic Society, and editor of the ' Gleanings,' which he remodelled 

 in 1832 under the title of the 'Journal of the Asiatic Society,' a work 

 which has contributed in an eminent degree to the extension of every 

 specie* of information in India. His attention having been directed 

 to the subject of Hadrian coins, he made numerous discoveries which 

 enabled him to fill up the blank left in the history of the successors of 

 Alexander the Great in Bactria, and constructed a nearly unbroken 

 aeries of numismatic records, which extended from the Macedonian 

 king to modern times. 



On the departure of H. H. Wilson for England in 1832, Prinsep became 

 secretary to the Asiatic Society, and he now began to follow up the 

 step* of Jones, Colebrooke, and Wilson in the field of Indian antiqui- 

 ties. Meantime hi* labours as editor of the ' Journal ' were unabated ; 

 he was in a great measure the engraver and lithographer for it ; and 

 he earned on an extensive correspondence in India and with Europe, 

 besides contributing a number of valuable articles on a great variety 

 of subjects, especially chemistry, mineralogy, Indian numismatics, and 

 Indian antiquities. The most interesting of his discoveries is the 

 deciphering of inscriptions which had remained a sealed book to all 

 previous Orientalists, and which are important as connecting the 

 history of India with that of Europe : the name of Antiuchus the 

 Great and the mention of bis generals as commanding in the north of 

 India, occur in two edicts of Asoka, or Piyadasi, king of India. 



Under the weight of these and other labours his health began to 

 break down. It was hoped that a voyage to England would restore 

 him ; but after an illness of eighteen months ho died on the 22nd of 

 April 1840, in the fortieth year of bis age. His cose is said to have 

 borne a considerable resemblance to that of Sir Walter Scott. His 

 death left a blank in the progress of knowledge and civilisation in India 

 which will not perhaps be readily filled up. 



(JkUu Oautle, July 8, 1840 ; Proc. Boy. At. Soc., 1810.) 



1'KlOH, MATTHEW, was born on the 21st of July 1604, it is 

 uncertain whether at Wiinborne in Dorsetshire, or in London, in 

 which city his father is said to have been a joiner. His uncle, 

 Samuel Prior, kept the Rummer Tavern near Charing-Cross. Matthew, 

 on the death of his father, was taken charge of by his uncle, who sent 

 him to Westminster School, then under Dr. Busby. When be was well 

 advanced in the school, his uncle took him home with the intention 

 of employing him in his huMnriu ; but he had the good fortune to 

 attract the notice of the Earl of Dorset, who formed so favourable an 

 opinion of his talent*, that he sent him in 1682 to St. John's College, 

 Cambridge, where he was admitted to bis bachelor's degree in 1086, 

 and obtained a fellowship. Drydeu's ' Hind and Panther' was pub- , 

 listed la 1686, and Prior, in conjunction with the Hon. Charles 

 MonUgne, afterwards earl of Halifax, wrote, in ridicule of Drydeu's 



poem, ' The City Mouse and Country Mouse,' which was published 

 in 1887. 



Aft -r the revolution of 1 688, Prior came to London, and was intro- 

 duced at court by the Earl of Dorset, by whose influence he was 

 appointed secretary to the embassy which was sent to the congress at 

 the Hague in 1690, and his conduct gave so much satisfaction to 

 King William, that he made him one of the gentlemen of his bed- 

 chamber. On the death of Queen Mary in 1695, Prior wrote an ode, 

 which was presented to the king on his arrival in Holland after her 

 death. In 1697 be was appointed secretary to tho embassy which 

 concluded the peace of Ryswick, and the next year filled the same 

 office at tho court of France, where he was treated with marked 

 distinction. In 1699 he was at Loo in Holland with King William, by 

 whom he was charged with despatches to England, and on his arrival 

 was made under secretary of state, but losing his place soon after, on 

 the removal of the Earl of Jersey from the office of secretary of state, 

 he was made, in 1700, one of the commissioners of trade. This year 

 he published a long and elaborate poem, the 'Carmen Secular.-,' in 

 which he celebrates the virtues and heroic actions of King William. 



In the parliament that met in 1701 Prior sat as member for East 

 Grinstead. Soon after this he joined the Tory party. In 1706 he 

 celebrated the battle of Ramillies in a long ode, which he inscribed to 

 Queen Anne. In July 1711, the Tories being now in power, Prior was 

 sent privately to Paris with proposals of peace. In about a month be 

 returned, bringing with him the Abbe* Gualtier and M. Mi-ranger, one 

 of the French ministers, who was invested with full powers. Tho 

 queen's ministers met Mesnager privately at Prior's house on tho 

 20th of September 1711. This private meeting was made the ground 

 of the charge of treason which the Whigs afterwards brought against 

 Prior. The conferences began at Utrecht on the 1st of January 1712, 

 but the business advanced so slowly that Bolingbroke was sent as 

 ambassador to Louis XIV. at Paris to forward it, and Prior either 

 accompanied or followed him. After Bolingbroke's return Prior acted 

 as ambassador, though he was not officially appointed till August 1713; 

 his public dignity however was of short duration, for on the 1st of 

 August 1714 the Tories lost office, and Prior was recalled by the Whigs, 

 by whom he was committed on a charge of high treason, and remained 

 in custody two years. During his confinement he wrote his poem of 

 ' Alms,' He was now without the means of subsistence, except from 

 bis fellowship, which he still retained; but the publication of bis 

 poems by subscription, which amounted to 4000 guineas, and an equal 

 sum added by Lord Harley, son of the Earl of Oxford, for the pur- 

 chase of Down-hall iu Essex, which was settled upon 1'rior for his life, 

 restored him to easy circumstance?. He died at Wimpole, a seat of 

 the Earl of Oxford, in Cambridgeshire, September IS, 1721, at the ago 

 of fifty-seven. A monument was erected to him in Wcstii 

 Abbey ; and for this and the Latin inscription upon it, which he 

 directed in his will to be written by Dr. Robert Friend, he left fiOOt. 



Prior seems to have been well fitted for the public situations which 

 he filled. It is evident that he was skilled in the art of pleasing, an 

 important requisite in a diplomatist. He secured the approbation of 

 the English sovereigns and ministers who employed him, and his 

 influence at the French court was undoubted. When he joined the 

 Tories he became, as is usual in such cases, a violent partisan ; and 

 the charge of high treason and two years' imprisonment were the 

 result of a malignant persecution to which he had exposed himself 

 by his desertion of the Whigs. In his private habits he appears to 

 have been negligent and sensual. It is stated, on the somewhat 

 doubtful authority of Spence, that the woman with whom he lived 

 was " a despicable drab of the lowest species." It in evident however 

 that he secured the esteem and affection of a large circle of asso- 

 ciates ; he became indeed almost a member of the family of the Earl 

 of Oxford. 



Prior, as a poet, was once popular, but is little read now. His 

 lighter pieces are the most attractive. His ' Tales,' though borrowed 

 and mostly indecent, are told with ease and sprightliness, and his 

 'Epigrams' are often neatly pointed. His 'Alma, or the Progress of 

 the Soul,' the style of which is professedly an imitation of that of 

 'Hudibraa,' bos not much either of philosophy or wit in it, but is 

 written in a very lively manner. 'Solomon ' is one of the best of his 

 poems. It is a sort of epic, formed out of tho Proverbs and Kocle- 

 siaates. The reflections ore elaborately expressed, and often with 

 great felicity of diction, but being without character or incident, it is 

 rather heavy reading. 'Henry and Emma' is displeasing from the 

 improbability both of the circumstances and sentiments ; yet it was 

 once a favourite with the public. Johnson very truly calls it a " dull 

 and tedious dialogue." His smaller occasional poems are deformed 

 by the continual introduction of the deities of the Grecian and Roman 

 mythology. Venus and Cupid and Mars and Mercury and Jupiter meet 

 us at every turn. Prior U fortunately one of the last of that race of 

 poets who sought for ornament in these school-boy allusions. On the 

 whole, it may be mid of Prior that he had none of the higher qualities 

 of a poet no invention, little power of imagination, and cousequrntly 

 no vividness of description. He has diligence and judgment, and ho 

 may be regarded as one of the most correct of Eugliwh poets. A 

 ' History of the Transactions of his own Times,' for which he had been 

 collecting materials, was published after his death, in 2 vols, 8vo, but 

 it has little in it of Prior s, and is of small value. 





