And, armed with more immediate power,
Calls cruel silence to her aid.

'Deeper to wound, she shuns the fight:
She drops her arms, to gain the field;
Secures her conquest by her flight;
And triumphs, when she seems to yield.

'So when the Parthian turned his steed,
And from the hostile camp withdrew;
With cruel skill the backward reed
He sent; and as he fled, he slew.'

Wit and a ready command of verse are the characteristics of Prior's
poetry. Both of these gifts are to be seen in his lively _English
ballad on the Taking of Namur by the King of Great Britain_, in which he
travesties Boileau's _Ode sur la prise de Namur_. As an epigrammatist he
reaped his advantage from a study of Martial, and in this department of
verse Prior is often successful. If brevity be a prominent merit in an
epigram, he sometimes excels his master, as, for example, in this
stanza:

'To John I owed great obligation;
But John unhappily thought fit
To publish it to all the nation;
Sure John and I are more than quit.'[25]

This is half the length of the original Latin, and what it loses in
elegance it gains in point.

It may be hoped that the next quotation is a libel on Bishop Atterbury;
if so, the lines have every merit but truth. The epigram is on the
funeral of the Duke of Buckingham, who died in 1721.

'I have no hopes,' the duke he says, and dies;
'In sure and certain hopes,' the prelate cries:
Of these two learned peers, I prithee say, man,
Who is the lying knave, the priest or layman?
The duke he stands an infidel confest;
'He's our dear brother,' quoth the lordly priest.
The duke, though knave, still 'brother dear,' he cries;
And who can say the reverend prelate lies?

Prior, it may be observed here, could say pointed things in prose as
well as in verse, and nothing can be happier than his reply to the
Frenchman's inquiry whether the King of England had anything to show in
his palace equal to the paintings at Versailles illustrating the
victories of Louis XIV: 'The monuments of my master's actions,' said the
poet, 'are to be seen everywhere except in his own house.'

It is always interesting to link poet with poet, and in relation to
Prior many readers will recall the pathetic incident related of Sir
Walter Scott when the wonderful intellect which had entranced the world
was giving indications of decay. Lockhart relates ho