,
was so pleasing to king William, that he made him one of the gentlemen
of his bedchamber; and he is supposed to have passed some of the next
years in the quiet cultivation of literature and poetry.

The death of queen Mary, in 1695, produced a subject for all the
writers; perhaps no funeral was ever so poetically attended. Dryden,
indeed, as a man discountenanced and deprived, was silent; but scarcely
any other maker of verses omitted to bring his tribute of tuneful
sorrow. An emulation of elegy was universal. Maria's praise was not
confined to the English language, but fills a great part of the Musae
Anglicanae.

Prior, who was both a poet and a courtier, was too diligent to miss this
opportunity of respect. He wrote a long ode, which was presented to the
king, by whom it was not likely to be ever read.

In two years he was secretary to another embassy at the treaty of
Ryswick, in 1697[5]; and next year had the same office at the court of
France, where he is said to have been considered with great distinction.

As he was one day surveying the apartments at Versailles, being shown
the victories of Lewis, painted by Le Brun, and asked whether the king
of England's palace had any such decorations: "The monuments of my
master's actions," said he, "are to be seen every where but in his own
house." The pictures of Le Brun are not only in themselves sufficiently
ostentatious, but were explained by inscriptions so arrogant, that
Boileau and Racine thought it necessary to make them more simple.

He was, in the following year, at Loo with the king; from whom, after a
long audience, he carried orders to England, and upon his arrival became
under-secretary of state in the earl of Jersey's office; a post which he
did not retain long, because Jersey was removed; but he was soon made
commissioner of trade.

This year, 1700, produced one of his longest and most splendid
compositions, the Carmen Seculare, in which he exhausts all his powers
of celebration. I mean not to accuse him of flattery; he probably
thought all that he writ, and retained as much veracity as can be
properly exacted from a poet professedly encomiastick. King William
supplied copious materials for either verse or prose. His whole life had
been action, and none ever denied him the resplendent qualities of
steady resolution and personal courage. He was really, in Prior's mind,
what he represents him in his verses; he considered him as a hero, and
was accustom