ed to say, that he praised others in compliance with the
fashion, but that in celebrating king William he followed his
inclination. To Prior gratitude would dictate praise, which reason would
not refuse.

Among the advantages to arise from the future years of William's reign,
he mentions a society for useful arts, and, among them,

Some that with care true eloquence shall teach,
And to just idioms fix our doubtful speech;
That from our writers distant realms may know
The thanks we to our monarch owe,
And schools profess our tongue through ev'ry land,
That has invok'd his aid, or bless'd his hand.

Tickell, in his Prospect of Peace, has the same hope of a new academy:

In happy chains our daring language bound,
Shall sport no more in arbitrary sound.

Whether the similitude of those passages which exhibit the same thought,
on the same occasion, proceeded from accident or imitation, is not easy
to determine. Tickell might have been impressed with his expectation by
Swift's Proposal for ascertaining the English Language, then lately
published.

In the parliament that met in 1701, he was chosen representative of East
Grinstead. Perhaps it was about this time that he changed his party; for
he voted for the impeachment of those lords who had persuaded the king
to the partition-treaty, a treaty in which he had himself been
ministerially employed.

A great part of queen Anne's reign was a time of war, in which there was
little employment for negotiators, and Prior had, therefore, leisure to
make or to polish verses. When the battle of Blenheim called forth all
the versemen, Prior, among the rest, took care to show his delight in
the increasing honour of his country, by an epistle to Boileau.

He published, soon afterwards, a volume of poems, with the encomiastick
character of his deceased patron, the duke of Dorset[6]: it began with
the College Exercise, and ended with the Nut-brown Maid.

The battle of Ramilles soon afterwards, in 1706, excited him to another
effort of poetry. On this occasion he had fewer or less formidable
rivals; and it would be not easy to name any other composition produced
by that event which is now remembered.

Everything has its day. Through the reigns of William and Anne no
prosperous event passed undignified by poetry. In the last war, when
France was disgraced and overpowered in every quarter of the globe, when
Spain, coming to her assistance, only shar