Prior and Montague began their rhyming career early, and a partnership production, entitled the _Hind and Panther, transversed to the story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse_ (1687), a parody of Dryden's famous poem published in the same year, brought both authors into notice. At the age of twenty-six Prior, who had previously obtained a fellowship, was appointed Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague. After that he rose steadily to eminence, became Secretary of State in Ireland, and was finally appointed Ambassador at the French Court. High office brings its troubles, and in those days was not without its perils. In 1711 Prior was sent secretly to Paris to negotiate a peace, for which, when the Whigs came again into power, he was imprisoned and expected to lose his head. While in prison, where he remained for two years (1715-1717), the poet wrote _Alma_, a humorous and speculative poem on the relations of the soul and body, and when released published his _Poems_ by subscription in a noble folio, said to be the largest-sized volume in the whole range of English poetry. He gained 4,000 guineas by the publication, and with that sum and an estate purchased for him by Lord Harley, Prior was able to live in comfort. He died in September, 1721, in his fifty-eighth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, under a monument for which he had had the vanity to pay five hundred pounds. The peculiar merit of Prior is better understood in our day than it was in his own. We read his poems solely for the sake of the 'lighter pieces,' which Johnson despised. The poet thought _Solomon_ his best work, but no one who toils through the three books which form that poem is likely to agree with this estimate. Dulness pervades the work like an atmosphere, but it had its admirers in the last century, and among them was John Wesley, who, in reply to Johnson's complaint of its tediousness, said he should as soon think of calling the Second or Sixth Æneid tedious. In the preface to the poem Prior declares that he "had rather be thought a good Englishman than the best poet or greatest scholar that ever wrote," a passage which does more honour to the poet than any in the text. A far more popular piece was _Henry and Emma_, which even so fine a judge of poetry as Cowper called 'inimitable.' Tastes change, let us hope for the better, and possibly none but the greatest poets remain unaffected by time. Assuredly Prior does not, and _Henry and Emma_ affords a striking illustration of the contrast between the poetical spirit of Prior's age and that which influences ours. The poem is founded on the fine ballad of the _Nut-Browne Maide_. The story, as originally told, is homely and quaint, written without apparent effort and told in 360 lines. Prior requires considerably more than twice that number, and his maid and her lover, instead of using the simple language befitting the theme, employ the conventional machinery