SOURCE: "Matthew Prior and Elizabeth Singer," in Philological Quarterly, Vol. XXIV, No. 1, January, 1945, pp. 71–82.

[In the following essay, Wright analyzes the relationship between Rowe and the poet Matthew Prior, based on a set of extant letters from Prior to Rowe.]

For several months in 1703 and 1704 Matthew Prior and Elizabeth Singer carried on a vivacious correspondence of which nothing has heretofore been known. Miss Singer's letters are not extant, but nine of Prior's have been preserved at Longleat,¹ and these entertaining epistles reveal rather clearly the substance and tone of the letters to which they were answers. A study of this correspondence and its implications therefore helps to clarify the relationship between the two poets, a matter that has aroused the curiosity of Prior's biographers and has led to some unfounded conjecture.

Prior met Elizabeth Singer in the autumn of 1703,² while he was visiting at Longleat, the country seat of Viscount Weymouth, his colleague on the Board of Trade and Plantations.³ Miss Singer, who lived nearby in the vicinity of Frome, Somersetshire, had been a friend of Lord Weymouth and his family since 1694, when they had first seen some of her verses,⁴ and it was proper for him as her patron to arrange the meeting with Prior. He had undoubtedly spoken to Prior of his protegée before this, and he may even have shown him some of her manuscripts. Prior was probably also acquainted with her contributions to the Athenian Mercury and with the volume of Poems on Several Occasions, written by Philomela, which she had published in 1696.

It was, then, as fellow poets that they met. Prior found Miss Singer an attractive young lady of twenty-nine, who had intelligence, talent, and considerable self-education; she had studied French and Italian with Lord Weymouth's son, Henry Thynne. And yet she was still a country girl who had no knowledge of city society and desired none. She had always lived in a very serious religious atmosphere and was an earnest follower of the dissenting beliefs of her relatives and friends. Her father was a minister who had once been put in prison for non-conformity, and her mother had met him there while visiting "those that suffer'd for the sake of a good conscience."⁵ At Longleat, Elizabeth Singer had found a friend of equal piety in Thomas Ken, who had been one of the seven bishops sent to the Tower in 1688, and who, as a prominent non-juror, had been deprived of his see in 1691.⁶ Already a considerable part of her poetry was religious; later it was to become primarily devotional and earn her the friendship of Isaac Watts and an international reputation as the "Heavenly Singer."⁷

In the two weeks that Prior was at Longleat, he did not see Miss Singer often. Apparently they met in social groups, and occasionally they discussed her poetry. He suggested some improvements on her translation of the passage on Armida's Garden from Canto XVI of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. This poem had already been accepted for inclusion in Part V of Tonson's Poetical Miscellanies. Among the other verses by her that were to be published there, was "A Pastoral, Inscrib'd to the Honourable, Mrs.——" on the subject of love and friendship. In it, Amarillis sings of her love for Alexis, while Silvia expresses "the warmth of friendship" for another shepherdess named Corinna.⁸ This dialogue was used by Prior as the basis for some flattering verses which appeared anonymously in the same volume under the title "To the Author of the Pastoral, Printed, Page 378." In these, Prior wishes for the fulfillment of the poetess' desires whether she be identified with either Silvia or Amarillis, begging only that amid her joys she think with pity of

… the wretched Swain
Who loving much, who not belov'd again
Felt an ill-fated Passion's last Excess
And dy'd in Woe….⁹

This is a very pretty compliment, but it is hardly an appeal for her love, as it has sometimes been interpreted.¹⁰ There is, indeed, a possibility that it was written before Prior met the author to whom it is addressed.¹¹

When they parted, Miss Singer entrusted to him a manuscript copy of her translation of the passage on the

Enchanted Forest from Canto XVIII of Jerusalem Delivered Apparently she requested his comments on this and asked him to submit it to Tonson for inclusion in the Miscellanies.¹² In addition, she wanted him to talk to Tonson about the other poems by her that were to be printed in that collection. She did not want her name put to all of them and she may have wished to recall or alter some.

Soon after Prior reached London and the work that had accumulated at the Board of Trade and Plantations, he wrote to Lord Weymouth about the Act of Jamaica for transferring the seat of trade from Port Royal to Kingston.¹³ By the same post he reported to Elizabeth Singer on her errands and told her in extravagant language that he missed her. The effective compliment which ends the first paragraph is one that he had already used elsewhere:¹⁴

Westminster. October the 14th 1703.

To give you an account of the Poetical Commission with which you intrusted me, I should make bold to break through all the Prose Business which I find at my return to London, But Tonson is not yet come from Holland, and I shal have time enough to look over your ENCHANTED FORREST; not that it will ever be so good as ARMIDA'S GARDENS; For, tho' I could Judge or Correct pritty well when I was with you, I am stupid & Senceless at fourscore miles distance, and the little Wit I had is not owing to Nature but Inspiration.

I am more troubled for leaving you than I would be, and think of you against my Will, and now let me Dye if I know whether I am more obliged to my Lord Weymouth that I ever saw you, or disobliged by my Lady that I saw you so little, Verse itself cannot tell you what I think upon that Subject—Adieu my fair fellow Poet, may our fancied Deities assist your Numbers, but real Angels attend & protect your Person.

In the letter by which Miss Singer replied to this, she requested him not to write until he had heard from her again, probably because she was going to Hampshire to visit Sir Robert Worseley and Lady Worseley, Lord Weymouth's daughter.¹⁶ The second letter permitted him to address her there. She asked him to send any lampoon that was then current in town, and she demanded that he burn her letter. In his answer, Prior confesses failure to fulfill either of these requests. He does, however, give her the news from Tonson, reviews in the last paragraph some of their experiences at Longleat, and ends with a phrase in the language in which she was so accomplished:

November 2d. 1703

I did not answer your first Letter till I had received your Second, because you commanded that omission, which is the only reason upon which it can be justifyed; I have not had an equal defer-rence to your command in burning your Letter, tho' it shal be as safe from any ones knowledge, as if it were burnt, and to confirm my assertion if you repeat your command (however rigorous I may think it) it shal be obeyed a la Lettre: You do me Justice in what you think of me in Prose, but your quoting my own Verses upon me is something hard, I own to you I like them better since you were pleased to recite them, I am melancholly enough to think them true, but that (it may be) proceeds from the remaining 40 miles wch. yet separate my fellow Poet from her humble Servt.

As to the Affairs which in that Qualifycation you trusted me with, I have (after 20 Messages to that Beast Tonson) reed, this enclosed note, that these copies were printed before he went to holland, & the name put to some, or omitted in others (as you see) so that to retrieve them, or call back yesterday is equally impossible. You need not be concerned at this for the world can find no real Faults in your inchanted Garden, or anything also you have writ. If I pretended to find any, it was from my having a particular regard for what was Yours; Every Body allowes you to write well, but I would have you write the best.

And now to talk a little Prose with you my Lord Weymouth is come to Town very Serious and reserved, whether this proceeds from any Political or other sort of reflection I know not, if you can inform me pray do; I have not seen my Lady. My Service to Lady Worsely is too common, my respect is too Cold, and my Friendship is too Saucy, use what term you please to signifye to her I am sincerely her Servant, and pray send me word if Chilton be a place where People Laugh, or converse with one another, or if there are in the House fine Appartmts where no body Enters, & large Gardens in wch no Body walks, & lastly if People are to see each other there a fortnight, & afterwards make their Acquaintance by Letter? There is no Lampoon to send, but rather then fail in a little time I will make one of myself, which you will grant to be a sure proof of my desiring to carry on a Correspondence, Adio mia Chara, God above protect you.

E…. S…. at Sir Rt. Worslys in
Chilton Candover near Alsford,
Hampsh.¹⁷

The show of anger which her next epistle displayed cannot entirely be explained by what Prior had written. Probably she insisted on his destroying her letters, for none of them are in the volumes which contain the others that he received during this period. Probably she was displeased that Tonson should have identified her as the author of all her contributions to the Miscellanies, whereas other poems (including all of Prior's) were left anonymous. Her raillery, however, seems to have been chiefly directed at Prior's character, and her particular accusations are made clear by his defense: he is impertinent and insincere in his pretended courtship of her; he asserts that their separation is torture to him, but makes no attempt to come to her; he is probably living a life of gaiety and indulging in flirtations; and in addition he is a High Churchman! Prior, not knowing quite how to take this tirade, makes his answer half facetious, half serious and refers to her religious views with a contempt equal to her opinion of his. In mentioning his age, he makes it one year less than it was:

London, Nov. 16th. 1703

I have received a Letter from you full of real Wit, & affected Anger, I would answr it, if I knew what Stile would be agreeable to you, but to the different Key in which you Sing, it is impossible I should keep Consort; Things are just as they are taken, Constancy is sometimes thought obstinacy, Courage is called Rashness, & a desire of pleasing is condemned for Impertinence: So not knowing the mind of my Goddess, I may mistake in the way of my Adoration, & whilst in one Letter we are to speak as plain as if we lived in the Golden Age, & in another we are to Disemble with each other & talk of Starrs & Destiny's, you must give me leave (with all the respect I have for you) to remember that I am writing to a Woman.

You are a good deal mistaken whilst you fancy I am at Tea Tables, & among the Ladys, but you are more so when you think I have an inclination either to be witty or Scandalous, Much bus'ness more Melancholly, some prudence & 38 [years] have wearied me from those Follies, & if I sought for Tea & a little Coqueterie at Long Leat, t'was because I could not see those I wished for without it; and now fair Lady, possibly I am not so happy a Man as you imagine, tho' I think 'tis but an ill natured Satisfaction that you can injoy from this Confession, & since you are so exquisite at giving one uneasiness so far off, I do not see that I should mend the matter by coming nearer you. You want a quarrel mightily when you tell me I am a high Churchman, & I never knew before that you could like Cant & Nonsense in a Barn, rather than Harmony & reason in a Cathedral, but I have nothing to do with your Religion.

If you would say anything on this Subject, don't quote other people, for I had rather see one Line of Dear Philomela's then all that Dryden e're composed. And now my fair fellow Poet by reading my Letter you may conclude I have the Spleen, & by remembring what you wrote last, you may determine what caused it; Not to be to Exact in any Date for fear of future mischief, 'tis now 7 at night, & I am going to drink your health till 12 as soon as I have told you I am (my fair Muse) Yours

Entirely.¹⁸

Miss Singer's reply, although it may have been less violent than the earlier attack, still expressed displeasure. She enclosed an epigram on Jacob Tonson, disapproved of Prior's lack of seriousness, and condemned his drinking. Prior was now convinced that she had the spleen in earnest, and in his letter points out symptoms of that malady displayed in her poetry. The melancholy terms he cites all appear in "Despair," which she may have sent him with her letter:

Oh! lead me to some solitary gloom,
Where no enliv'ning beams, nor chearful echoes come;
But silent all, and dusky let it be,
Remote and unfrequented, but by me;
Mysterious, close, and sullen as that grief,
Which leads me to its covert for relief.
Far from the busy world's detested noise,
Its wretched pleasures, and distracted joys;
Far from the jolly fools, who laugh, and play,
And dance, and sing, impertinently gay,
Their short, inestimable hours away;
Far from the studious follies of the great,
The tiresome farce of ceremonious state.
There, in a melting, solemn dying strain,
Let me, all day, upon my lyre complain,
And wind up all its soft, harmonious strings,
To noble, serious, melancholy things….¹⁹

As a cure, Prior suggests society instead of solitude. He also recommends a change in the tone of her correspondence. Disregarding her criticism, he suggests in a deprecating manner that he is in love with her:²⁰

Plantation Office 25 Novr. 1703

You have contrefaited the Spleen so long Dear Philomela, that I begin to fancy you have it in Earnest, your melancholly Gloom & unfrequented Shades, Dying Strains & complaining Lyres are sure Symptoms of a Person very far gone in that Distemper; Sweet Bardolph says Sir John Falstaffe, talk to a Body like a man of this world, & let one hear a little how your Tea Table is furnished, how much butter a good huswife Country Lady makes in a Season, how much higher the Coquets head Knot is then that upon the fore Horse of her Team; What Phanatic Parson got his maid with Kidd, & what Orthodox Dean fell drunk from his horse between Sir Bobt. Worsely's & his own home; The sum of all this is that I would have you merry, and think nothing in the World worth much Anxiety, these are my Morals however you may disaprove them, & if I cannot practice them as heartily as I would it is because I think of——you; That comes in so dull & Sneaking; fye Mr. Prior, a Poet to admire one of his own calling, and a Philosopher to be in Love! A Traveller to lose his heart in Hampshire, no, no, Sommersetsh: & a man of Business to hold Correspondence with a Country Lady.

You chid me once for drinking from 7 till 12, & to show you how fast I mend, I drank last night from 5 till 2 in ye morning. Hang Tonson how could you throw away 4 or 5 lines upon him; When this Miscellany comes out I will send it to you: Hark ye, take my Advice get into Company & dont play with edge Tools Loves Dart may cut your finger, & his flames burn 'em, as secure as you think yourself from

Your Amintor

I presume you would give Lady
W…. ly my most Obedt. Service, tho'
I had omitted my P…. S….²¹

Either with this letter or later Prior sent a copy of "The Ladle," although he must have known that the vulgarity in the poem would not please Miss Singer. His next letter, dated six weeks later, was written in answer to a short note that was on paper as small as the slip on which is written the name of one's sweetheart to be drawn from a hat on St. Valentine's Day. He speaks flippantly of her religion and of his suffering for love of her:²²

Westminster. Januy. 8th. 1703/4

I have had a Lre. from you no bigger than the Name of ones Valentine for a hatt, and since the writing it you have I presume received the Miscelanie Poems; By the way you have said nothing to me of my Ladle, tho' I sent it for your Criticism, or to speak more justly for your Diversion. I suppose you have made Bonfires for the Community Bill being thrown Out, and I know way Question but you have assisted at a Thanksgiving Sermon in a Barn on that Occasion. I have no News to write to you, tant vous etez dans la belle Indifference else I could tell you that the interview between the Queen and the King of Spain was very fine, and that His Catholic Majesty is like me, only with a longer chin and a blobber Lipp. What should I say to you? I hate Company, Business, and Books. Those that Love me say I am troubled, and ask me for what; And the rest of the World say I am bewitched, but do not think it worth their pains to enquire for whom. Adio Mia Chara; may You injoy every thing in the Country but the happyness of a quiet Love, and then you will be a little upon the Level, with

Yours

Ever.²³

Some weeks later, Miss Singer wrote asking him to make his letters less familiar and impertinent. His answer is both, in spite of his avowal to follow her commands. He mentions the High Church and his drinking in a way that is sure to offend her, and at the same time expresses his love in the most direct terms he has yet used. In his last sentence and his signature he alludes to Voscius in The Rehearsal, who symbolized his indecision between love and honor by making his exit with one boot on and one off:²⁴

Februy: 15th 1703/4.

I have read, your Letter and will obey your Commands in the Stile of Answering it, which shal not be Familiar or Impertinent, tho' by the by such a way of writing is much the hardest. So therefore, I addore you with Passion, and Salute you with respect, I look over your Epistle wth. a profound Bow & end every Period of my own with a Deep Sigh. I will always form my words according to what I find your pleasure Orders me, I will never dare to offend you or cease to Love you. Oh brave Mrs. Betty how d'y like me now? You see I have both my Boots on, & so rest your most Obedient, most humble, and most Devoted Slave at the very bottom of the Paper.

Volsius.

The Ladys were very fine on the Queens Birth Day; My Prologue was not very well Spoken; The high Church will at last have the better out. My Lord Weymouth has the Gout. Grimes dined with me yesterday, and we drank your health a little to largely, and this is all the News I have to send you. Adio alma mia; May nothing in the World give you uneasiness, but my Self.²⁵

For several weeks after this, Prior was preoccupied with business and worried about the precariousness of his position. His salary was months in arrears. His political friends were losing their power and their offices, and he himself was in the bad graces of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough.²⁶ It appears that during this time he had not heard from Elizabeth Singer. He now addresses her in melancholy vein, asking her to write and begging for her pity. He thinks that the only cure for his unhappiness is to see her:

May the 2nd. 1704

If my Dearly beloved Friend will think that tho' I have not writ Her these 4 Posts I have not ceased many minutes to think of Her, she will do me the greatest Justice; And if she will sometimes write to, or think of me she will do me the most signal Favour. I have been since I wrote to you last, and continue still to be in such a Confusion of Business, Hopes, disappointments, fears and Vexations, that I am even Sick to Death of Ambition, and all the ills that attend it; so I will only desire you to pitty me. But what will that Pitty do, but give me Torments of another kind more intollerable than those I have laboured under; Reserve it than; No, don't, give it me, be Chimerical no longer, but tell me in honest prose you will be concerned for any Misfortune which I or my friends may suffer; in recompence of which Goodness I will endeavour, if I can, not to be so wholly your Slave as to be satisfied with nothing but that Servitude. Not to find in the sound of Betty more Music than in all the Cassandra's and Clorinda's that were, or can be ever admired and not in the Capital of Beauty to Sigh and Languish for a down-right Country Girle whom I saw but seldom, and never Saluted! You see my Circumstances, I begin with Friendship, come off presently to Love, would be a reasonable Creature again if I could, yet must be unhappy unless I see you. May your good Angel keep you from all Ill, and may mine direct me to You.

Adieu.²⁷

It was another seven weeks before his next letter was written. Miss Singer had just informed him that she was at home again, and begged him not to mention ecclesiastical politics when he addressed her there for fear of displeasing her father. She also asked him to try to find a place for some of her friends in the next issue of Tonson's Miscellanies.²⁸ With his usual perverness Prior pretends to obey her dictates as to the contents of his letter, but does not really do so. He encloses a copy of his "Ode Inscribed to the Memory of the Honble. Col. George Villiers," his cousin's husband, who had been drowned in November 1703:²⁹

June the 24th. 1704.

Pray think it neither Love of Idleness or want of regard to you, that I have not for some Posts written to you, but ascribe it to my uncertainty of knowing where you are, wch your last letter has set right, and since you are at Agford I will talk no Politicks with you; Tho' I own I cannot but laugh at your reasoning as if le bon homme would not thump you as hard if he found you received Letters filled with bleeding hearts, tender Sighs and Eternal Constancy, as with a word of Application to Bishop Kenn, or a touch upon the high Church, but I will not argue that matter with you. Yours to Command, my part is to Obey. I dont know if you have seen the Tale of a Tub, or if you will like it when you do see it. I presume you will shortly be at Long Leat, where you must hear of the Church, whether you will or no; And Peter, Martin, & John will set you right as to Ecclesiastical Affaires, Who these Excellt: persons are you will know when you read the Book before mentioned. I send you in the meantime, a very moral Melancholly Poem. But you have one good trick of never saying one word how you like any of my Verses. Jacob Tonson does not intend us an other Miscellany this great while, when he does your Friends shal be sure to have a place kept, il faut changer de Langue pour vous dire Mia Charissima que je vous Aime a la folie et que je vous Souhaite autant de repos que l Amour pourra permetre. Dieu vous benisse; Amen.

Agford near Froom
Sommersetsh.³⁰

About two months later Prior received a letter which, it seems, consisted of Miss Singer's customary banter and a suggestion that he come to see her. His reply is very facetious:

Westminster [Aug.] 29th. 1704

At my return from a Journy of 4 days into Surry I found a Letter from you, If I did know how to Direct to you I am not much enlightened in that point by anything you have Written; The Letter bears no date either of Place or time, so that whither it was written 16 hundred years [ago] by Philomela from the foot of Pelorus near Messine in Sicily, or a week since from Mrs. Elizabeth Singer at Agford near Froom in Sommerset, may fairly be left to the Criticks and Commentators: by the stile however of Loving and hating, calling Names & recanting, liking ones Verses mightily, and giving them away to the next Body you meet, I may conclude it is a Genuine and Original Epistle, so to answer to the particulars of it, I am tyed by the Leg here by my Lord W…., and my other Landed Brethren leaving their Business in Town to look after their Beans and Oates in the Country, I am very melancholly, and (to be more so) have Essayed twice or thrice to be in Love pour m'amuser, but my heart is so far mortgaged to a certain Country Gentlewoman that I can't take up a Sigh or a Soft Look upon it; So I read, Drink, Walk and do everything as other Mortals do, but Live, which it is impossible to do to any purpose whilst I am fourscore Miles Distant from her who should make life agreable, ha! ha! Mrs. Betty, is not that Galant, and shal I hear any more of Ropes and Daggers these 2 months!

Adio Mia Vita.³¹

With that their correspondence seems to have come to an end. There is little evidence of any subsequent relationship. In November, 1706, Prior, in writing to Lord Weymouth about a castaway boy, said, "I think this is a very pretty subject for Mrs. Singers Muse."³² Mrs. Singer's "Love and Friendship" was printed with Prior's verses to the author in the 1709 edition of his poems, and in the preface he appropriately praised "the fineness of her genius." In that same year she was married to Thomas Rowe, a scholarly and pious young man whose father, like hers, had been a non-conformist minister.³³ Upon the appearance of Prior's religious poem Solomon, Mrs. Rowe wrote some verses devoted chiefly to describing her own poetic interests as contrasted with Prior's:

A muse devoted to celestial things,
Again for thee prophanes th' immortal strings;
The stars, the myrtle shade, and rosy bow'r,
She quits, to revel in thy iv'ry tow'r;
The music of the spheres and heav'nly throngs
She minds no more, to listen to thy songs.

…..

Perverted by the Jewish monarch's eyes,
She fondly turns apostate to the skies,
And envies Abra's beauty, while it shines
With undecaying bloom in Prior's lines.³⁴

There is no contemporary comment on the friendship of these two poets except for a rumor reported in the biographical sketch for the Miscellaneous Works of Mrs. Rowe, published in 1739, after the death of both principals:

Among others, 'tis said, the famous Mr. Prior would have been glad to share the pleasures and cares of life with her; so that, allowing for the double license of the Poet and Lover in the manner of expression, the concluding lines in his answer to the pastoral on Love and Friendship, by Mrs. Singer, were not without all foundation in truth.³⁵

That a friend and relative of the poetess should be so indefinite, indicates that he lacked evidence on this point.³⁶ And the evidence just presented seems to show that when we "allow for the license" of the poet and wit in the style of his letters to Miss Singer, the lover is difficult to discern. Superficially, of course, they are love letters just as the pastorals that both wrote display the conventional phraseology of love. Sometimes it is hard to be certain whether such mannerisms are a disguise for genuine feeling or a mere substitute for it. In this case, however, Prior's behavior seems to belie his professions. He does not make an earnest attempt to please Miss Singer, to overlook their differences of opinion, or—and this is most significant—to meet her again. Undoubtedly he was attracted to her; but lacking encouragement, he chose to tease rather than plead with her.

Like the modern reader, the original writers must have found the correspondence amusing.

Notes

¹ Prior Papers (Longleat), Vol. XIII, passim. This MS volume contains "fair copies" in the hand of Adrian Drift, Prior's secretary, of letters written by Prior between 1701 and 1714. Like the other Prior Papers, it was brought to Longleat by the first Marchioness of Bath, granddaughter of Edward Lord Harley, to whom Prior had bequeathed his MSS. The letters are here published by permission of the Marquess of Bath, from a careful transcript made by his secretary, Mr. C. G. Long.

² Statements not otherwise documented are based on the letters which follow.

³Dictionary of National Biography, art. "Thynne, Sir Thomas, 1st Viscount Weymouth (1640–1714)," LVI, 368–9.

⁴ Henry Grove, "The Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe," in her Miscellaneous Works (London, 1739), I, xvii. Grove wrote pp. i–xxix; upon his death the "Life" was completed by Theophilus Rowe. This is the basis of all later biographies.

⁵Ibid., pp. iv, xi, xv, xviii.

⁶Dictionary of National Biography, art. "Ken or Kenn, Thomas (1637–1711)," XXX, 401–2.

⁷Ibid., art. "Rowe, Elizabeth Singer (1674–1737)," XLIX, 338–9.

⁸Poetical Miscellanies: the Fifth Part (London: Jacob Tonson, 1704), pp. 378–82. Later editions have Aminta for Corinna.

⁹Ibid., pp. 604–5.

¹⁰ In the Poetical Miscellanies and the collected editions of Prior's works, the poem referred to above is followed by a clever conceit entitled "Disputing with a Lady, who left me in the Argument." According to one of Miss Singer's early biographers, this also was addressed to her (Grove, op. cit., p. xviii). There is, however, no other evidence that this is so. This poem does not refer to the preceding one, for there is no debate involved in that; and in any argument about his love Prior would not have "argued on her side." On the subject of religion, which was a matter of dispute between them, Miss Singer, it seems, was not inclined to "shun the fight."

¹¹ Prior's letter of November 2, 1703, makes it clear that all of Miss Singer's contributions to the Poetical Miscellanies had gone to press before Tonson left for Holland. Therefore, Prior's may also have been in print before the meeting at Longleat, unless the collection was still being compiled while the printing was going on and the process had paused somewhere between page 494 and page 604 until Tonson's return. The passage from Canto XVIII of Jerusalem Delivered which Miss Singer gave Prior to submit to Tonson on his return to London did not get into this volume, perhaps because it was too late.

¹² The Index to Vol. XIII of the Prior Papers (Longleat), which is also in Drift's hand, describes the first letter as "To Philomela on a poem of hers which She recommends to his perusal before Publication."

¹³ Prior Papers (Longleat), XIII, 21.

¹⁴Dialogues of the Dead, ed. Waller (Cambridge, 1907), p. 305.

¹⁵ Prior Papers (Longleat), XIII, 23.

¹⁶ J. Burke and J. B. Burke, Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies (London, 1841), p. 581.

¹⁷ Prior Papers (Longleat), XIII, 28.

¹⁸Ibid, f. 34.

¹⁹Miscellaneous Works, I, 71–2.

²⁰ The inaccurate quotation of Falstaff is apparently based on 2 Henry IV, V, iii:

There is a later allusion to this same passage in Prior's "A Better Answer [to Cloe Jealous]."

²¹ Prior Papers (Longleat), XIII, 36.

²² The Occasional Conformity Bill, to which Prior refers, was rejected by the House of Lords on December 14, 1703 (G. M. Trevelyan, England Under Queen Anne: Blenheim, London, 1931, p. 330). Arch Duke Charles of Austria, recognized by England as Charles III of Spain, was royally entertained by Queen Anne in January and February 1704 (Ibid., p. 402).

²³ Prior Papers (Longleat), XII, 39.

²⁴ Act III, Scene V: "Honour aloud commands, pluck both Boots on; But softer Love does whisper put on none." Perhaps Prior meant to say, "I have both my Boots off."

²⁵ Prior Papers (Longleat), XIII, 40.

²⁶ C. K. Eves, Matthew Prior, Poet and Diplomatist (New York, 1939), pp. 186–9.

²⁷ Prior Papers (Longleat), XIII, 44.

²⁸ Part VI was not published until 1709. It does contain verses by her friend Henry Grove.

²⁹ The "melancholy poem" mentioned in the letter is so identified in the index to this volume.

³⁰ Prior Papers (Longleat), XIII, 46.

³¹Ibid., f. 53. The index to Vol. XIII supplies the name of the month, omitted from the date line of the letter.

³²Ibid., f. 93.

³³ Grove, op. cit., p. xviii.

³⁴Miscellaneous Works, 1, 166–7.

³⁵ Grove, loc. cit.

³⁶ Henry Grove was an uncle of Thomas Rowe (Dictionary of National Biography, art. "Grove, Henry (1684–1738)," XXIII, 296).