"Dramatic Texture and Philosophical Debate in Prior's Dialogues of the Dead," in Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Vol. 28, No. 3, Summer, 1988, pp. 427-41.

[In this essay Nelson supplies an overview of what he considers Prior's unique contributions to the "dialogues of (or with) the dead" literary form.]

Since ancient times, the dialogue has proven itself one of the most versatile of all the forms of literature. One offshoot of this form, the dialogue of the dead, has had, however, a much less fertile literary history.¹ The three most eminent writers of this more restricted form are probably Lucian, Fontenelle, and Fenelon, but there is another who merits, and is beginning to receive, a wider recognition. In the final years of his life, Matthew Prior composed several dialogues of the dead that have received high praise from their few commentators. K. N. Colvile declares that they are "among the very best of their kind ever written in any tongue,"² and Frederick Keener, in the most comprehensive and illuminating discussion of this genre, says that "they do not pale when set beside acknowledged masterpieces of eighteenth-century literature."³ Since they were first published only in 1907 and since only four of them were written (of which one is unfinished), these dialogues have received relatively little scholarly attention. Two aspects of these works in particular, I believe, could use further exploration: the nature of Prior's thought, his central philosophical values, and the various techniques he uses to dramatize these ideas. In this paper I propose to show how Prior blends the different uses of such dialogues, from satire to a discussion of ethics, into dramatic confrontations between two personalities with radically conflicting ways of looking at the world. To understand Prior's distinctive contribution to this form, we need to look briefly at the three writers mentioned above before turning to the Englishman's writings.

Writing in the second century of the Christian era, Lucian is generally credited with originating the dialogue of the dead, and he placed it firmly in the satiric tradition. Lucian depicts mythological or historical figures who discover, to their chagrin, that death obliterates all worldly distinctions and that their earthly obsessions no longer matter. He ridicules those who cling to their possessions or to their physical beings after death, though he makes little effort to render human personality in his conversations. A typical example occurs in the debate between Nireus and Thersites about which one is better looking. They appeal the decision to Menippus the Cynic, Lucian's satiric mouthpiece, whose decision underscores their absurdity: "Bones are all alike. The only way of distinguishing your skull from Thersites'," he tells Nireus, "is that yours wouldn't take much cracking; it's fragile—not very masculine." And at the end of this brief dialogue Menippus sums up: "There aren't any distinctions in Hades; everybody's equal."⁴ Thus Lucian initiates one of the central themes of the dialogue of the dead, the leveling power of death. Lucian's attack on man's pretensions is harsh and cynical, since, as Bryan Reardon has observed, his "merciless rationality never reaches any but negative conclusions. Lucian knows all the answers; and they are all 'No'."⁵

Closer to Prior in time if not in spirit are the French dialogists of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Fontenelle and Fénelon. Fontenelle first established himself as a writer with his dialogues published in 1683, in which he mixes ancient and modern characters in urbane, witty, and often ironic explorations of the vagaries of human nature or the paradoxical quality of life. Like Lucian's, they are brief discussions of general ideas, but they lack his strongly marked satiric impulse. One of the characters commonly acts as the instructor of the other as they probe the subtleties of their topic. Socrates, for example, explains to Montaigne that the nature of man is essentially constant throughout history: "La politesse ou la grossièreté, la science ou l'ignorance, le plus ou le moins d'une certaine naïveté, le génie sérieux ou badin, ce ne sont là que les dehors de l'homme, et tout cela change; mais le coeur ne change point, et tout l'homme est dans le coeur."⁶ But there are few moments of high tension or sharp intellectual debate in these conversations, which, for the most part, remain smooth, polite, and clever, and without much passion or personality.

At the end of the seventeenth century, Fenelon adopted the dialogue of the dead for the instruction of his prince-pupil, the Duke of Burgundy. His conversations naturally have a strong didactic element, with their goal of showing the future king of France the proper values and attitudes of a wise and benevolent monarch. In one of these, Achilles confesses to the centaur Chiron in the afterlife that he was an impetuous young man whose passion got the better of him, as youth is prone to allow: "la jeunesse," he remarks, "serait charmante si on pouvait la rendre modérée et capable de réfexions." Chiron replies, however, that this will only be possible if one learns "de se craindre soi-même, de croire les gens sages, de les appeler à son secours, de profiter de ses fautes passées pour prévoir celles qu'il faut éviter à l'avenir, et d'invoquer souvent Minerve dont la sagesse est au-dessus de la valeur emportee de Mars."⁷ Moral judgments permeate these dialogues as Fenelon lays bare for his young student the shocking ignorance or misguided intentions of past leaders and civilizations. In commenting on recent French history, for example, Fénelon has Richelieu condemn Mazarin for being weak, timid, secretive, and lacking in principle. The Italian, Richelieu declares, is responsible for undermining the morality of the French: "vous avez corrompu le fond de leurs moeurs, vous avez rendu la probité gauloise et ridicule."⁸

Such are the major dialogists of the dead before Prior. The Englishman, despite the few dialogues he wrote, manages to strike a new and distinctive note in this tradition, by combining the satire, irony, and didacticism of his predecessors with a greater sense of the dramatic, together with a fuller exploration of the philosophical issues in question.

In his dialogues Prior depicts historical characters who engage in serious discussions of issues and ideas, defending their lives according to their conception of man and the world. Philosophy comes alive through personality; the human clash is elevated by the debate about general principles. Though not all of the dialogues are equally successful, they point to a more theatrical approach to the form than found in the past. Before detailing some of the dramatic aspects of these dialogues, we must look carefully at Prior's central ideas.

Critics have generally identified Prior as a philosophical skeptic. Forty years ago, in a series of seminal articles on Prior, Monroe Spears, though acknowledging Prior's fideism, made Pyrrhonism the key to his religious thought. Prior, Spears declared, "is, throughout his work, a consistent exponent of Pyrrhonism and a disciple of Montaigne," and he cites the Locke-Montaigne dialogue for an important piece of evidence. Montaigne's "chief argument" in Prior's dialogue, Spears says, is "the basic Pyrrhonist one against the possibility of any knowledge of absolute truth beyond the uncertain realm of sense-impressions."⁹ Recently, John Higby and Frederick Keener have concurred with this judgment, though Keener speaks more generally of "Prior's distinctive blend of skepticism and energy, disillusionment and generosity."¹⁰ Prior's skepticism has, in effect, become a critical commonplace.

But I believe we have accepted this designation too easily. True Pyrrhonist or skeptical doctrines are less evident in Prior's dialogues, or his work as a whole, than we are given to believe. Many years ago, C. K. Eves, Prior's biographer, pointed out that Prior wrote a number of religious poems throughout his career, some of which were among his favorites, and that he "was as loyal a Church of England man as he was a patriotic Englishman. For the natural religion of many of his contemporaries or for irreligion, he had neither patience nor understanding."¹¹ It is difficult to believe that a man who can casually refer to Christ as "our Savior" in his own commonplace book at this time (1720-21) could be a true skeptic.¹²

Nor do his dialogues support a skeptical or libertine interpretation. Montaigne himself, in Prior's dialogue, refers disparagingly to the founder of Greek skepticism in discussing a contemporary philosopher: "Descartes in the middle of the Joy he felt when he was certain he doubted of every thing and only knew his own Ignorance, was just in the same piteous estate where Pyrrho found himself two thousand years before" (1:633). In the passage from the Locke-Montaigne dialogue that Spears cites to support his claim for Prior's Pyrrhonism, Montaigne's purpose is to demonstrate the fallibility of man's sensory knowledge, thus undermining Locke's philosophy. Arguments against the validity of sense impressions are not unique to skepticism, nor does Montaigne assert that certain knowledge does not exist. From his other comments it is clear that he believes there is plenty of knowledge and wisdom about life available to man if he will only open his eyes a little more. Moreover, some other characteristics of skepticism are missing from Montaigne's arguments. The goal of the skeptic was, according to Long, "freedom from disturbance,"¹³ since it was impossible to determine any absolute truth. Montaigne neither argues for such tranquility of mind nor does he exhibit it. And, finally, a proper skeptic would suspend judgment on any question and refuse to discriminate between good and evil for the same reason that he values imperturbability: ultimate reality can never be known for certain. On the contrary, Prior's Montaigne, like the real one, is positive, cheerful, dogmatic, and fully engaged with life. He is a vigorous Gascon with a Gallic wit and a rapid-fire mind. There is very little of the true skeptical philosopher about him or his arguments.

If Prior is not a skeptic, what is he? His own philosophy is difficult to characterize because it is unsystematic and eclectic. Like Montaigne, he draws on a variety of sources, both classical and Christian, for his themes. He is a traditional moralist who harks back to Horatian moderation as an antidote for the excessive zeal or enthusiasm with which human beings generally pursue their selfish goals. He sees clearly the limits of our reason and knowledge, and he roundly condemns our inclination to presumption and pretense. He wants us to know ourselves and our limitations better and not to impose ourselves on others as we strive to realize our ambitions or our happiness. Prior's dialogues affirm the values of simplicity, honesty, and moderation, in part by satirizing the human tendency to self-righteousness and an inflated sense of self-worth. Humility, restraint, and tolerance are key words in Prior's lexicon, or implicit assumptions in his satiric mode. Like Swift, he chooses not to depict humanity's spiritual condition, focusing instead on the ethical dimension of our behavior. Prior's ideas are scarcely original, but they are threaded throughout his dialogues, providing a continuous basis for judging what is being said.

As many have pointed out, one of Prior's characters appears to speak for the author in each of his dialogues, though he may not embody absolute truth or represent the perfection of humanity. This character, in the course of the dialogue, instructs the other one not only in ideas but also in feelings and sensitivity, though hehimself may show some failings or weaknesses of character along the way. Aristotle's Golden Mean furnishes one of the truths that Prior's characters keep returning to in their discussions. Montaigne is perhaps Prior's chief exponent of this idea, especially when he summarizes some of his own axioms on life in opposition to Locke. "There is no pleasure," Montaigne asserts, "so just and Lawfull but is blamable if used in Intemperance or Excess" (1:627). "Valor," too, according to Montaigne, "has its Limits as well as the other Virtues, and foolhardiness is as great a Vice as Cowardise" (1:627). Even the concept of courtesy includes the possibility of excess: "I have seen," Montaigne remarks, "People impertinent by too much good Manners, and troublesome with the greatest Decorum" (1:627).

Prior's other dialogues contain a similar concern with virtue as a mean. The Vicar of Bray suggests to Thomas More that virtue itself requires restraint, and quotes some verses from a "Freind" (actually Prior himself) that were originally composed for Alma:

Your Conscience like a Firy Horse
Shou'd never know His native force
Ride him but with a Moderate Rein
And stroke him down with Worldly gain;
Bring him by Management and Art
To every thing that made him Start;
And strive by just degrees to Settle
His native warmth and height of mettle.
(1:653)

Occasionally, this theme is adapted directly from Horace, whose poetry Prior admired and imitated. Nicolas Clenard, a learned and lively professor of languages, in his conversation with Charles V, former Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, cites Horace's first satire from Book I to support his contention that moderation should guide our attitudes and actions in life, in contrast to the hauteur that Charles displayed. As Clenard translates Horace's famous lines on this theme:

One equal bound there is, one Stated line,
Which shou'd the Justice of our Act confine:
There Right resides, what goes beyond is Wrong:
Grows idly vast, and trails absurdly long.
(1:603)

Clenard further advises Charles that "Reason should Direct your view, but Ambition dazles it, So you never attain your Desires, because you neversufficiently consider what will satisfy them" (1:603). The grammarian proceeds to condemn heroic virtue, which, according to him, once it transcends "the measure of Nature from Sublime turns to Ridiculous" (1:603). All of this sounds very much like Aristotle's discussion of virtue in his Ethics, where he says that virtue "is a mean between two kinds of vice, one of excess and the other of deficiency; and also for this reason, that whereas these vices fall short of or exceed the right measure in both feelings and actions, virtue discovers the mean and chooses it."¹⁴ Like Horace, then, who based his satires on the idea of the "happy medium,"¹⁵ Prior centers his dialogues on the same commonplace, though he gives it his own dress and style.

Because of its wide-ranging nature, the Locke-Montaigne dialogue, especially in Montaigne's axioms for life, summarizes most of Prior's central themes. Throughout Montaigne's long monologue, he emphasizes simplicity in life, integrity, and tolerance. "To be honest is the end and Design of our Life" he declares (1:627), though the difficulty of this modest goal is clearly implied. Another statement about the purpose of life suggests an even more limited end: "Our chief Business in life is to learn to bear the ills of it" (1:627). Life, Montaigne implies, will furnish enough suffering for us without our creating more problems for ourselves through imaginary anxieties or a crusading zeal. We should learn to accept ourselves and our conditions, and not seek out greener pastures elsewhere. But human beings are eternally restless: "we are always beyond our selves, fear, Desire, hope, throw us forward into futurity, and take away our sense of what is to amuse us, with what shal be, and that too possibly when we cannot perceive it" (1:627). Because of our restlessness we find it difficult to live peaceably in a community: "Have you composed your own Manners, and lived as you ought to do with Your Neighbors? You have done more than he who has written Volumes or taken Cities" (1:627). Even in education restraint is the key: "As to Science," Montaigne asserts, "Plants may be Killed with too plentifull Nourishment, and Lamps Extinguisht by too great a supply of Oyle; We may have so much Science that it may confound our Judgment" (1:628). To find stability in life we must recognize that many apparently desirable goals are illusions, such as the lives of the "great," who suffer from many serious "Inconveniences and hindrances" (1:628) by being constantly in the public eye. Finally, Prior paraphrases Montaigne's thoughts on death, where he tries to moderate ournatural fear of it and to lessen the importance we attach to life: "Comfort Your self, You have good Company in the way. A thousand Men and ten thousand Animals Dye in the very same moment with You" (1:628). In such maxims carefully selected from Montaigne's essays, Prior inculcates the virtues of temperance and modesty, of limited goals and realistic visions, and, in doing so, sounds a good deal more like a traditional moralist than a philosophical skeptic.

Similar sentiments occur in Prior's other dialogues. One common theme is that happiness may be found in any station of life. Clenard makes this point to Charles after the Emperor has wondered how people of inferior rank can possibly be considered as happy as their superiors: "Every Wise Man has [an equal share of happiness] … for … he must form it himself, and this is soon done, when the necessarys of Life very few and easy to come at, almost within every Mans reach are once acquired" (1:606). Cromwell's porter, too, defends his life in a prison cell after the Lord Protector expresses his astonishment that anyone could be happy there, especially one who was judged to be mad. Simplicity of desire, the porter remarks, mocks all of Cromwell's "Splendor and Magnificence, Gardens Parks and Palaces." After all, the porter notes: "I had every thing which I desired or wanted, My Potage well dressed, my Straw fresh and my Coverlet Clean, Whilst in the midst of the Plunder of Three Nations You were always in Necessity, and every Week laying New Taxes upon an opprest People For the Support of an awkward ill founded Greatness" (1:657). The simple life of a madman in his cell was certainly not Prior's literal ideal, but it favorably contrasts with Cromwell's extravagant and immoral attempts as self-glorification. Simplicity also appears in the Vicar of Bray's disarmingly plain answer to Thomas More's question about his goal in life: "Why," the Vicar replies, "to teach my Parish and Receive my Tythes" (1:644). To the extent that he retains his integrity, the Vicar is right. His modesty acts as a satiric counterpoint to More's self-righteousness.

As these examples show, the defense of the simple life leads naturally to some of Prior's most telling blows against social pretense and snobbery. Clenard's description of Charles V's exploits as a conqueror reduces them to an immoral spectacle: "Now of the Hundred thousand Men, with whom You went Dub a Dub, and Tantara rara thrô the World Nineteen parts in Twenty were only Machines, meer Instruments of War, made use of to fill Trenches, or stop Breaches, played off by whole Battallions, Food for Powder, as Sir John Falstaff calls it, in the English Play" (1:601). A number of such passages appear in this dialogue as Clenard's satiric imagination catches fire when he denounces Charles's abuse of his power and his contemptuous attitude toward the common people. In a statement that does much to discredit his own judgment, Thomas More exhibits a similar attitude toward the people when he exclaims: "the Mass of Mankind is a Multitude of Such Animals as this Vicar, the Burden of the Earth, who only feed upon it without endeavoring to deserve the Bread it affords them, Wretches, who in having done nothing have done ill" (1:654-55). Sympathy for the common man is one of Prior's most constant and most endearing themes.

Another snobbery that Prior ridicules is the intellectual, with Locke being the chief target. Locke opens the dialogue musing upon his very important role in the history of philosophy: "Is it not wonderfull," he remarks, "that after what Plato and Aristotle, Descartes and Malbranch have written of Human understanding, it should be reserved to Me to give the most clear, and Distinct Account of it?" (1:615). Montaigne, of course, cannot allow such vanity to go by without laughing at it, but he also levels some serious as well as satiric criticisms at the Englishman's philosophy. In particular, he attacks Locke's use of language, especially his penchant for giving circular or meaningless definitions. In a parody of Locke's method, Montaigne imagines the following interchange:

I hold a Stone in my hand, and ask you what it is, You tell me 'tis a body, I ask you what is a Body, You reply it is a Substance; I am troublesome enough once more to ask You what is a Substance, you look graver imediately, and inform me that it is something whose Essence consists in Extension in such a manner as to be capable of receiving it, in Longitude, Latitude, and Profundity.

(1:618)

Intellectual pretense joins with social snobbery when Locke scorns the effort to write "to the Vulgar" as he defends the difficulty of his philosophy. Montaigne counters that common readers are "the only People that should be writ to," pointing out that many of the greatest writers either came from the "Vulgar" themselves or wrote for them: "Esop and Epictetus had more Sense than their Masters. Sophocles shewed his Tragedies to his Maid. Since our time Racine, said, he doubted of the Success of his Phaedra till his Coachman told him he liked the Character of Hypolitus, and Boileau, addresses one of his Epistles to Antoine his Fav'rite Gardiner" (1:624). Montaigne concludes his debate with Locke by showing how impractical the Englishman's philosophy is when applied to everyday life. He imagines Locke's servant trying to carry out the simplest command from his master ("You may go down and Sup, Shut the Door" [1:635]) by analyzing it in Lockean terms. Such a process effectively reduces the command to nonsense, confusing the servant and embroiling him with his fellow servants. Wisdom is clearly not served by such a method of reasoning.

In ridiculing Locke's search for truth, Prior does not adopt the premise that it is impossible ever to know anything for sure, as agood Pyrrhonist would. Rather, through Montaigne and his other spokesmen, he shows how selfishness, pride, and presumption cloud our vision and obstruct the search for wisdom, and how simplicity, integrity, and moderation could provide a positive set of norms and attitudes for guiding our lives toward a reasonable measure of happiness and fulfillment. The dialogue form enables Prior to present such values indirectly without preaching, but they emerge nonetheless clearly and distinctly. The personalities Prior sets in conflict, especially his favored speakers, defend their lives and their ideas vigorously and often eloquently, with the result that these dialogues are unusually lively and dramatic. It is to this human side of the dialogues, with its theatrical aspect, that I now wish to turn.

Each dialogue opens with a sudden and apparently accidental meeting of the two characters in the after-life. No exposition of situation or setting introduces the discussion, but the issues in the debate emerge clearly in the opening statements. In a kind of reverie, Charles V reviews his conquests on earth: "Burgundy with Brabant and Flanders, Castile, Arragon, Germany Possessed: Italy, France, Africa, Greece Attempted" (1:599). Hearing this, Clenard, without an introduction, recites his own achievements as if in mockery: "Noun Substantive and Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Participle Declined: Adverb, Conjonction, preposition Interjection undeclined" (1:599). Thus Prior pits the warrior against the intellectual, the active life against the contemplative, to the detriment of the proud conqueror. We have already noted Locke's complacent dream of his place in the history of philosophy being shattered by Montaigne's pointed challenges, but there is also the Vicar of Bray's fond farewell to his parish that is upset by Thomas More's rebuke for his reluctance to go to his eternal home. From the start, then, Prior's characters square off in abrupt confrontations over their lives and values, with one of them challenging the other to philosophical debate.

Other dramatic techniques heighten the characterization in the dialogues and increase the tension between the debaters. Monologues not only enable one of the speakers to develop his ideas at length, but they also more fully reveal him as an individual. Clenard's speeches tend to turn into monologues because he is a "Word-Man" as Charles notes (1:605) and because he is defending a difficult position. The power of language is rarely accorded much recognition in contrast to the power of the sword, yet Clenard maintains that "Swords Conquer some, but words Subdue all Men" (1:611). These arguments, which Charles is unable to counter effectively, reinforce Clenard's central theme, though we see that he too goes overboard in his assertions. Like Clenard, Montaigne loves to amplify and embroider his ideas, not only to win the debate but also to show his wit and to indulge his love of invention and expression. We sense the joy in his verbal powers as his recital of various axioms for life extends to over two pages. When he finally stops to look up for a moment, he discovers that Locke has fallen asleep. On waking up, Locke naturally ridicules Montaigne's garrulous, rambling treatment of his ideas, a criticism sometimes made of the Essays, yet despite this comic incident, Montaigne's arguments are not seriously undermined but only given a human context. In the other two dialogues monologues are less in evidence since no personality dominates them as do Clenard and Montaigne in theirs.

Another dramatic device Prior uses effectively, though sparingly, in the dialogues is the aside. The speaker of the aside is generally in the process of losing the argument, and it enables us to see into his feelings about the course of the discussion. After Clenard concludes his long diatribe on the power of language, Charles comments to himself with a typical image: "I'l e'en draw down my main Argument, my great Battering Piece upon him, and Strike him Dead at once" (1:612). Charles's confidence is, however, seriously misplaced, since he cannot repel Clenard's verbal assault so easily. A variation of the aside occurs when Thomas More, true to his character, moralizes on the foolish Vicar's worries about his curate outliving him: "Strange Illusion! of which even Death has not cured this Wretch, We join Ideas which in Nature have no Coherence: Our fear of Death gives us not sufficient leizure to consider what Death it self is" (1:648). More goes on to speak of the Vicar in the third person as if he were not there in front of him: "What was it to this Vicar who should enjoy that Benefice from which Death has given him an Eternal Quietus. Yet with Regret he considers who shall possess the Tythes when he shal neither have Mouth to Receive or Stomach to Digest the produce" (1:648). No doubt More is right about the Vicar's silly concerns, yet the interesting element is More's contempt for people of lesser intellectual capacity than his own. The aside, then, momentarily interrupts the flow of the discussion to allow a sudden perspective on it that often suffuses it with dramatic irony.

Prior uses language effectively to heighten our sense of two personalities in conflict over basic issues. It is considerably more varied than the language of Fontenelle and Fenelon, ranging from the highly formal to the colloquial or idiomatic. The colloquial expressions of some of his most educated speakers stand out, with such words as "Od zooks," "Pough, hang it," and "Egad" cropping up rather frequently. Even the Emperor Charles flavors his comments with a "prythee Man" (1:609) and "hark You" (1:615) that imitate an actual conversation taking place. Montaigne's language is naturally spiced with French exclamations like "Mort de ma Vie" (1:629) and "foy de Gentilhomme" (1:617), as well as a number of idiomatic English phrases such as "Who the Devil" (1:618), "come in for a Snack with my Landlord" (1:633), and "knock Your heart out" (1:638). He also uses contractions like "'tis," "'em," and "t'other," and coins some words like "Ergoismes" (1:631) and "Sectators" (1:619). Characters occasionally employ nicknames for their opponents that contribute to the satirical tone of the dialogue. Cromwell's porter calls the great man "Noll" to his face, Clenard refers to the Emperor as "Neighbor Charles," and More speaks of the Vicar as a "Drole." The Vicar is consistently respectful toward Sir Thomas, but he does call two of Henry VIII's queens "Old Kate" and "Nanny Bullen" (1:645). This informal language clearly gives us the impression of a vivid, almost realistic conversation taking place before us.

Language is also wittily employed in these dialogues, especially by Prior's favored speakers. Clenard, for instance, often introduces satiric analogies to deflate Charles's self-importance, as when he asks if Charles has never noticed "a large Ship going out of Port … with her Sails all spread, and her Streamers flying? … yet how soon her Bulk diminishes to the Eye of those that stand upon the Shoar 'till as the distance increases She becomes quite lost" (1:608). Applying this directly to Charles's career on earth, Clenard mocks his dependence upon the writer for his future reputation:

You are launched into the Ocean of Eternity with all your Scutchons and Bandirolls about your Hearse, and probably you may have Four Marble Virtues to Support the Monument you were Speaking of just now. But alas, the Funeral Pomp is soon diminishd worn out and forgotten: Age and Accident deface the Tomb, And, it is only one of Us Scholars that must take an Account of Your true Worth, and transmit its safe to succeeding Generations.

(1:608)

In his defense Charles asserts that men of words are the parasites of men of action, but his language lacks the expressiveness of Clenard's and thus fails in persuasive power.

The wittiest of Prior's characters is undoubtedly Montaigne. His speeches are filled with analogies, metaphors, similes, and imagery, much as his actual essays were, giving them an energy and an appeal that Locke cannot hope to match. When he ridicules Locke's penchant for defining terms without discussing his topic in a substantive fashion, Montaigne declares: "You seem, in my poor apprehension, to go to and fro upon a Philosophical Swing like a Child upon a wooden Horse always in motion but without any Progress, and to Act as if a Man instead of Practising his Trade should spend all his Life in Naming his Tools" (1:620-21). And when he defends his apparently confused method of treating his own subjects, Montaigne asserts that he is simply following the mode of Nature herself: "Is it not the variety it self that pleases while it instructs?" he asks. After all, "If all your Lillies were Collected together in one bed next your House, then all your Roses in an other, and all your Sun flowers in a Third, Who would admire the Beauty of your Garden?" (1:630). In answering Montaigne's critique of his lack of substance, Locke briefly introduces his own figure ("if a Man does not leap Hedge and Ditch, in your Opinion, he stands stock stil" [1:621]), but he is soon overwhelmed by a profusion of images and arguments from the Frenchman.

The other dialogues offer fewer imaginative passages than these because of the characters involved, yet the ones that do exist help reveal character or convey Prior's point of view. The Vicar of Bray, though a rather simple and uncomplicated man, exposes More's rigid moral approach to life after he hears some of the saint's hardhitting maxims: "you mix't too much Gall with your Ink," the Vicar declares, "Egad with these Maximes of Your's you would raise both Court and Country against You, and if You had as many heads as there are Loops upon Your Gown You might run a fair risk to have 'em all cut off (1:655). The Vicar speaks the truth here and more effectively because of his figurative language. More himself, as Prior depicts him, is not a very imaginative character, but when he does employ some figures, they are more bitter than most, as in the passage quoted above where he calls the common people "Animals" who are the "Burden of the Earth." Cromwell's porter is inherently not very imaginative, yet even he can introduce his own metaphors, as when he describes his master's own madness in despoiling his enemies of their property: "You find others," he tells Cromwell, "bitt with the same Tarantula who Second your fury pertake of the Plunder and justify your error. Yee all herd together, and it is a very hard thing to catch one of You" (1:661-62). Without this witty, imaginative language, Prior's characters, and hence his dialogues, would lack much of their interest and persuasiveness.

A final ingredient in these dialogues as miniature human dramas remains to be considered, that is, the range of emotion expressed. Prior's characters defend their convictions and attack their opponents with vigor and sometimes passion. Abrupt changes of tone occur, as characters react to one another in the flow of the exchange. All of the emotions we would expect are here, from the consternation of an emperor at being challenged by a lowly scholar to the haughty dogmatism of Cromwell. Montaigne himself plays most of the notes on the scale of feeling except perhaps those of deep anger or bitterness. There are, however, other feelings present that we would not anticipate and that lend a human richness to these conversations. Thus the Emperor Charles, by the end of his discussion with Clenard, is so frustrated with the professor that he breaks off any further debate, yet he solicits Clenard's help in concealing their talk because of its potential embarrassment for him. "Pray," he begs Clenard, "dont take the least Notice to any of my Fellow Princes of the Discourse we have had" (1:615). Fear of shame humanizes this haughty prince. The Vicar of Bray is remarkably mild and gentle throughout his dialogue until the last sentence when he allows himself a pointed thrust at Sir Thomas: "Thou Great Chancellor of England, without a head, Adieu" (1:655). Sarcasm humanizes the saintly Vicar. When Cromwell's porter describes the effect the execution of Charles I had upon him, we cannot help being struck by the depth of his disillusionment: "I imitated You, I looked upon You as my Idol till running from your Door with my Staff in my hand one thirtieth of January, I Shal never forget the Day, I saw You order your Master to be brought out of the Window, and Murthered at his own Palace Gate. I confess when You cut off the Kings head you turned mine into the bargain" (1:657). Though this dialogue may have the appearance of being Prior's most Lucianic work,¹⁶ the porter's unusual sensitivity gives it a pathos not found in the Greek author. Prior thus enriches the human side of his dialogues with these diverse and unexpected emotions.

Each of the dialogues ends with the two characters going their separate ways without having found any common ground of agreement. The reader, I believe, knows which one has had the better of the argument, though he also knows that neither has an exclusive option on the truth. Even Montaigne has to admit the justice of Locke's comment that many of his best ideas are taken from other writers. Prior, in other words, achieves a richer characterization in his dialogues, a greater "negative capability," than most other dialogists of the dead. Without sacrificing his central theme of Horatian moderation, Prior depicts a scene of conflicting personalities whose views and characters are unchanged since their earthly careers. The fusion of mimetic, satiric, and philosophical elements into a coherent dramatic scene is a remarkable achievement. It is a pity Prior had so little time to pursue his work in this genre.

Notes

¹ The land of the dead was used as the setting for a large number of literary works from the Renaissance down to modern times, as Benjamin Boyce has shown in "News from Hell," PMLA 58 (1943):402-37. As a distinct form, however, the dialogue of the dead appears only sporadically since Prior's time, from Lord Lyttleton's Dialogues (1760) to W. S. Landor's Imaginary Conversations (1824-29; 1853), George Santayana's Dialogues in Limbo (1925), and Steve Allen's television series "Meeting of Minds" (published in book form in 1978).

² K. N. Colvile, "Dialogues of the Dead," Quarterly Review 267 (1936): 312.

³ Frederick M. Keener, English Dialogues of the Dead: A Critical History, An Anthology, and a Check List (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1973), p. 55.

⁴ Lucian, Selected Works, trans. Bryan Reardon. The Library of Liberal Arts (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), p. 45.

⁵ Bryan Reardon, Introduction to Lucian, Selected Works (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), p. xxix.

⁶ Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, Nouveaux Dialogues des Morts, ed. Donald Schier (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1965), pp. 65-66.

⁷ François de Salignac Fenelon, Oeuvres, ed. Jacques Le Brun. Bibliotheque de la Pleiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1983, p. 285.

⁸ Fenelon, p. 493.

⁹ Monroe K. Spears, "The Meaning of Matthew Prior's Alma," ELH 12 (1946): 285.

¹⁰ Frederick Keener, English Dialogues of the Dead: A Critical History, An Anthology and a Check List (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1973), p. 69. John Higby, "Idea and Art in Prior's Dialogues of the Dead," Enlightenment Essays 5 (1974): 62-69.

¹¹ Charles Kenneth Eves, Matthew Prior: Poet and Diplomatist (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1939), p. 207; see also p. 404.

¹² See Matthew Prior, The Literary Works, ed. H. Bunker Wright and Monroe K. Spears, 2nd edn., 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 1:1011. All references to Prior's dialogues and other writings are to this edition.

¹³ A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics (New York: Scribner, 1970), p. 79.

¹⁴ Aristotle, The Ethics: The Nichomachean Ethics, trans. J. A. K. Thomson, rev. Hugh Tredennick (Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 1976), p. 102.

¹⁵ Niall Rudd, The Satires of Horace (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1966), p. 23.

¹⁶ Richard Morton, "Matthew Prior's Dialogues of the Dead," Ball State University Forum 8 (1967): 74.