SOURCE: "Matthew Prior's Dialogues of the Dead," in Ball State University Forum, Vol. VIII, No. 3, Summer, 1967, pp. 73-8.

[In the following essay, first presented as a lecture in 1964, Morton contrasts the approach to the dialogue des morts ("dialogue of (or with) the dead") taken by various seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers with that of Prior in his Dialogues of the Dead. Morton focuses particularly on Prior's use of irony, his subtlety, and effective portrayal of setting.]

"I shall be transported into the company of wise and just gods," said Socrates of his approaching death, "and of dead men greater than those left alive. You may be assured that I expect to find myself amongst good men." Dr. John Arbuthnot has his Bishop Burnet "dream that I am dead, and conversing with the ghosts of emperors, popes and kings." From the Augustans to the present century—

For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney …
And other heroes of that kidney—

the immortal and loquacious throngs of Hades have offered themselves to the imagination, and it is small wonder that manywriters have tried to verbalize the wit and wisdom of the dead. Particularly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in France and in England, the dialogue des morts flourished. Among those who wrote in English, Matthew Prior has perhaps the most distinguished name, and his dialogues well deserve A. R. Waller's praise, "among the best of their kind." Prior wrote only four dialogues and in variety and scope he is more limited than his fellow necrodramatists, but his uniquely keen insight into the full potentials of the form gives his pieces a particular appeal and effectiveness.

The dead may be presumed to have neither illusions nor false dignity; Lucian, the classical exponent of the dialogue from Hades, vigorously propounded the cynic theme that human success and achievement are transitory, and he made his dialogues primarily satires against pretension. In his celebrated Dialogue 20 we see the various dead souls crowding into Charon's boat, stripped of their beauty, their wealth, their physical prowess, their trophies, and their luxury. The transported rhetorician must abandon his flowers of rhetoric, and only Menippus is allowed to bring aboard his worldy possessions—frankness, geniality, independence, and laughter. This Lucianic theme is widely continued. Frequent passages in the Letters from the Dead to the Living by Tom Brown (one of Dryden's translators of Lucian) attest to the decay of human fortune. We are, for example, shown Semiramis as an alewife:

and this may serve as a lesson of instruction to you, that when once death has laid his icy paws upon us all other distinctions of fortune and quality immediately vanish.…

and numerous other notables appear similarly grovelling in penury.

This fairly obvious satirical device is utilized by Prior—in his opening speech of Oliver Cromwell, who is to discourse with his late, mad porter:

What a Vicisitude does Death bring to human affairs! No Coronet on my Head, no purple Robe to my back no Scepter in my hand, neither Heralds before nor Guards around me, Justled and Affronted by a hundred Cavalier Ghosts whom I ruined in t'other World.

Yet Lucian himself seems mostly to have exhausted the satirical possibilities of death as disposer of honors. Indeed, his more successful dialogues take place on the way to Hades where the trappings of life are present, though reluctantly being shed. When the vanities of life have been thoroughly purged away, the individuality of the speaker evaporates. The once-great dead become intellectual and spiritual paupers, whose conversations can have nocomic potential; there is only the one irony—the discrepancy between the heroic reputation and the impotent ghost. A more viable form for the dialogue shows the dead permitted to retain their status and their baggage: the satire arises more dynamically from the clash between the different sorts and conditions of men flung together in the democracy of the afterlife and maintaining the beliefs and philosophies, or the illusions and eccentricities, of their lives. Such dialogues have potential intellectual subtlety. Little of interest could flow from the consultations of the following characters, to use Tom Brown again:

Alexander the Great is bully to a guinea-dropper; and Cardinal Mazarin keeps a nine-holes: Mary of Medicis foots stockings, and Katharine, queen of Sweedland, cried "Two bunches a penny cardmatches, two bunches a penny"; Henry the Fourth of France carries a raree-show; and Mahomet, mussels; Seneca keeps a fencing-school, and Julius Caesar a two-penny ordinary, etc.

But when we see, in Prior's dialogue between Charles the Emperor and Clenard the Grammarian, the ruler and the scholar still, in death, tranquilly totting up their human conquests, we expect some good entertainment:

CHARLES: Burgundy with Brabant and Flanders, Castile, Arragon, Germany Possessed: Italy, France, Africa, Greece Attempted.

CLENARD: Noun Substantive and Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Participle Declined: Adverb, Conjunction, preposition, Interjection undeclined.

CHARLES: Into this Model I had cast Europe, how Glorious was the Design?

CLENARD: How happy was the Division I made of all Greece into five Dialects.

A classic confrontation of human values is clearly about to begin.

In his most Lucianic dialogue, that between Cromwell and the porter, Prior skillfully recognizes and avoids the fruitless theme of naked grandeur. The mad porter explains that while the pretensions of the world are rejected from Hades, their imprints linger on, giving a recognizable identity to the individuals. The dead are shown as acting out not a meaningless series of drudgeries as in Tom Brown, but a legitimate, if mimic, continuance of their earthly lives:

You may find [the Conquerors and Heroes] there withSpartacus, Massenellio, and Jack Cade, making of Dirt pies or playing at Cudgells for it is not absolutely true what the Poets say of Lethe Waters That they make us forget all we have done, they only cool our Passions and calm the heat of Our Mondane Distempers. Every Man acts in Jeast here what He did in the t'other World in Earnest. You may excercise amongst the Heroes without blowing up Citadells and destroying whole Countries, You may study among the Lawgivers without being Stark wild about Ordonnances and Proclamations, etc.

Prior's words, "for it is not absolutely true what the Poets say," are a valid clue to his thoughtful and cautious consideration of the nature of the form he uses. Others, less subtle than Prior at this point, simply let the satire and humor emerge from the shades' retention of their human qualities and distinctions, unchanged by death. Thus, we often meet good satire, but rarely good dialogue des morts. Obvious social vices or intellectual claptrap, when revealed after death, have the most palpable air of folly. William King's Dialogues of the Dead (1699), for example, are an extended commentary on Bentley and the Phalaris controversy, and the scholar and his minions are shown distracting the dead with their pedantry exactly as on earth they confuse the living. William Wotton, thinly disguised as Moderno, retails to a skeptical shade named Indifferentio the extent of his researches:

In the meantime I think I have demonstrated from the ditches, crevices, tadpoles, spiders, divinity, caterpillars, optics, maggots, tobacco, flies, oranges, lemons, cider, coffee and linen rags of the moderns, that THE EXTENT OF KNOWLEDGE IS AT THIS TIME VASTLY GREATER THAN IT WAS IN FORMER TIMES.

In such satire, only the title, "Dialogues of the Dead," lets us know that we are dealing with other than a worldly dispute such as we frequently meet with in the John Bull papers or the memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus.

In the Varronian satire of King, the intellectual disputes of the real world can be dramatized; but these are disputes of a kind familiar (indeed actual) among the living. The unique criterion of Lucian, the isotimia of Hades which reduces everything to dust (the bones of Nireus and Thersites undistinguished) is equally unfruitful. But the fully developed dialogue of the dead, when used imaginatively, can bring together habits of mind and attitudes which would, in practice, never come together in the real world. When the shades retain their earthly vanities the dialogues can develop into meaningful confrontations of different points of view and different sets of values. Prior, in the debate between Charles and Clenard, lets each maintain his peculiar eminence as a basic position:

CLENARD: … You would not find so much difference between us Two as you imagine.

CHARLES: Difference? Why I was by Birth Monarch of Nations, by Acquisition and Power Emperor of the West, and by Stratagem and refinement one of the most Cunning Politicians and most renowned Warriors of my time.

CLENARD: And I was the best Grammarian of Mine, very Virtuous as to my Morals, well versed in the Belles Lettres, and of an agreable Wit in Conversation.

CHARLES: Why Thou dost not intend I should submit to so Comical a Comparison.

Undeniably, such an unexpected juxtaposition of individuals from different ends of the corridors of power could take place only in the open and eternal society of Hades. In another dialogue Sir Thomas More and the Vicar of Bray meet on equal terms and well laden with maxims of stoicism and compromise to argue for their positions, and, in the longest of Prior's pieces, Montaigne and Locke dispute on the great questions of philosophy.

This is the approach to the dialogue des morts of the great French moralists of the period, such as Fenelon or, later, Vauvenargues. They can show a pair of intellectual positions, symbolic frequently of two civilizations, in conflict. Usually a solemn moral purpose is served. Fenelon is avowedly didactic, and his dialogues come equipped with titles sounding in moral virtue:

"Justice and happiness are only found in fidelity, righteousness and courage," "To oblige the ungrateful is to destroy oneself," "Virtue is worth more than high birth," "Lies and tricks have more effect on the credulous than truth and virtue," etc.

Hardin Craig warned us, many years ago, not to ignore the effect of Erasmus on the European dialogue, and we can sense his impact here, or in the later work of Lord Lyttelton. But, as in some of the admittedly satirical dialogues, so in the openly moral pieces of the French—the authors seem to recognize the juxtaposition of ideas but largely ignore the peculiar nature of the setting. In general, they might be accused of writing, to use Landor's term, "Imaginary Conversations" rather than dialogues des morts; we forget, in reading them, the central, motivating fact that the disputants are dead. A parallel might be found in some of the "beast fables" of sophisticated cultures in which we forget that the speakers are after all animals. Prior, at the beginning of his career, had observed this flaw in Dryden and wittily attacked it in the Hind and Panther Transvers'd:

Gadsokers! Mr. Johnson, does your Friend think I mean nothing but a Mouse, by all this? I tell thee, Man. I mean a Church, and these young Gentlemen her Sons, signifie Priests, Martyrs and Confessors, that were hang'd in Oats's Plot.

It is a sign of Prior's skill that in his dialogues he never lets the reader forget the vital correlate. Even in the discourse of Locke and Montaigne, which ranges most widely over nonpersonal and abstract considerations, he makes Montaigne's "Contemplation on Death" a centerpiece for commentary. The dialogues of More and the Vicar, and Charles and Clenard are essentially occupied with the nature of death and the due preparation for it; Clenard, speaking of regal pomp, relates it specifically to Charles dead:

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.

The "you" meaning Charles' social group turns appositely to "you" meaning Charles himself. The Vicar is able to use the situation to advantage in his argument:

Admirable Philosophy indeed, in the Practice of which you were Beheaded on Tower Hill at fifty-three, whereas without it I Dyed quietly in my bed at eighty.

Nor does Prior forget the central irony of the situation, the ridiculous meeting in the afterworld. Charles, defeated in argument, begs Clenard not to tell his fellow princes of his shame. More and the Vicar discourse of Laud, pointing out that:

it is as reasonable for Us to mention a Man that was born Since we Dyed as it is for those in the t'other World to quote an Author that Dyed before They were born.

To point this moral home, Charles and Clenard briefly digress to comment on the poetry of Prior himself. The reader, then, is always aware of the marks of death on the speakers, as the Vicar reminds us with his condolences on More's mishap:

Oh that ugly Seam, Sir; that remains still about your Neck.
O Sir a Head Sewed on again never sits well.

The clash of cultures brought together in the fellowship of death, which produces the moral crux in the French writers, is well utilized by Prior when he elects speakers whose whole visions of humanity conflict, so that the debate between them can be farranging and meaningful. Charles the tyrant debates with Clenard the humane teacher, whose character is, in the Emperor's eyes, unambitious, modest, and insignificant. The saintly Thomas More reveals the selfish pettiness of the Vicar of Bray's inconstancy. Locke's pedantic scholasticism is mocked by the urbane geniality of Montaigne. A danger not always avoided in such dialogues is that well defined by Dr. Johnson in his comment on Lyttelton, "The names of his persons too often enable the reader to anticipate their conversation." The comment would also hold true of Fenelon; Prior avoids blame not so much by the introduction of novel or startling points of view as by his constantly witty dialogue, and by his willingness to write at length, so that the obvious ideas can be scrutinized closely and pointedly. To this extent Prior is skillful. To the extent that one character, representing an apparent ideal, debates with a less admirable interlocutor, Prior's dialogues are conventional.

But Prior goes beyond skillful conventionality in some passages. The Locke-Montaigne confrontation shows that he has a somewhat subtler approach to the dramatic possibilities of the form than his contemporaries—even including Fontenelle who surpasses him in sheer fun. This dialogue is not a plain confrontation of the desirable and the undesirable; though the sympathtic Montaigne seems the obvious victor, Locke is not denied some shrewd hits:

Speak, Sir, Answer me logically [says Locke after making a splendid rebuttal], You are not used to Pause for a Reply.

MONTAIGNE: Faith I think he has me a little upon the hipp, with his Logic, where one cannot perfectly Excuse, all one can do is to recriminate.

which he now proceeds to do. Indeed, this debate is at a logical and philosophical rather than a moral level—Prior has no intention of accusing Locke of wickedness, but merely of some foppery. Even the other debates are by no means as one-sided as we might expect. The author works on the reader's too facile acceptance of Clenard and More as the ideals, and lets us see that their opponents can direct sure and thought-provoking responses. As in Book IV of Gulliver's Travels the unwary reader is confused by whether Gulliver or the Houyhnhnm or either represents the decent norm, so in these dialogues the writer's irony is apparent in his refusal to accept an easy moral victory for the obvious ethical superior. Clenard, in his enthusiastic zeal for the status of the grammarian, comes at the end of the dialogue to the point of accepting Charles' view of power, and proudly runs through a list of wars and quarrels caused by the verbal quibbles of the scholars. Surely Prior is exercising his irony here:

Two Latin prepositions Trans and Cum joined withSubstantiation a word invented by us Scholemen were the Cause of all your troubles in Germany, and the same Contention is stil on foot tho it is now one hundred and fifty Years Since we were discharged from having any part in it.

He retells the famous story of the EINIG-EUIG confusion, noting:

for the Power of an n and a u here is the Grandson of Maximilian of Austria, and Mary of Burgundy … playing a Trick for which a public Notary in the smallest Imperial District would be Censured, and to say no worse of the matter. The Emperor both as to his Sense and honor depending wholly upon the Grammarian.

Charles is more readily persuaded by this sign of real power in the hands of the grammarians, but the reader must surely demur somewhat. In the debate between More and the Vicar the reader senses that, willy-nilly, practice and the world are on the side of the Vicar:

MORE: If I were to be Chancellor again, and had all the Livings in the Land to dispose I would not give You one of them.

VICAR: If all Succeeding Chancellors were of Your Opinion your Livings would want Incumbents, and the Civil Power might send out Press Gangs for Priests to supply the Parishes.

The selections for the incomplete dialogue involving Jane Shore (printed in the apparatus to the majestic Oxford edition of Prior by H. Bunker Wright and Monroe K. Spears) shows again that Prior had thought out some skillful knocks to come from the enemy.

A powerful dramatic device is to let the unsympathetic character have some of the best lines—traditionally a weakness of the dialogues des morts as a form has been the failure of the writers to give the wicked shades a fair hearing. Prior's momentary ironic reversals of sympathy accomplish the desirable effect.

From the traditional forms of the dialogue des morts Prior absorbs what is meaningful, and he adds insights of his own. Throughout, these dialogues, written late in his life, manifest that sophistication which distinguishes all of his work. He does not deny the power of opinion, as he observes in his essay on that topic:

We cannot see two People play, but we take part with One, and wish the other Should lose, this without any previous reason or consideration: But alas! the Bowl takes a stronger Bias, as we more know the Person: If we Love him his Defects are diminished, if we hate him, his faults are Exagerated. We look upon the differentobjects without finding that we have insensibly turned the Tube.

But in his dialogues, regardless of obvious opinion, he takes care to manage his tube with consistency and, when the reader least expects it, he bowls counter to the bias and startles our complacency.