Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/365

 12 S. IX. OCT. 8, 1921. J NOTES AND QUERIES. 299 DISRAELI, ROGERS, OR SHAFTESBURY | (12 S. ix. 52, 94). I remembered, but being away from home could not give the refer- ence to, an early attribution to the Earl of Shaftesbury of the saying respecting ! the religion of sensible men. Viscount i Percival (afterwards Earl of Egmont) notes j in his Diary under Oct. 23, 1730 : The same company met at the usual time, and i discoursed about two hours and a half of several parts of literature and characters of men. He said a lady asked the famous Lord Shaftesbury what religion he was of. He answered, the religion of wise men. She asked, what w T as that ? He answered, wise men never tell. (' Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont ' (1920), i., p. 113.) It is impossible to decide from the con- text who the " he " was, but as the Speaker (Qnslow) is mentioned as one of the company and statements made by him are given before and after the one quoted he may be the authority. I should think that in 1730 the "famous Lord Shaftesbury" would be the first Earl. DAVID SALMON. Swansea. MRS. SHERWOOD (12 S. ix. 251). 'Stories of the Church Catechism,' by Mrs. Sherwood, describe the lives in India of the women and children of a British regiment, date about 1830. C. B. E. [See also under Notices to Correspondents.] on JBoofeg. Matthew Prior : a Study of his Public Career and Correspondence. By L. G. Wickham Legg. (Cambridge University Press, 1 2s. 6d. net.) Mil. WICKHAM LEGG has been able to enrich his book by the use of documents hitherto un- published, and he is dealing with a subject of exceptional interest. Dick Whittington himself did not achieve a more sensational rise in life than Matthew Prior. By birth he belonged to labouring stock in a Wiltshire village and came to London as a child with no higher prospect than service in a tavern near Charing Cross. His uncle, who kept the tavern, gave him some opportunity of education, and according to tradition it was his scholarship that first attracted the attention of Lord Dorset, by whom he was sent to Westminster School. He continued to find a home beneath his uncle's roof, but the great man's patronage assured to him a better prospect than tavern service. From childhood Prior seems to have had a capacity for inspiring affection in persons of a social grade far above his own. It is hard to believe that the little schoolboy at Westminster chose his friends with a view to their eventual usefulness, but had he been endowed with such precocious worldly wisdom his selection of associates could not have been more skilful. With Charles Montagu, afterwards Lord Halifax, he became so intimate that he insisted on following him to Cambridge and so forfeited the patronage of Lord Dorset, who intended him for Oxford. He began his connexion with Cambridge as a Scholar, and continued it as a Fellow, of St. John's College. While there his poetical gift won him celebrity and he lost no opportunity that the widening of his circle of acquaintance offered which might advance his fortunes. Throughout his career, indeed, cleverness rather than in- dustry was responsible for his successes, and he never achieved a secure position. In 1690, when he was twenty-six, he became secretary to Lord Dursley, British Ambassador at The Hague, and from that time for twenty-five years his life was closely involved with public events. Until after the Peace of Ryswick he remained in Holland, impatient of official drudgery, but keenly observant of every indica- tion of opinion in friends and enemies that might be useful to his chief. William III., an excellent judge, approved his quality as a diplo- matist, and in his seven years' apprenticeship he seems to have done useful work. It was not until The Hague was left behind, however, that he plunged into those experiences which inspired the most entertaining series of his letters. Five chapters of the twelve in the book before us are concerned with Prior's diplomatic work in Paris, first as Secretary to the Embassy under Lord Jersey and afterwards in the negotiations that preceded the Peace of Utrecht. Although the brilliant period of the Great Monarch's Court was over, French society offered many attractions to a man possessed of wit and insight, and in Paris, Prior seems to have found the setting for which he was naturally adapted. Not only did he speak and write the language with complete facility, but he was thoroughly conversant with French opinion and could make shrewd surmise. as to the line of defence or argu- ment likely to be chosen by his opponents in diplomacy. The same intuition taught him how to make friends in every social grade. " Madam my Sister," wrote Louis XIV. to Anne;-" I expect with impatience the return of Mr. Prior, whose conduct is very agreeable to me." There were times when Prior represented the British Crown at the most important capital in Europe, and, while the full state and dignity of such representation was never assigned to him, he assumed as much of it as lay within his reach even at risk of bankruptcy. When unsympathetic Treasury officials taxed his accounts, he boasted that his table in Paris had been " as handsome as that of an Am- bassador," and in actual fact it is clear that he owed much of his success as a diplomatist to his power of playing to an audience. The Letters printed by the Historical MSS. Commission show us how keen was his own appreciation of the dramatic effects and contrasts of the society which centred at Versailles, and the volume before us supplies the background of fact required for comprehension of them. The story of " Mat's Peace " and its sequel, full as it is of suggestion of intrigue and back-stairs negotiation, is a tempting theme, and here it is well told, for unnecessary digressions are avoided, and out of th tangle of malevolent report and actual