himself to great advantage, but was afterwards taken home by his
uncle in order to be bred up to his trade. Notwithstanding this mean
employment, to which Mr. Prior seemed now doomed, yet at his leisure
hours he prosecuted his study of the classics, and especially his
favourite Horace, by which means he was soon taken notice of, by the
polite company, who resorted to his uncle's house. It happened one
day, that the earl of Dorset being at his Tavern, which he often
frequented with several gentlemen of rank, the discourse turned upon
the Odes of Horace; and the company being divided in their sentiments
about a passage in that poet, one of the gentlemen said, I find we are
not like to agree in our criticisms, but, if I am not mistaken, there
is a young fellow in the house, who is able to set us all right: upon
which he named Prior, who was immediately sent for, and desired to
give his opinion of Horace's meaning in the Ode under consideration;
this he did with great modesty, and so much to the satisfaction of
the company, that the earl of Dorset, from that moment, determined to
remove him from the station in which he was, to one more suited to his
genius; and accordingly procured him to be sent to St. John's College
in Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1686, and afterwards became
fellow of the College.

During his residence in the university, he contracted an intimate
friendship with Charles Montague, esq; afterwards earl of Hallifax,
in conjunction with whom he wrote a very humorous piece, entitled The
Hind and Panther transversed to the story of the Country Mouse, and
the City Mouse, printed 1687 in 4to. in answer to Mr. Dryden's Hind
and the Panther, published the year before.

Upon the revolution Mr. Prior was brought to court by his great patron
the earl of Dorset, by whose interest he was introduced to public