by subscription. The expedient succeeded by the industry of many
friends, who circulated the proposals, and the care of some who, it
is said, withheld the money from him lest he should squander it.
The price of the volume was two guineas; the whole collection was
four thousand; to which Lord Harley, the son of the Earl of Oxford,
to whom he had invariably adhered, added an equal sum for the
purchase of Down Hall, which Prior was to enjoy during life, and
Harley after his decease. He had now, what wits and philosophers
have often wished, the power of passing the day in contemplative
tranquillity. But it seems that busy men seldom live long in a
state of quiet. It is not unlikely that his health declined, he
complains of deafness; "for," says he, "I took little care of my
ears while I was not sure if my head was my own."

Of any occurrences of his remaining life I have found no account.
In a letter to Swift, "I have," says he, "treated Lady Harriet, at
Cambridge (a Fellow of a College treat!) and spoke verses to her in
a gown and cap! What, the plenipotentiary, so far concerned in the
damned peace at Utrecht; the man that makes up half the volume of
terse prose, that makes up the report of the committee, speaking
verses! Sic est, homo sum."

He died at Wimpole, a seat of the Earl of Oxford, on the 18th of
September, 1721, and was buried in Westminster; where on a monument,
for which, as the "last piece of human vanity," he left five hundred
pounds, is engraven this epitaph:-


Sui Temporis Historiam meditanti,
Paulatim obrepens Febris