"The City Mouse and Country Mouse" procured its authors more solid
advantages than the pleasure of fretting Dryden, for they were both
speedily preferred. Montague, indeed, obtained the first notice
with some degree of discontent, as it seems, in Prior, who probably
knew that his own part of the performance was the best. He had not,
however, much reason to complain, for he came to London and obtained
such notice that (in 1691) he was sent to the Congress at the Hague
as secretary to the embassy. In this assembly of princes and
nobles, to which Europe has perhaps scarcely seen anything equal,
was formed the grand alliance against Louis, which at last did not
produce effects proportionate so the magnificence of the
transaction.

The conduct of Prior, in this splendid initiation into public
business, was so pleasing to King William, that he made him one of
the gentlemen of his bedchamber; and he is supposed to have passed
some of the next years in the quiet cultivation of literature and
poetry.

The death of Queen Mary (in 1695) produced a subject for all the
writers--perhaps no funeral was ever so poetically attended.
Dryden, indeed, as a man discountenanced and deprived, was silent;
but scarcely any other maker of verses omitted to bring his tribute
of tuneful sorrow. An emulation of elegy was universal. Mary's
praise was not confined to the English language, but fills a great
part of the Musae Anglicanae.

Prior, who was both a poet and a courtier, was too diligent to miss
this opportunity of respect. He wrote a long ode, which was
presented to the king, by whom it was not likely to be ever read.