MATTHEW, one of the most correct of our English poets, was born at Winburn in Dorsetshire, on July 21, 1664. He was willing to leave his birth and his birthplace unsettled. On his father's death, his uncle, who was a vintner near Charing Cross, took charge of him, and sent him for some time to Dr. Busby at Westminster. The Earl of Dorset having found him reading Horace, was so pleased with his proficiency that he undertook the care and cost of his education. He accordingly, in his eighteenth year, entered St John's College, Cambridge, where he distinguished himself by writing a poem on the Deity, addressed to the Earl of Exeter, in acknowledgment of a benefaction enjoyed by his college from the bounty of the Earl's ancestor. He published, in conjunction with Montague, The City Mouse and Country Mouse, in 1687, in ridicule of The Hind and Panther of John Dryden, which gained for both speedy preferment. Prior took his bachelor's degree in 1686, and his master's by mandate in 1700. In 1691 he was sent as secretary to the embassy of the Hague, where he conducted himself so well that he was appointed, on his return, a gentleman of King William's bed-chamber. On the death of Queen Mary in 1695, he added a long ode to the heaps of elegy which already mourned her loss. He was secretary to the embassy at the treaty of Ryswick in 1697, and next year he met with great distinction at the court of France. On his return he was made commissioner of trade. He exhausted all his powers of celebration in the Carmen Seculare, published in 1700. King William was the subject; and gratitude dictated what his reason did not refuse. Prior was chosen representative of East Grimstead in 1701, when he seems to have changed his party.

In the succeeding reign war took the place of negotiation, and left Prior to polish his verses. He published soon after a volume of poems, with a high panegyric upon his deceased patron, the Earl of Dorset. In 1706 he was excited, by the victory of Ramillies, to another effort of poetry. The Tories being then in power, and anxious to end the war, employed Prior, in 1711, on the peace negotiations at Utrecht, and he was subsequently induced to go privately to Paris with pacific propositions. He accordingly attended Bolingbroke to the French capital in the capacity of ambassador without the public distinction, and continued to act without a title until the return from Paris of the Duke of Shrewsbury, who "refused to be associated with a man so meanly born," when Prior assumed the style and dignity of ambassador. He was cheated, somehow, of his ambassadorial plate; and in a heroic poem addressed to her Majesty Queen Anne, he makes some magnificent allusions to the loss he had sustained. On the 1st August 1714 he was recalled, and returned as soon as his debts would let him. He was welcomed by a warrant for treason as soon as he had set foot on shore, and was confined to his own house, where he relieved the tedium by writing his Alma. On regaining his liberty he was in danger of penury, when his friends adopted the expedient of encouraging him to publish his poems by subscription. The enterprise succeeded; and he now enjoyed the privilege of contemplative tranquillity. He died at Wimpole, a seat of the Earl of Oxford, on the 18th of September 1721, and was buried in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. Prior's works comprise tales, love verses, occasional poems, Alma and Solomon. In the opinion of Mr Thackeray, Prior's are "amongst the easiest, the richest, the most charmingly humorous of English lyrical poems." Some of his tales, however, are, to say the least, not over decent.

PRISCIANUS, one of the most celebrated of the ancient grammarians, was surnamed Caesariensis, either because he was born at Caesarea, or had received his education there. He flourished in the reign of Justin about the middle of the fifth century, and taught grammar at Constantinople, where he received a salary from the court, which makes it probable that he was a Christian. He has left Commentariorum Grammaticorum libri xviii, ad Julianum, besides eleven smaller pieces. His grammatical works have been published by Krehl, Leipzig, 1819, in 2 vols.; and his smaller essays by Lindemann, Leyden, 1817.