‘Stricken Deer and Digressive Diplomacy’

Abstract

William Cowper’s admiration for the poetry of Matthew Prior proved a lifelong source of inspiration. Although Prior remained a very popular poet until the middle decades of the century, Cowper was perhaps unique in retaining a sense of Prior’s centrality as far as the end of his life (which coincided with the end of the century). The nineteenth century, by contrast, tended to find Prior somewhat trivial if not smutty and the twentieth century failed to rehabilitate Prior as any kind of literary heavyweight deserving of anything other than the most peripheral and elective pedagogic treatments.