July 21, 1664

Matthew Prior   (July 21 or 23, 1664 to September 18, 1721) was an English poet.

Here is an excerpt from

WHEN THE CAT IS AWAY, THE MICE MAY PLAY.

....
A Lady once (so stories say)
By rats and mice infested,
With gins and traps long sought to slay
The thieves; but still they 'scap'd away,
And daily her molested.

Great havoc 'mongst her cheese was made,
And much the loss did grieve her:
At length Grimalkin to her aid
She call'd (no more of cats afraid),
And begg'd him to relieve her.

Soon as Grimalkin came in view,
The vermin back retreated;
Grimalkin swift as lightning flew,
Thousands of mice he daily slew,
Thousands of rats defeated.

....

The picture above was ancient long before the poet was born. His intent here is a satirical comment on the some political scene in England. His grace as a writer is spoken of and this certainly illustrates that.

Matthew Prior was a famous poet in his time, and not really forgotten til the last century. This line from a long biographical article at poetryfoundation.org  perplexes:

Matthew Prior was the most important poet writing in England between the death of John Dryden (1700) and the poetic maturity of Alexander Pope (about 1712). 

I guess I didn't think of importance as something measureable  by decade. According to this source:

He was particularly important in his own century in England for two accomplishments: he helped to keep alive as a lesser current, in the main current of polished Augustan couplets, the Restoration gifts of lyricism and levity in tone and of octosyllabics and anapests in metrical form; and the tremendous financial success of his 1718 Poems on Several Occasions, with its 1,446 subscribers paying half the price of the edition in advance, helped to teach his fellow poets a significant economic lesson—that it was possible to support oneself handsomely by relying on the reading public in general rather than on one titled patron.

That praise is a bit pinched. Or so it seems; this is a world that has disappeared.  From his biography:

Prior later praised the training he had received at Westminster, particularly in the making of extemporaneous verses and the composing of declamations in a short length of time.

His was a different world, with standards we have forgotten.  And yet a world like our own, where even the religious, can say with Matthew Prior, they are “unable to explain / The secret Lab’rynths of Thy Ways to Man.... “