University of Virginia Library

This poet is now, alas! equally insensible to censure and to praise. While this proof was passing through the press, I read the account of his death in the public papers, which took place on the 4th of October, near Birmingham. He was a man of genuine benevolence. His character as an author has been variously appreciated.

Public characters of every description, but more particularly those of a literary stamp, are peculiarly subject to the attacks of virulence and ill nature: it is therefore little to be wondered at that Mr. Pratt, in the progress of his long career, should have felt the lash of malice and ill nature. As I am far from desirous of interfering with the private characters of individuals, I shall refrain from adverting to any of these insidious attacks, and content myself with referring to the literary requisites of this author, which, however chequered by inequalities, are, upon the whole, far above mediocrity. Mr. Pratt has certainly indulged too much in the flimsy Della Cruscan style; nor do any compositions of that description display the real talent of this writer, who never pleases so much as when eliciting the unsophisticated effusions of the heart. He has been by far too exuberant in his encomiums upon individuals; and the frequency of this strain of eulogy has, in too many instances, prompted our author to become a plagiarist upon himself, by committing a poetical felo de se. With all his literary lapses, however, Mr. Pratt is, in many instances, deserving the meed of approbation. Neither have his efforts to procure relief for the suffering been unattended by success; although the most ill natured construction has been put upon this gentleman's motives for such humane interposition.

As a specimen of Mr. Pratt's extempore, the subjoined lines are transcribed from the fly leaf of the first volume of his works, in 22 volumes, presented to a friend.

I have above stated that Mr. Pratt has been too much addicted to the eulogizing of particular personages: this strain, however, cannot rank in competition with the subjoined specimens, which, by way of a commentary upon the bombast, may not prove displeasing to the reader.

Honorie Riouffe, president and orator of the French Tribunate, who complimented Bonaparte in a strain of flattery that might have disgusted a Nero or a Domitian, seemed to have been regularly trained in this school of adulation. In 1786, he made a Sully of Calonne, and a Richelieu of his successor, Cardinal De Brienne. He next proceeded to compliment Neckar as the modern Colbert: and, in 1789, compared La Fayette to the great Washington, and ranged Mirabeau on a par with Dr. Franklin. In 1790 Abbé Maury was the French Demos. thenes. In 1791 Brissot was the Gallic Cato, and Roland the French Aristides. In Marat the world beheld a Brutus: in Danton a Tullius: while Santerre, in his estimation, was equal to Marlborough. This sycophant, in 1793, flattered the monster Robespierre by the designation of Gracchus; and Henriot was not inferior to the great Eugene. In 1795 Talleyrand was held out as the Republican Christ! O blasphemy! where is thy blush? La Revelliere, in 1796, was the Republican Moses: Rewbell shone forth a Solon: and Carnot blazed the living Vauban! To this vile flattery, by way of finale, I shall subscribe the lines once addressed to the facetious but inoffensive Tom D'Urfey, making only a slight alteration.