they have made the (late) man posthumously ridiculous, by printing what
he would have had sense enough never to print himself. Certes, these
rakers of 'Remains' come under the statute against resurrection-men.
What does it signify whether a poor dear dead dunce is to be stuck up in
Surgeons' or in Stationers' Hall? is it so bad to unearth his bones as
his blunders? is it not better to gibbet his body on a heath than his
soul in an octavo? 'We know what we are, but we know not what we may
be,' and it is to be hoped we never shall know, if a man who has passed
through life with a sort of éclat is to find himself a mountebank on the
other side of Styx, and made, like poor Joe Blackett, the laughing-stock
of purgatory. The plea of publication is to provide for the child. Now,
might not some of this 'sutor ultra crepidam's' friends and seducers
have done a decent action without inveigling Pratt into biography? And
then, his inscriptions split into so many modicums! 'To the Duchess of
So Much, the Right Honble. So-and-so, and Mrs. and Miss Somebody, these
volumes are,' &c. &c. Why, this is doling out the 'soft milk of
dedication' in gills; there is but a quart, and he divides it among a
dozen. Why, Pratt! hadst thou not a puff left? dost thou think six
families of distinction can share this in quiet? There is a child, a
book, and a dedication: send the girl to her grace, the volumes to the
grocer, and the dedication to the d-v-l."]

[Footnote 13: That he himself attributed every thing to fortune, appears
from the following passage in one of his journals: "Like Sylla, I have
always believed that all things depend upon fortune, and nothing upon
ourselves. I am not aware of any one thought or action worthy of being
called good to myself or others, which is not to be attributed to the
good goddess, FORTUNE!"]

[Footnote 14: The grounds on which the Messrs. Longman refused to