Thomas Sprat

Thomas Sprat (1635-1713). Portrait by Michael Dahl (1659-1743), 1683 1712. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Bp. Thomas Sprat (1635 - 20 May 1713) was an English poet and Anglican divine, and a biographer of poet Abraham Cowley.

Life

Overview

Sprat was born at Beaminster, Dorset, and educated at Oxford, was a mathematician, and in of the group of scientific men among whom the Royal Society, of which he was an early member and the historian, had its origin. He wrote a Life of his friend Cowley the poet, and an account of Young's plot for the restoration of James II. His History of the Royal Society is his principal work, but he also wrote poems, and had a high reputation as a preacher. His literary style gives him a distinguished place among English writers. He held various high preferments, and died Bishop of Rochester.

Youth and education

Sprat was born in 1635 at Beaminster in Dorset, as he states in his "Sermon before the Natives of Dorset, 8 Dec. 1692" (38), the son of Thomas Sprat, minister of that parish, who is said to have married a daughter of Mr. Strode of Parnham.

After receiving the rudiments of education ‘at a little school by the churchyard side,’ Sprat matriculated from Wadham College, Oxford, on 12 Nov. 1651, and on 25 Sept. 1652 was elected a scholar. He earned a B.A. 25 June 1654, an M.A. 11 June 1657, and B.D. and D.D. 3 July 1669. In 1671 he was incorporated at Cambridge.

Career

Having taken orders he became a prebendary of Lincoln in 1660. In the preceding year he had gained a reputation by his poem "To the Happie Memory of the most Renowned Prince Oliver, Lord Protector" (London, 1659), and he was afterwards well known as a wit, preacher and man of letters.

His chief prose works are the Observations upon Monsieur de Sorbier's Voyage into England (London, 1665), a satirical reply to the strictures on Englishmen in Samuel de Sorbiere's book of that name, and a History of the Royal Society of London (London, 1667), which Sprat had helped to found.

In 1669 he became canon of Westminster, and in 1670 rector of Uffington, Lincolnshire. He was chaplain to Charles II. in 1676, curate and lecturer at St Margaret's, Westminster, in 1679, canon of Windsor in 1681, dean of Westminster in 1683 and bishop of Rochester in 1684.

He was a member of James II's ecclesiastical commission, and in 1688 he read the Declaration of Indulgence to empty benches in Westminster Abbey. Although he opposed the motion of 1689 declaring the throne vacant, he assisted at the coronation of William and Mary. As dean of Westminster he directed Wren's restoration of the abbey.

He died on 20 May 1713.

Writing

Verse

Sprat was a contributor of satirical commendatory verses to the Naps upon Parnassus, 1658, of Samuel Austin the younger. A poem by him "Upon the death of his late highnesse, Oliver, lord-protector," was published, with others by Dryden and Waller, in 1659, and was dedicated to Dr. Wilkins. It was reprinted in 1682 and 1709, and was included in the 1st part of Dryden's Miscellany. Its laudation of Cromwell frequently exposed Sprat to censure in after years.

From a 2nd poem, "The Plague of Athens," composed "after incomparable Dr. Cowley's Pindarick way," he was known as "Pindaric" Sprat. It appeared in 1659, was reprinted in 1665, 1676, and 1688, and was included in Dryden's Miscellany and Pratt's Cabinet of Poetry (vol. ii.)

Cowley biography

In 1667 Sprat's friend Abraham Cowley died, and the next year he wrote "An Account of the Life of Mr. Abr. Cowley" in a communication to Martin Clifford, which he prefixed to Cowley's De Plantis lib. 6. It was considerably amplified and placed before the 1668 edition of the poet's English Works, which he undertook in accordance with the terms of Cowley's will, and until 1826 it was often reprinted.

Sprat's defense of his friend's poem of the Mistress was attacked by Rev. Edmund Elys in An Exclamation against an Apology by an ingenious person for Mr. Cowley's lascivious and prophane Verses. Johnson justly spoke of the biography as "a funeral oration rather than a history," a character, not a life, with its few facts "confused and enlarged through the mist of panegyrick.’" Coleridge regretted ‘the prudery of Sprat in refusing to let Cowley appear in his slippers and dressing gown.’

Recognition

The poems of Sprat were included in the collections of Johnson, Anderson, Chalmers, and Sanford. Through this circumstance his name is better known as a versifier than as a master of English prose.

Publications

Non-fiction

• History of the Royal Society of London, for the Improving of Natural Knowledge. London: 1667.

Edited

• Prose Works of Abraham Cowley" Including his essays in prose and verse. London: William Pickering, 1826.

See also

• List of British poets

References

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Sprat, Thomas". Encyclopædia Britannica. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 736. . Wikisource, Web, Mar. 4, 2018.
• Clinch, George. Antiquarian Jottings: relating to Bromley, Hayes Keston, and West Wickham, in Kent (1889).
• Johnson, Samuel. The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets: Vol. 2 (1821).
•  Courtney, William Prideaux (1898) "Sprat, Thomas" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 53 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 419-424 . Wikipedia, Web, Mar. 4, 2018.

External links

Prose

• An Account of the Life and Writings of Mr. Abraham Cowley (1668) at Representative Poetry Online
• from The History of the Royal Society

Books

• Thomas Sprat at Amazon.com

About

• Thomas Sprat in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Sprat, Thomas at Encyclopedia.com

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Sprat, Thomas
 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica..Original article is at Sprat, Thomas