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Updated: May 3, 2025
The Oxford antiquary informs us, that on the 16th of January 1654, he was entered in Wadham-College, where he pursued his studies with the closest application, and distinguished himself by his prudent and courteous behaviour. On the 3d of July 1669, Mr. Sprat took his master of arts degree, and the same day, commenced doctor in divinity.
He very often attempts to be humorous, and yet we do not remember a single occasion on which he has succeeded further than to be quaintly and flippantly dull. In one of his works he tells us that Bishop Sprat was very properly so called, inasmuch as he was a very small poet. And in the book now before us he cannot quote Francis Bugg, the renegade Quaker, without a remark on his unsavoury name.
This important personage had been hitherto overlooked by the Landers, that is, they had not as yet made him any present; in order, however, to let them know that there was such a being in existence, he sent them a sheep as a present, on the principle of the English adage, of throwing a sprat to catch a mackerel.
"I had never been able to discover before in what year he was born, and here is the very flower-pot and counterfeit association for which Bishop Sprat was taken up, and the Duke of Marlborough sent to the Tower." It is, however, by no means clear, that this was a "counterfeit association," though Walpole abandons his usual scepticism on all disputable points with such facility.
There was hundreds of them, of all sizes, and one little chap, who brought up the rear, was no bigger than a sprat. After me they came with open months and big red eyes, all the hair on their backs standing up, and their tails whisking about like the flukes of a whale in a flurry. Didn't I just pull for dear life, for I knew what they'd be after if they once grappled me.
Sprat became Bishop of Rochester and Chaplain to Charles II., though in his youth he had written an Ode on the death of Oliver Cromwell. Lawrence Rooke was admitted in 1650 from King's College, Cambridge. He accompanied Ward in his migration to Oxford, "and seated himself in Wadham College for the benefit of his conversation."
Two able and aspiring prelates, Ward, Bishop of Salisbury, and Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, were conspicuous among the leaders of the movement. Its history was eloquently written by a younger divine, who was rising to high distinction in his profession, Thomas Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester.
Sprat enumerates as "the principal and most constant of those who met at Wadham, Dr Seth Ward, Mr Boyle, Dr Wilkins, Sir William Petty, Dr Wallis, Dr Goddard, Dr Willis, Dr Bathurst, Mr Matthew Wren, Dr Christopher Wren, Mr Rooke, besides several others, who joyn'd themselves to them, upon occasion."
The causes of these omissions are not far to seek. Sprat was a youth of seventeen in 1651, the year of his admission into Wadham: it is difficult to believe that he was present at the gatherings of men many years his senior in Dr Petty's lodgings, or knew as much as Wallis did of the infancy of the Royal Society.
She was equally amused by Laura's description of the miserable week she had spent, trying to make up her mind to confess. "You ridiculous sprat! Why didn't you come to me? We'd have let them down with a good old bump." But Laura could not so easily forget the humiliations she had been forced to suffer, and delicately hinted to her friend at M. P.'s moral strictures.
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