sketch of his life and writings to Temple Bar for March, 1862 ("William Mackworth Praed"), speaks of him as "an absolute improvisatore," and as having "no rival as a writer of political pasquinades," which he contributed copiously to the journals of his party. The best known of his poems are his "Charades," which are very animated, graceful, and felicitous. Several collections of his verse have been published in the United States, but none hitherto in his own country.—F. E.
PRAM, Christen Henriksen, a Danish poet of some note, was born at Laessö parsonage in Guldbrandsdalen, on the 4th of September, 1756. After completing his studies at the university of Copenhagen he filled various high commercial situations, yet devoting much of his attention at the same time to the pursuit of poetry and literature. When the chamber of commerce in 1816 was united with the board of West India affairs. Pram, who held an important office in the former, vacated his post, retiring on a pension; but about three years afterwards he accepted another appointment in the island of St. Thomas, to which place he repaired in 1820. The following year, however, he was cut off by fever, when sixty-five years old. His death occurred 25th November, 1821. As a business man Pram was most laborious and unwearied, but in poetry he never produced anything worthy of special notice, if we except his "Emilias Kilde" (Emilia's Fountain), a descriptive poem, published in 1782, containing fine passages, with distinct traces in them of the influence exercised on the author's mind by contemporaneous German and English poets; and his romantic epic "Staerkodder," published in 1785, the first of its kind in Denmark, and which is in certain respects undoubtedly a meritorious performance. Rahbek edited Pram's collective works in six volumes, 1824-28; but in this collection we find much that it would have been infinitely better to exclude.—J. J.
PRAT, Antoine du. See Duprat.
PRATT, Charles, Earl Camden. See Camden.
PRATT, Sir John, Lord Chief-justice of the king's bench, and father of Lord-chancellor Camden, was born probably about 1660, of a respectable Devonshire family. Educated at Oxford, and called to the bar, he became a serjeant-at-law in 1700, and was twice returned to the house of commons as member for Midhurst. Stanch to the whigs during the reign of the tories, he was rewarded on the accession of George I. by a puisne judgeship of the king's bench, and was elevated to the chief justiceship in 1718. He is defined as "a great sessions lawyer," and died in 1725. In Bentley's dispute with his college, Pratt displayed an honourable independence rarer then than now, by resisting Walpole's and Macclesfield's endeavours to bias him in the judicial conduct of the case.—F. E.
PRAXAGORAS, of Cos, one of the early Greek physicians, was according to Galen a lineal descendant of Æsculapius. He is supposed to have lived about 300 b.c., and to have been shortly after or a contemporary with Diocles. Galen charges both Praxagoras and Diocles with a neglect of anatomy; but the former is said to have been the first to point out the distinction between the arteries and veins, and to have made some original observations on the human uterus. His treatment of disease appears to have been remarkably active. He strongly advocated bleeding, and according to Cœlius Aurelianus he adopted the free use of emetics, which he pushed to a great extent in cases of iliac passion. The same author gives him the credit of having been an exceedingly bold operator. He asserts that Praxagoras did not hesitate to perform the operation of gastrotomy in desperate cases of obstructed bowel. Praxagoras taught the curious doctrine, that fevers originate in an inflammation of the vena cava.—F. C. W.
PRAXITELES, famed as a statuary in bronze, and the greatest of the Greek sculptors in marble, is assumed to have been a native of the island of Paros, famed for its marble quarries. He lived a generation or more later than Phidias, was the contemporary of Lysippus and Apelles, and may have been born about 410 or 400 b.c., being already distinguished about 370 b.c. Some of the most popular remains of antiquity are associated with the name of Praxiteles, though upon no positive grounds. He was distinguished for figures of Cupid and of Venus, and the beautiful Cupid of the capitol at Rome, now only a fragment, and the Venus de' Medici are both assumed to be by, or from originals of, Praxiteles. He is otherwise remarkable from the record of Pliny that he professed to like his coloured statues best, "those which Nicias had painted." (See the article Nicias.) The naked Venus of Cnidus was the most celebrated of all his marble works, and was reported to have been made from the Thespian prostitute Phryne. It was the pride of Cnidus, and was eventually destroyed at Constantinople, in the same fire which is assumed to have destroyed also the great Olympian Jupiter of Phidias. He made also two statues of Phryne; one was gilt and placed by her in the temple of Delphi. The works of Praxiteles as noticed by ancient writers are numerous, but the method and material are only occasionally indicated. The group of the destruction of Niobe and her children, at Florence, commonly attributed to his contemporary Scopas, is by some attributed to Praxiteles. Of his bronze figures one of the most famous was a satyr called "Periboëtos"—the celebrated; and a young Apollo killing a lizard, called "Sauroctonos," of which a marble has come down to us, but of no very remarkable merit: the fact of its being copied from an original by Praxiteles is a mere supposition. The Cupid above referred to was one of his most celebrated works, and he presented it to Phryne, of whose beauty he appears to have been a devoted admirer. His style was distinguished for the simple natural beauty which characterized the art of the age, as compared with the conventional grandeur of the former period of Alcamenes and Phidias.—(Junius, Catalogus Artificum; Sillig, Cat. Art.)—R. N. W.
PREISSLER, Johann Martin, a celebrated German engraver, was born at Nuremberg in 1715. Of a family of engravers, he learned the rudiments of his art from his elder brother, George Martin Preissler—born in 1700; died in 1754—an engraver of considerable ability, but completed his studies under G. F. Schmidt. J. M. Preissler engraved with great neatness and precision the Madonna del Seggia of Raphael; Christ bearing the Cross, by P. Veronese; and others by Guido, S. Rosa, and other eminent masters; many plates of antique statues; and several contemporary portraits. He went to Copenhagen in 1744, and was appointed engraver to the king of Denmark. He was elected member of the Academy of Copenhagen, and died in that city in 1794.—J. T—e.
PRESCOTT, William Hickling, the eminent American historian, was born on the 4th of May, 1796, at Salem, Massachusetts, U.S. His grandfather. Colonel Prescott, commanded the American levies at the battle of Bunker's Hill; his father was an able and respectable lawyer of Massachusetts, at one time judge of the court of common pleas for the county of Suffolk. Prescott remained at Salem till he was twelve, when he removed with his father to Boston, where he received the elements of a sound classical education from an old pupil of Dr. Parr's. At fifteen he was sent to Harvard, where he studied diligently, and graduated in 1814. While he was at college an accident, a blow, it is said, deprived him of the use of one eye, and the sight of the other was soon very much impaired by inflammation. He abandoned all thoughts of the legal profession for which he was intended; no great sacrifice, probably, for his tastes were more literary than legal, and his father was in opulent circumstances. On leaving college Prescott visited Europe, partly to consult eminent oculists, and after two years returned home to marry and lead a life of study and authorship. In 1819 he resolved to devote ten years to study, and ten years more to the composition of an elaborate historical work, designs which he himself ascribed to the effect produced upon him by a perusal of Gibbon's autobiography. He read largely in history and literature, and some of the results of his reading and reflection were published in the North American Review, among his early contributions to which we note a paper entitled "Asylum for the Blind," which has a personal interest as well as a philanthropic value. About 1826 he decided on selecting the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain as the theme of his intended historical work, and through Mr. Alexander Everett, then United States minister in Spain, he procured from Madrid a large mass of original and novel material, printed and manuscript. When it reached him he was totally though temporarily blind, and, to use his own expression, was forced to "make the ear do the work of the eye." He engaged an assistant who knew no Spanish to read to him, and in time he came to understand him. Thus, "under the old trees of his country residence," the history of Mariana was gone through and mastered. A more accomplished assistant, who could make researches intelligently, was then secured; and with the aid of a writing-case for the blind, Prescott, instead of dictating, wrote his history. When it was
