Samuel Jackson Pratt's forays into a wide range of popular literary genres are marked by a consistent moral and benevolent emphasis. This humanitarian bias makes the novels, in particular, of interest to social historians, who will discover that--typical of the age--his advocacy of philanthropic responses depends more on verbal play than on commitment to action. In his depiction of the judiciously charitable hero, Pratt also contributes to that strain of late-eighteenth-century thought bent on reformulating traditional ethical inquiry in terms of a nominally utilitarian interpretation of social behavior. In this light, fascinating evidence of Samuel Richardson's influence on narrative trends can be found in Pratt's adaptation of motifs from Clarissa (1747-1748) to accord with his own highly developed sense of his reader's expectations. For Pratt is perhaps most noteworthy as a kind of novelistic litmus to changing tastes, as he faithfully translates current issues into fictional constructs which...