tions to the Muses; but circumstances calling him away, he retired to Bromley in Kent, where he soon found an amiable female partner, who fixed his inconstant and volatile mind to the more useful routine of life : in short, he took up the business of a boarding-school, and had, for a series of years, great credit in educating pupils for the more active scenes of life; some of whom are yet living witnesses of his merits and industrious application to facilitate their education.

In this way he appears to have accumulated some considerable property, and he had at that time the good fortune to get acquainted with an old lady, whose property and interest in the Honourable East India Company procured him the ostensible place of a Director of that body.

His intervals of leisure were never totally unemployed; for if he was not conducting the common concerns of life, he was planning or performing some serviceable work for posterity. His industry was conspicuous to his friends, who more than once warned him of his excessive attachment to books, and shewed him the danger of too close a sedentary employment.

His Almoran and Hamet are monuments of his taste for the true oriental way of writing; and his translation of Telemachus a proof of his knowledge and correctness in a work of labour and genius. But as an author we are to behold him in his great work the ADVENTURER, which was produced at stated periods, when it is very conceivable a man may not always have the same bias at one time as at another.

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The merits of this work, we are informed, procured him the degree of L.L. D. from the archbishop of Canterbury. When the design of compiling a narrative of the discoveries in the Great South Sea was on foot, he was recommended as a proper person to be employed on the occasion; but by his manner of executing it he seems to have been a very improper person; nor did the performance answer the long-wished for ex

pectation: however, he had the success to secure to himself the valuable copy-right, which was granted to him by the late Lord Sandwich, who inconsiderately gave it up to him as a trifle, after he had agreed to pay our author 5000l. for writing the events from Captain Cook's papers; so that he is reputed to have obtained by this business nearly 10,000l. by the curiosity of the public for these important discoveries.

Works of taste and elegance, where imagination and the passions were to be affected, were his province; not works of dry, cold; accurate narrative. However, he executed his task respecting the voyages, and his emolument, as we have already mentioned, far exceeded the common remuneration of authors hired by booksellers to supply the public curiosity. The cause of his death is variously attributed; some say of his high living proceeded the original cause, while others insist that he was mentally wounded to the quick, from the chagrin occasioned by the ill reception of his Narrative; for the generality of his friends allowed him to be a man of the keenest sensibility, and very obnoxious to all the evils of such irritable natures, His death happened in 1773, and he was buried at Bromley in Kent, where, on a handsome marble monument is to be read the following inscription, the latter part of which is taken from the last number of the ADVENTURER.

TO THE MEMORY OF

JOHN HAWKESWORTH, L.L. D.
Who died the 16th of November,
MDCCLXXIII.
Aged 58 Years.

That he lived ornamental and useful
to Society in an eminent degree,

Was

among the boasted Felicities
Of the present Age:

That he laboured for the benefit of Society,
Let his own pathetic Admonitions
record and realize.

"The hour is hastening, in which whatever praise or censure I have acquired, will be remembered with equal indifference: time who is impatient to date my last paper, will shortly moulder the hand which is now writing it in the dust, and still the breast that now throbs at the reflection. But let not this be read as something that relates only to another; for a few years only can divide the eye that is now reading, from the hand that has written."

Nature had endowed him with an uncommonly fine understanding, which he had improved not only by long study, but by extensive converse with mankind. His mind was fertile, and was luxuriant of ideas, which he delivered in so clear, and yet concise a manner, that no one could mistake his meaning, or ever grow tired by hearing him speak; especially as his diction was so unaffectedly pure, and his language so simply elegant, that the learned and unlearned attended with equal pleasure to that unstudied flow of eloquence, which, seeming to look for them, always adapted those words which were most suitable to the subject, as well as most pleasing to the hearers.

It has been objected to him that he was erroneous in his views of Providence, particularly in his latter years; but it must be confessed, a too keen sensibility seemed to him, as indeed it ever is to all who profess humanity, a pleasing but unfortunate gift. Alive to every tender sentiment of friendship, his heart dilated with joy whenever Heaven put it in his power to be beneficial to those he esteemed; but his ingenuous disposition was the means of leading him often into mistakes, from which he seldom retrieved without making such reflections as were not always to the credit of his philosophy. Yet with all these quick sensations, he was incapable of knowingly acting or writing wrong; and had he never found an enemy till he had done an in

jury, he would, it may be ventured to be pronounced, have left the world without having known one.

The first of Dr. Hawkesworth's talent in writing was on subjects of the graver kind; yet his ballad of Edgar and Emeline, several little detached pieces scattered in the Gentleman's Magazine, as well as many of his papers in the Adventurer, abound with a strain of wit and humour, which affords sufficient proof to any one of his sportive powers of fancy, whenever he gave it play. Of his acquaintance, as Mr. Boswell observes, they to a man declare, that when he was excited to mirth, his sallies were entirely inoffensive, and were never employed to ridicule religion, nor expose the infirmities of his fellow-creatures.

From the most diligent inquiry that can be made into his character, and to sum it up in a few words, he was the scholar and the gentleman joined, with the supplement of the good man, which is all that humanity can arrive at in this imperfect state.

Such was the late Dr. Hawkesworth. While remembrance remains in the minds of those who knew and loved him, he will ever be revered.

The Gentleman's Magazine for several year's experienced the value of his correspondence.