scholar he ranks very high. When I would have consulted him upon certain points of literature, whilst I was making my collections from the Greek dramatists for my essays in The Observer, he candidly acknowledged that his studies had not lain amongst them, and certain it is there is very little shew of literature in his Ramblers, and in the passage, where he quotes Aristotle, he has not correctly given the meaning of the original'. (Volume i. p. 356.)

EXTRACTS

FROM SIR JOHN HAWKINS'S LIFE

OF JOHNSON

[ACCORDING to Miss Hawkins (Memoirs, i. 158) Strahan and Cadell called on her father, in the name of the booksellers, 'who meant to collect and publish Johnson's works, and had commissioned them to ask him to write the Life, and to oversee the whole publication. They offered him £200.'

For Boswell's account of Hawkins's book see Life, i. 26.

'Sir John Hawkins was originally bred a lawyer, in which profession he did not succeed. Having married a gentlewoman who by her brother's death proved a considerable fortune he bought a house at Twickenham, intending to give himself up to his studies and music, of which he was very fond. He now commenced a justice of peace; and being a very honest moral man, but of no brightness, and very obstinate and contentious, he grew hated by the lower class and very troublesome to the gentry, with whom he went to law both on public and private causes; at the same time collecting materials indefatigably for a History of Music.' Horace Walpole's Journal of the Reign of George III, i. 421.

Horace Walpole, writing on Dec. 3, 1776, of Hawkins's History of Music, says (Letters, vi. 395):-'I have been three days at Strawberry and have not seen a creature but Sir John Hawkins's five volumes, the two last of which, thumping as they are, I literally did read in two days. They are old books to all intents and purposes, very old books; and what is new is like old books too, that is, full of minute facts that delight antiquaries.... My friend, Sir John, is a matter-of-fact-man, and

does

does now and then stoop very low in quest of game. Then he is so exceedingly religious and grave as to abhor mirth, except it is printed in the old black letter, and then he calls the most vulgar ballad pleasant and full of humour. He thinks nothing can be sublime but an anthem, and Handel's choruses heaven upon earth. However he writes with great moderation, temper and good sense, and the book is a very valuable one. I have begged his Austerity to relax in one point, for he ranks comedy with farce and pantomime. Now I hold a perfect comedy to be the perfection of human composition, and believe firmly that fifty Iliads and Æneids could be written sooner than such a character as Falstaff's.'

On Feb. 28, 1782, Walpole wrote to Mason (Ib. viii. 169):— 'I am sorry you will fall on my poor friend Sir John, who is a most inoffensive and good being. Do not wound harmless simpletons, you who can gibbet convicts of magnitude.' Mason replied that 'Hawkins has shown himself petulant and impertinent in several parts of his history, and especially on the subject of honest John Gay.' Ib. p. 170.

Bentham, speaking of about the year 1767, said:—' I liked to go to Sir John Hawkins': he used to talk to me of his quarrels, and he was always quarrelling. He had a fierce dispute with Dr. Hawkesworth, who wrote the Adventurer and managed the Gentleman's Magazine, which he called his Dragon. He had a woman in his house with red hair; and this circumstance, of which Hawkins availed himself, gave him much advantage in the controversy. Hawkins was alway tormenting me with his disputatious correspondence; always wondering how there could be so much depravity in human nature; yet he was himself a good-for-nothing follow, haughty and ignorant, picking up little anecdotes and little bits of knowledge. He was a man of sapient look.'

'Dr. Percy (writes Malone) concurred with every other person I have heard speak of Hawkins, in saying that he was a most detestable fellow. Dyer knew him well at one time, and the Bishop heard him give a character of Hawkins once that painted him in the blackest colours. Dyer said that he knew instances of his setting a husband against a wife, and a brother against a brother; fomenting

I had some

fomenting their animosity by anonymous letters. conversation with Sir J. Reynolds relative to both Hawkins and Dyer. He observes that Hawkins, though he assumed great outward sanctity, was not only mean and grovelling in disposition, but absolutely dishonest. After the death of Dr. Johnson, he, as one of his executors, laid hold of his watch and several trinkets, coins, &c., which he said he should take to himself for his trouble. Sir Joshua and Sir Wm. Scott, the other executors, remonstrated against this, and with great difficulty compelled him to give up the watch, which Dr. Johnson's servant, Francis Barber, now has; but the coins and old pieces of money they could never get. The executors had several meetings relative to the business of their trust. Hawkins was paltry enough to bring them in a bill, charging his coach hire for every time they met. With all this meanness, if not dishonesty, he was a regular churchman, assuming the character of a most rigid and sanctimonious censurer of the lightest foibles of others. He never lived in any real intimacy with Dr. Johnson, who never opened his heart to him, or had in fact any accurate knowledge of his character.' Prior's Malone, p. 426.

Sir Joshua Reynolds perhaps had Hawkins in his mind when he said that 'Johnson appeared to have little suspicion of hypocrisy in religion.' Life, i. 418, n.

That the two men were not intimate is confirmed by Boswell's statement, who says:-'I never saw Sir John Hawkins in Dr. Johnson's company I think but once, and I am sure not above twice. Johnson might have esteemed him for his decent, religious demeanour and his knowledge of books and literary history; but from the rigid formality of his manners it is evident that they never could have lived together with companionable ease and familiarity.' Life, i. 27.

Johnson himself said of him:-'As to Sir John, why really I believe him to be an honest man at the bottom; but to be sure he is penurious, and he is mean, and it must be owned he has a degree of brutality, and a tendency to savageness, that cannot easily be defended.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 65.

The story of the watch got abroad, and was thus sarcastically dealt with by Porson in the Gentleman's Magazine for Sept. 1787,

VOL. II.

G

P. 752

p. 752 (Porson's Tracts, p. 342):-'In the Life [by Hawkins], p. 460, 461, we have an ample description of a watch that Johnson bought for seventeen guineas; but, just as we expect some important consequence from this solemn introduction, the history breaks off, and suddenly opens another subject. Now, Mr. Urban, some days ago I picked up a printed octavo leaf, seemingly cancelled and rejected. It was so covered with mud and dirt that I could only make out part of it, which I here send you, submitting it to better judgment, whether this did not originally fill the chasm that every reader of taste and feeling must at once perceive in the history of the watch. It is more difficult to find a reason why it was omitted. But I am persuaded that the person who is the object of Sir John's satire was so hurt at the home truths contained in it, that he tampered with the printers to have it suppressed.

FRAGMENT.

'And here, touching this watch already by me mentioned, I insert a notable instance of the craft and selfishness of the Doctor's Negro servant. A few days after that whereon Dr. Johnson died, this artful fellow came to me, and surrendered the watch, saying at the same time, that his master had delivered it to him a day or two before his demise, with such demeanour and gestures that he did verily believe it was his intention that he, namely Frank, should keep the same. Myself knowing that no sort of credit was due to a black domestic and favourite servant, and withal considering that the wearing thereof would be more proper for myself, and that I had got nothing by my trust of executor save sundry old books, and coach-hire for journeys during the discharge of the said office; and further reflecting on what I have occasion elsewhere to mention, viz. that, since the abolishing general warrants, temp. Geo. iii1, no

1 On April 30, 1763, Wilkes had been arrested on a general warrant directed to four messengers to take up any persons without naming or describing them with any certainty, and to bring them, together with their

papers.' Such a warrant as this Chief Justice Pratt (Lord Camden) declared to be 'unconstitutional, illegal, and absolutely void.' messengers' broke open every closet, bureau, and drawer in Mr. Wilkes's

The

good