during several successive years, the mass of occasional poetry to which we have already alluded; and between his thirtieth and fortieth years, we find him established at Bromley in Kent, where his wife kept a boarding-school for young ladies. In 1752, he began to publish a set of periodical papers under the title of the ADVENTURER,' which were continued to the one hundred and fortieth number, and then collected into four volumes, 12mo. He had for his coadjutors, JOHNSON, BATHURST, and WARTON, and there were a few other occasional contributors. The ADVENTURER' was favourably received by the public, and merited its success by the purity of its morals, the elegance of its critical disquisitions, and the acquaintance it displayed with life and manners. The papers of HAWKESWORTH, resemble in style the RAMBLERS of JOHNSON, though with somewhat less pomp of diction. Those among them which have been most admired, consist of eastern tales, and stories in domestic life; in the former of which he exhibits a fine imagination, and in the latter a considerable knowledge of the human heart. Both of them convey admirable and instructive lessons. Archbishop HERRING was so impressed with the moral and religious tendency of these papers, that he voluntarily conferred upon HAWKESWORTH the degree of doctor in civil law. From some circumstance, this acquisition of dignity lost Dr. HAWKESWORTH the friendship of JOHNSON, who had not then obtained a similar honour, and they appear never again to have associated together. HAWKESWORTH, it is said, was weakly elated by his new title, and even intimated his intention of practising as a civilian in

the ecclesiastical courts; but the opposition which he encountered obliged him to abandon his design.

In 1756, at the request of GARRICK, he altered for the stage DRYDEN'S comedy of Amphytrion. In 1760, he composed the oratorio of Zimri,' which was represented at Covent-garden. It is a piece of considerable talent, but with much objectionable dialogue, and totally destitute of a moral. That such a story is to be found in Scripture, is no excuse for dragging it on the stage. There are many stories in the Bible, which are better suppressed than promulgated. In the In the year following, his Edgar and Emmeline, a Fairy Tale,' was performed with great success at Drury-lane. It is a production of great elegance. But his eastern story of Almoran and Hamet,' which appeared also this year, was received with immense popularity. Some incongruities apart, and some improbabilities, which are pardonable in a work of fiction, it claims a high place in the ranks of oriental fable.

About this time, also, he collected the works of Dean SWIFT, and wrote his life of that extraordinary man. Dr. JOHNSON, in his lives of the English Poets, mentions this performance with too remarkable an eulogy, that we can pass it by in silence. It is at once a valuable testimony to HAWKESWORTH's merits, and a proof that, to whatever cause their separation was owing, no malignity rankled at the heart of JOHNSON. 'An account of Dr. SWIFT has been already collected with great diligence and acuteness by Dr. HAWKESWORTH, according to a scheme which I laid before him in the intimacy of our friendship.

I cannot, therefore, be expected to say much of a life, concerning which I had long since communicated my thoughts to a man, capable of dignifying his narration with so much elegance of language and force of sentiment.' Dr. HAWKESWORTH'S edition of SWIFT did not, however, pass the ordeal of criticism unassailed. It is almost unnecessary to mention, that the last editor and biographer of SWIFT, Sir WALTER SCOTT, has with much patient research and luminous observation, supplied what had been left deficient in the history of that eccentric and talented individual. In 1766, Dr. HAWKESWORTH presented the public with three additional volumes of correspondence between SWIFT and his friends; and his translation of Telemachus, published in 1768, obtained a considerable reputation. It exhibits to great advantage the beauties of HAWKESWORTH's style, and leaves far behind the attempts of preceding translators.

The celebrity which he had now acquired in literature, obtained for him, in 1772, the lucrative and honourable task of compiling into one narrative an account of all the voyages of discovery made by command of the late King, to that period of his reign. Mr. CHALMERS informs us, that he owed this appointment to the recommendation of GARRICK, in a conversation with the Earl of SANDWICH, at that time first lord of the admiralty; but that HAWKESWORTH soon forgot the favour, and GARRICK withdrew his friendship. The work was published in three magnificent quarto volumes, embellished with charts, maps, views, and plans, and comprising all the materials

that enriched the journals of Commodore BYRON, Captains WALLIS and CARTERET, and Lieutenant Cook, in their several voyages to the Southern Hemisphere and Pacific Ocean. Dr. HAWKESWORTH executed this task with sufficient fidelity as to matters of fact, and entitled himself to the praise of a lively and elegant narrator: but he intermingled too much philosophy and speculation with the simple descriptions of seamen and navigators, and the warm glow and rich colouring of his canvas is often sinfully out of place. He received, nevertheless, for this compilation, the princely compliment of six thousand pounds; but it availed not to heal the wounds of a broken spirit. He had described, perhaps too luxuriantly, some of the lascivious customs which prevail among the South Sea islanders; and he attacked, with an imprudence of candour which was quite uncalled for, the popular doctrine of a particular providence. He had been guilty, also, of some nautical omissions, for which he was loudly blamed. 'An innumerable host of enemies now appeared in the newspapers and magazines; some pointed out blunders in matters of science, and some exercised their wit in poetical translations and epigrams. These might hurt his feelings as an author; but the greater part, who arraigned his impious sentiments and indecent narratives, probably rendered his sufferings as a man more acute. Against their charges he stood defenceless; and no defence indeed could be attempted with a reasonable expectation of success. But what, we are told, completed his chagrin, was the notice frequently given in an infamous magazine published at that time, that "all the amorous

passages and descriptions in Dr. HAWKTH'S collection of voyages (should be) selected and illustrated with a suitable plate." And this, in defiance of public decency, was actually done, and he, whose fame had been raised on his labours in the cause of piety and morals, was thus dragged into a partnership in the most detestable depravity that the human mind can invent*'

This reception of a work, in the execution of which he had prided himself not unjustly, and from which he had derived so large an emolument, was beyond his power to bear. He never held up his head again in society; his health became rapidly deteriorated, and his too sensitive aud irritable spirit sunk under the malignity of his revilers. Shortly after the publication of his Voyages, he was chosen into the direction of the East India Company, at the general election in April, 1773; but he never bore a part in the management of those great affairs. Indeed, his health was too sensibly declining. Like the stricken deer, shunning and shunned, he carried the barbed arrow a short while in his side; and died in Limestreet, at the house of his friend, Dr. GRANT, on the 7th of November, 1773.

Dr. HAWKESWORTH is described in the General Biography' as a man of irritable passions and exquisite sensibility, but friendly, social, and humane. His conversation is represented as having been highly agreeable, and his manners to have been those of the scholar and gentleman united.

Mr. CHALMERS goes at length into the question of what he terms, HAWKESWORTH'S irre

*CHALMERS.