filth" pervade all his fictitious writings. As an historian, he writes in a clear and easy style; but neither his temper of mind nor his pursuits qualified him for an historical writer. As a poet, though he takes not a very high rank, yet the few poems which he has left have a delicacy which is not to be found in his novels. THE TEARS OF SCOTLAND.2 The wretched owner sees afar What boots it, then, in every clime, Through the wide-spreading waste of time, Thy martial glory, crown'd with praise, Thy towering spirit now is broke, What foreign arms could never quell, The rural pipe and merry lay Oh! baneful cause, oh! fatal morn, 1 Read-Hazlitt's "English Comic Writers," whose opinion I here quote, being happy to say that I never read but one of Smollet's novels, and such was its character that I never wish to read another. * These fine verses were written in 1746, on the barbarities committed in the Highlands by order of the Duke of Cumberland, after the battle of Culloden. The dreadful cruelties practised upon the vanquished, made his name execrated throughout Scotland, and have fixed an indelible stain upon his memory. Read-Chambers's "History of the Rebellion," a small work replete with interest. When Smollet wrote this poem, he was, as mentioned in the above biographical sketch, a surgeon'smate, lately returned from service abroad. It is said that he originally finished the poem in six stanzas; when, some one representing that such a diatribe against government might injure his prospects, he sat down and added the still more pointed invective of the seventh stanza. The sons against their fathers stood, The pious mother, doom'd to death, While the warm blood bedews my veins, ODE TO LEVEN-WATER. On Leven's banks, while free to rove, And tune the rural pipe to love, I envied not the happiest swain That ever trod th' Arcadian plain. Pure stream, in whose transparent wave My youthful limbs I wont to lave; No torrents stain thy limpid source, With white, round, polish'd pebbles spread; Still on thy banks so gayly green, May numerous herds and flocks be seen: And heart resolved, and hands prepared, JOHN HAWKESWORTH. 1719-1773. BUT little is known of the family or early history of John Hawkesworth. He was born in the year 1719, but how or where educated it is not known. His first appearance as a writer was in 1744, at the age of twenty-five, when he was engaged by the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine to succeed Dr. Johnson as compiler of the Parliamentary Debates; so that he must have had, at that time, considerable reputation as a literary character. In 1752, owing to the success which the "Rambler" had met with, he was induced to project and commence a periodical paper, under the title of "The Adventurer," having received the promise of assistance from Johnson, Warton, and others. For a work of this kind he was eminently qualified. His learning, though not deep, was elegant and various; his style was polished, his imagination ardent, his standard of morals high, and he possessed an intimate knowledge of the world. The first number of the "Adventurer" was published on the 7th of November, 1752, and the paper was continued every Tuesday and Saturday, until the 9th of March, 1754. The name, design, and management, and the writing of seventy of the one hundred and forty numbers, are to be ascribed to Hawkesworth. The sale, during its circulation in separate papers, was very extensive; and when thrown into volumes, four large editions passed through the press in eight years. "The variety, the fancy, the taste, and practical morality, which the pages of this periodical paper exhibit, were such as to ensure popularity; and it may be pronounced, as a whole, the most spirited and fascinating of the class to which it belongs."1 The reputation which Hawkesworth had acquired induced him, at the request of Garrick, to turn his attention to the drama, and in 1760, he brought forward his first piece, called "Zimri, an Oratorio," which was tolerably well received. A few other plays followed: but as they did not meet with great success, in 1765 he undertook the office of Reviewer in the Gentleman's Magazine; which department he filled with great ability until the year 1772. In 1765 he published an edition of Swift's works, in 19 volumes, accompanied by explanatory notes, and prefixed with a well-written life. On the return of Captain Cook from his first voyage of discovery in the South Seas, it being thought desirable, by government, to intrust the task of compiling an account of the voyage to a literary man, rather than to one of the voyagers, Dr. Hawkesworth's reputation as a beautiful and able writer obtained for him the commission. He completed his task in 1773, in 3 vols. quarto, which were illustrated by charts, maps, and engravings, executed in a very splendid manner. For this labor he received the princely remuneration of six thousand pounds. The work, however, met with very severe and deserved censure, owing to the glowing representations and the licentious pictures it presented of the manners and customs of the islanders of the South Seas; and to some speculations of a religious character which seemed to border upon skepticism. His enemies made the most of these defects, and held them up to public ridicule and censure; and so keen was his sensibility, that his health was soon affected by it, and he died on the 16th of November of the same year, 1773. Dr. Hawkesworth was certainly an elegant scholar. "His writings, with the exception of the last ill-fated work, have a tendency uniformly conducive to the interests of virtue and religion; and we may add, that the errors of Real, a very interesting memoir of Hawkesworth in the fifth volume of Drake's Essays. that unfortunate production must be attributed rather to defect of judgment, than to any dereliction of principle. His imagination was fertile and brilliant, his diction pure, elegant, and unaffected. He was in a high degree charitable, humane, and benevolent; his manners were polished and affable, and his conversation has been described as uncommonly fascinating. He died, it is said, tranquil and resigned, and, we trust, deriving hope and comfort from a firm belief in that religion which his best writings had been employed to defend." VALUE OF FAMILIAR LETTERS. In a series of familiar letters between the same friends for thirty years, their whole life, as it were, passes in review before us; we live with them, we hear them talk, we mark the vigor of life, the ardor of expectation, the hurry of business, the jollity of their social meetings, and the sport of their fancy in the sweet intervals of leisure and retirement; we see the scene gradually change; hope and expectation are at an end; they regret pleasures that are past, and friends that are dead; they complain of disappointment and infirmity; they are conscious that the sands of life which remain are few; and while we hear them regret the approach of the last, it falls, and we lose them in the grave. Such as they were, we feel ourselves to be; we are conscious to sentiments, connections, and situations like theirs; we find ourselves in the same path, urged forward by the same necessity; and the parallel in what has been, is carried on with such force to what shall be, that the future almost becomes present; and we wonder at the new power of those truths, of which we never doubted the reality and importance. Preface to the Letters of Dean Swift. DANGER OF RELAPSE AFTER PURPOSES OF AMENDMENT. The dread of death has seldom been found to intrude upon the cheerfulness, simplicity, and innocence of children; they gaze at a funeral procession with as much vacant curiosity as at any other show, and see the world change before them without the least sense of their own share in the vicissitude. In youth, when all the appetites are strong, and every gratification is heightened by novelty, the mind resists mournful impressions with a kind of elastic power, by which the signature that is forced upon it is immediately effaced: when this tumult first subsides, while the attachment of life is yet strong, and the mind begins to look forward, and concert measures by which those enjoyments may be secured which it is solicitous to keep, or others obtained to atone for the disappointments that are past, then death starts up like a spectre in all its terrors, the blood is chilled at his appearance, he is perceived to approach with a constant and irresistible pace; retreat is impossible, and resistance is vain. The terror and anguish which this image produces whenever it first rushes upon the mind, are always complicated with a sense of guilt and remorse; and generally produce some hasty and zealous purposes of more uniform virtue and more ardent devotion, of something that may secure us not only from the worm that never dies, and the fire that is not quenched, but from total mortality, and admit hope to the regions beyond the grave. This purpose is seldom wholly relinquished, though it is not always executed with vigor and perseverance; the reflection which produced it often recurs, but it still recurs with less force; desire of immediate pleasure becomes predominant; appetite is no longer restrained; and either all attempts to secure future happiness are deferred "to a more convenient season," or some expedients are sought to render sensuality and virtue compatible, and to obtain every object of hope without lessening the treasures of possession. Thus vice naturally becomes the disciple of infi delity; and the wretch who dares not aspire to the heroic virtue of a Christian, listens with eagerness to every objection against the authority of that law by which he is condemned, and labors in vain to establish another that will acquit him: he forms many arguments to justify natural desires; he learns at length to impose upon himself; and assents to principles which yet in his heart he does not believe; he thinks himself convinced that virtue must be happiness, and then dreams that happiness is virtue. Let those who still delay that which yet they believe to be of eternal moment, remember that their motives to effect it will still grow weaker, and the difficulty of the work perpetually increase; to neglect it now, therefore, is a pledge that it will be neglected for ever: and if they are roused by this thought, let them instantly improve its influence; for even this thought, when it returns, will return with less power, and though it should rouse them now, will perhaps rouse them no more. But let them not confide in such virtue as can be practised without a struggle, and which interdicts the gratification of no passion but malice; nor adopt principles which could never be believed at the only time when they could be useful; like arguments which men sometimes form when they slumber, and the moment they awake discover to be absurd. Let those who in the anguish of an awakened mind have regretted the past, and resolved to redeem it in the future, persist invariably to do whatever they then wished to have done. Let this be established as a constant rule of action, and opposed to all the cavils of sophistry and sense; for this wish will inevitably return when it must for ever be ineffectual, at that awful moment when "the shadow of death shall be stretched over them, and that night commence in which no man can work." Adventurer, No :30 |