genius of no mean order. In the early part of his career he advocated liberal opinions, and his conduct was in accordance with his principles; but these

seem to have undergone a considerable change in his late years, when his works betrayed a strong bias towards authority.

JOHN HAWKESWORTH, the son of a watchmaker, was born at Bromley, in Kent, in 1715, according to some writers, to others, at London, in 1719. | His parents, who were dissenters, destined him for trade, and he was at first apprenticed to his father; but, disliking a business so mechanical, he became clerk either to a writing stationer, or an attorney, and, by some means or other, fitted himself for the profession of a man of letters. Some essays in the Gentleman's Magazine introduced him to the notice of Cave, and, about 1744, he became Dr. Johnson's successor in that periodical, as compiler of the parliamentary debates. His other productions in this publication were chiefly poetical, and in general appeared under the signature of H. Greville. In 1752, with the assistance of Johnson, Bathurst, and Warton, he commenced publishing a set of periodical papers, entitled The Adventurer, which was terminated in 1754, and afterwards printed in four duodecimo volumes: of the one hundred and forty numbers they contained, about half were written by Hawkesworth.

This production brought our author into much repute, and Archbishop Herring was so pleased with the moral tendency of his writings, that he conferred upon him the degree of D.C.L. Elated by this dignity, which was the means of estranging from him the friendship of Dr. Johnson, Hawkesworth attempted to get admitted as an advocate into the ecclesiastical courts, but desisted from his purpose, after some preparatory studies, on finding himself strongly opposed. About this

time, he appears to have resided at his native place, and to have assisted his wife, who kept a boarding-school for young ladies, in the education of her pupils. Literature, however, formed his chief pursuit: in 1756, he altered

for the stage, at the desire of Garrick, Dryden's comedy of Amphytrion; and in 1760, he composed an oratorio, called Zimri, which was produced at Covent Garden, and displayed to advantage the poetical capacities of its author. This was succeeded, in 1761, by his dramatic entertainment, entitled Edgar and Emmeline, acted at Drury Lane; and in the same year he published his celebrated oriental tale of Almoran and Hamet. He next edited the works, and wrote a Life of Swift; published three volumes of the dean's letters in 1766; and, in 1768, appeared his translation of Telemachus.

His popularity as a writer was now at its height, and in 1772, he was selected, by the Earl of Sandwich, the first lord of the admiralty, to compile into one narrative an account of all the voyages of discovery made by command of the king, to that period of his reign. This work, for which he received the enormous sum of £6,000, was printed in three volumes, quarto, adorned with charts, maps, views, &c., and contained the voyages of Byron, Wallis, Carteret, and Cook. It was at first read with avidity, and praised by the critics; but objections were soon taken against it, which gave Hawkesworth vexations, that more than counterbalanced the satisfaction arising from his profits. Some nautical omissions were detected; his descriptions of the licentious manners of the South Sea Islands, were thought too inflammatory: and, in his preface he had made some unnecessary attacks upon the popular doctrine of a particular providence. In other respects his task obtained the praise of lively and elegant narration, and of tolerable fidelity with respect to matters of fact. Hawkesworth made but one feeble reply to the numerous attacks that were levelled against this work, after the publication of which he had sufficient in

terest to get himself appointed an East India director. I health, however, prevented him from taking an active part in the duties of his office, and he expired at Bromley, on the 16th of November, 1773. His death was doubtlessly hastened by the reception his last work met with; and, indeed, he may be said to have died of criticism.

Hawkesworth was undoubtedly one of the most elegant English writers of the last century, and his eastern, tales, and domestic stories in The Adventurer, exhibit a fine imagination and a very considerable knowledge of the human heart. His morality is as pure,

and conveyed in a more entertaining manner than that of Johnson, whose style in The Rambler he somewhat resembles, but with less pomp of diction. In his Telemachus, he has left all former translators far behind him; and his Almoran and Hamet stands among the first class of serious and dignified ro

mances.

In his private character he was much respected and beloved; his manners were those of the gentleman and the scholar, though he is said to have been occasionally violent in his temper, and to have been somewhat addicted to the pleasures of the table.

THOMAS GRAY, the only son of a money scrivener, was born on Cornhill, London, on the 26th of December, 1716. He received his education at Eton, and Peter-house, Cambridge, where he wrote some Latin poems, which obtained him an early reputation, and were inserted in the Musæ Etonenses. In 1738, he removed to London with the intention of studying for the bar, but having previously formed an acquaintance with Horace Walpole, he accepted an invitation to accompany him abroad, where they quarrelled, and returned home separately. It is probable that Gray received an insult not to be forgiven, for we learn from Cole, in his Athenæ Cantabrigienses, that when matters were made up between them. and our author accepted Walpole's invitation to Strawberry Hill, he told his host that he came to wait on him as civility required, but by no means would he ever be there on the terms of his former friendship, which he had totally cancelled. During Gray's residence on the continent, he not only formed an acquaintance with the native language and customs, but made some progress in the study of architecture, painting, and music.

On the death of his father, Gray, who was left but a small property, retired to Cambridge, and took his degree in civil law, but, at the same time, renounced

| all thoughts of going to the bar. Literary pursuits now occupied him closely for some years, in the course of which he read almost every English author of note, besides Propertius, Ovid, Petrarch and others, from some of whose works he made translations. So tardy, however, was he in the production of his own compositions, that although his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College was finished in 1742, it did not appear until 1747; and it was only in consequence of the printing of a surreptitious copy, that, in 1751, he published his Elegy written in a Country Church-yard. No poem ever produced so great a sensation; although published anonymously, it quickly ran through eleven editions; it was translated into nearly all the modern languages, as well as into Latin, by Anstey, Roberts, and Lloyd; and into Greek, by Doctors Cooke, Norbury, and Coote; and numerous other elegant and able classics. In the two following years he appears to have written an ode on the Progress of Poetry, and his celebrated ode of The Bard, together with some fragments; but he complains, about this period, nevertheless, of being prevented from applying himself closely to poetry, from listlessness and a depression of spirits.

In 1756, he, in consequence of the annoyance of some collegians, whose apartments adjoined his own, removed

to Pembroke Hall, in the same university, an event which he describes "as an era in a life so barren of events as his." This remove, however, has been explained, by other of his cotemporaries, to have originated in his great dread of fire; and for his better chance of escape, in case of accident, he is said to have practised a descent from his front window into the court below, by means of a rope. This coming to the ears of some mischievous students, they frequently annoyed him by giving an alarm of fire in the night; and on one occas on, a butt of water having been p'aced below to receive him, he unconsciously immersed himself therein.

In 1757, he published the odes before-mentioned, and in the same year he declined the office of laureate, which was offered him on the death of Cibber. In 1759, he removed to London, and resided for three years in the neighbourhood of the British Museum, which he attended for the purpose of transcribing the Harleian and Cottonian manucripts. Being disappointed in obtaining the Cambridge professorship of modern history, which he had solicited from Lord Bute, and finding his health require change of air, he, in 1765, took a journey into Scotland, where he was introduced to the most eminent men of literature of that country. His account of this journey, "so far as it extends," says Dr. Johnson," is curious and elegant; for as his comprehension was singular, his curiosity extended to all the works of art, all the appearances of nature, and all the monuments of past events." Part of the summer of the years 1766 and 1767 he passed in journeying through England. 1768, the death of Mr. Brocket again leaving the Cambridge professorship of modern history vacant, he was appointed to the chair by the Duke of Grafton; and in the following year he wrote his famous Installation Ode: a production, says Dyer, in his History of Cambridge, in which he speaks of the duke in the language of gratitude; but, with great poetical management, steers clear of the language of sycophancy. Soon after he had accepted the office, he grew melancholy and dejected, and had some thoughts of resigning his professorship, from a disinclination to perform the duties, although

In

he was only bound to read one lecture per term. It was his intention, however, to have made the office less of a sinecure than his predecessors, but his ill health and inactive habits did not suffer him to do more than to sketch a plan for his inauguration speech, shortly after which he died, on the 30th of July, 1771.

Gray was small of stature, and finical in his appearance and gait; he paid a foppish attention to dress; and, although he had humour and a quick sense of the ridiculous, was so fastidiously delicate, that the least tendency to coarseness, or vulgar or unrefined manners, was sure to disturb his equanimity. This, Mason attributes to "an affectation in delicacy and effeminacy," rather "than to the things themselves;" adding, that Gray" chose to put on this appearance before persons whom he did not wish to please." Whatever were his peculiarities, no one has disputed his amiable disposition, and exemplary mode of life. He was temperate, sincere, of strict morality, and so independent, that he carried his fear of receiving favours to a blameable extent. Notwithstanding his high reputation, he exhibited no sign of vanity, and bore the attacks of critics with the most easy negligence.

It has been truly observed of Gray, that no modern poet has left so many examples of what he designed, or so little executed; for what he did not at once complete, he seldom had sufficient regard for to return to. The little, however, which he has left behind him, has secured him lasting popularity as a lyric poet; and if a judgment may be formed from his fragment of An Essay on the Alliance of Education and Government, he had equal capacities for excellence in the didactic style. As a writer of Latin verse he has been equalled by few; and his letters, which are to be found in the account of his life, by his friend Mason, have been universally admired. In allusion to that portion of them describing his travels, Dr. Johnson says, "he that reads his epistolary narrative wishes, that to travel, and to tell his travels, had been more of the employment of Gray." In his poetical compositions he is lofty, energetic, and harmonious; and, to quote the opinion of the celebrated scholar and traveller, Clarke, "his writings, both in style

and diction, were a century before the age in which he wrote."

Beattie says of him "Setting aside his merit as a poet, which, however, in my opinion, is greater than any of his

contemporaries can boast, in this or in any other nation, I found him possessed of the most exact taste, the soundest judgment, and the most extensive learning.'

THE exact year in which this nobleman was born, we have been unable to ascertain with certainty: 1715-16-17 and 1718 have been assigned by his different biographers, but, according to the Gentleman's Magazine, which is no bad authority for dates, his birth took place in 1716. He was the third and youngest son of the first Earl of Orford, by his first wife, and received the early part of his education at Eton, where, as has been stated in our memoir of that poet, he became acquainted with Gray. From Eton he proceeded, in 1734, to King's College, Cambridge, in honour of the founder of which, Henry the Sixth, he wrote some verses that gave no unfavourable omen of his future abilities. They were probably the first production of his pen, and were dated February 1738; in the summer of which year he was appointed inspector-general of the exports and imports, a place which he soon after exchanged for that of usher of the Exchequer. In 1739, he went abroad with Gray, from whom he parted at Reggio, in 1741, as he acknowledged to Mr. Mason, by his own fault; but Walpole's subsequent conduct seems to have been more friendly and generous than that of the poet, though their reconciliation did not revive the former cordiality of either. On his return to England, the subject of our memoir was chosen member of parliament for Callington, in Cornwall; and in March, 1742, he made an animated speech in opposition to a motion for an inquiry into the political conduct of his father. He sat as a borough member in several subsequent parliaments, and terminated his political career, in 1768, without any other senatorial reputation than that of consistency in his Whig principles.

A most important era in his life was the purchase of his villa at Strawberry

Hill, near Twickenham, in 1747. Here he occupied himself in the collection of paintings and curiosities, and having adorned, and extended the size of, his house, it became a very fashionable resort for the literati of the metropolis, to whom, every summer, he gave a daily conversazione. In 1749, he was nearly killed by the accidental discharge of a highwayman's pistol, after he had robbed our author, who has humorously related the story in a paper in The World, to which he communicated Nos. Six, Eight, Ten, Fourteen, Twenty-eight, One Hundred and Three, One Hundred and Sixty-eight, and One Hundred and Ninety-five.

In 1752, appeared his first regular publication, entitled Edes Walpoliana, being a description of his father's splendid mansion at Houghton, in Norfolk. In 1757, he opened a printing-press at Strawberry Hill, the first production of which was Gray's Odes, and subsequently were published, an edition and translation of part of Heulzer's Travels, Lord Whitworth's Account of Russia, Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, &c., being his Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors. Of these he printed but a few copies, and by parting with them only as presents, his press soon became an object of fame and curiosity. In 1761 appeared, in two volumes, quarto, his Anecdotes of Painting in England, compiled from the papers of the artist, George Vertue, to which two additional volumes were subsequently added. In 1764, he wrote and published a pamphlet in defence of the conduct of his friend, General Conway, who had been dismissed from the army on account of a vote given in parliament on the question of general warrants. In 1765, he published, as a translation from the Italian, the well-known romance of The Castle of