HAWKESWORTH, John (c. 1715-1773), an author of the last century, was born in London, according to one account in 1715, but according to another in 1719. He is said to have been apprenticed first to a clockmaker and afterwards to an attorney, but at any rate he was indebted for the education requisite for the prosecution of a literary career chiefly to his own perseverance. In 1744 he succeeded Dr Johnson as compiler of the parliamentary debates for the Gentleman’s Magazine. Eight years later he started in company with Johnson, Bathurst, and Warton a periodical called the Adventurer. This journal had a great success, and ran to 140 numbers, of which 70 were from the pen of Hawkesworth himself. On account of what was regarded as its powerful defence of morality and religion, Hawkesworth was rewarded by the archbishop of Canterbury with the degree of LL.D. In 1761 he published a volume of fairy tales, and an edition of Swift’s works and letters, with a life prefixed which Johnson has referred to in highly laudatory terms in his Lives of the Poets. The reputation he obtained by these and other works was such that he was commissioned by Captain Cook to edit hÏ3 papers relative to his first voyage. The work appeared in 1773 in three volumes, and as a reward of his labours Hawkesworth received from the Government the sum of £6000. His descriptions of the manners and customs of the New World were, however, regarded by many critics as hurtful to the interests of morality, and the severity of their strictures is said to have hastened his death, which took place November 17, 1773. He was buried at Bromley in Kent, where a monument has been erected to his memory. Hawkesworth was a close imitator of Johnsen both in style and thought, but his independent literary talent is ...