To tinctures of a thousand different dyes: The little warbler of the cheerful day The charmer-lark, has sung himself to rest. Perch'd on his bough. But wakes in conscious man,— The star of eve lights up her diamond flames. In her fill'd orb, new ris'n, completely thron❜d, Of fix'd and planetary lustres join'd In lumination mutual, slow she moves Thro' her throng'd court; and heav'n's vast palace glows With an infinitude of living fires. Night. Hark! 'tis the nightingale,-love's lonely bird! In the deep bosom of this dusky wood Sweet'ning her note; while the soft lamp of night Her still nocturnal watch.-'Tis pleasing thus Slow as the silent fowler roves, who steps The fresh-plow'd glebe, and in each furrow quests Some springing game-nor ceases this to please The mind of nature fond in every dress, E'en when she wears her virgin shroud of snows, And weeping mists spread, sad, her funeral pall. O'er her dim form, that warns to due repose. *Joel, II. 31, JOHN HAWKESWORTH, L.L.D. BORN 1715.—Died 1773. O! let me haste to yonder rustic seat Of the family from which John Hawkesworth was descended we have no account; his father was probably a watchmaker, which may explain the assertion that has found its way into most of the biographical sketches extant of him, of his having been originally destined for that mechanical employment. He was born at Bromley,* in Kent, and according to his epitaph, *So says Lempriere, upon what authority we know not: -The circumstance of his being a native of Bromley is not mentioned by any other biographer that we are aware of; and being born among the dissenters, a reference to parish registers would not settle the point. which is the best authority we have, in 1715, but most of his biographers fix the date of his birth later by four years. His family was of the Presbyterian sect, and he was himself in the early part of his life a member of Bradbury's congregation, a celebrated preacher of that time, from which he is said to have been expelled før some irregularity. Whatever may have been his original destination, it is asserted by Sir John Hawkins, that he was a hired clerk with Mr. Harwood, an attorney in the Poultry; this assertion is in some degree confirmed by the character of his hand-writing, which is decidedly that of a law-writer, and it is most probable that his employment in the office was merely that of a transcriber, which may account for the term hired, as applied to his clerkship. It is certain that this occupation did not satisfy him, and that he took the earliest opportunity that offered to resign it, for the more congenial pursuits of literature. Of his education we know nothing; he was probably taught Latin and French, both of which languages are to be found in his communications to the Gentleman's Magazine. Sir John Hawkins, in his life of Johnson, gives the following account of his literary attainments. "He was a man of fine parts, but no learning: his reading had been irregular and desultory: the knowledge he had acquired, he, by the aid of a good memory, retained, so that it was ready at every call; but on no cubject had he ever formed a system. All of ethics that he knew, he had got from Pope's Essay on Man, and Epistles; he had read the modern French writers, and more particularly the poets; and with the aid of Keill's Introduction, Chamber's Dictionary, and such other common books, he had attained such an insight into physics, as enabled him to talk on the subject. In the This summary way of deciding upon the attainments of an author by profession, and presuming to point out the very books from which he drew the information he possessed, shews a degree of arrogance in the writer which may reasonably lead us to doubt the correctness of his assertion. Hawkesworth had indeed no pretension to the character of a learned man, if by a learned man be meant one whose memory is loaded with all the literary lumber of schools; but that he derived from nature the finest capacity, that he had read much. and observed more, is amply proved by the number, variety, and the excellence of his productions. Whatever may have been his qualifications, it is certain that he considered himself possessed of a competent stock to commence the arduous career of an author, and it is probable that in the early part of his life he subsisted upon the productions of his pen, part of which may, perhaps, have been of the mere mechanical kind. His talents however, if not his learning, led him into the best literary society: he associated with Johnson and his friends, became a member of the club in Ivy-Lane, and in the year 1744 succeeded Johnson in the employment of compiling the Parliamentary Debates for the Gentleman's Magazine, then considered the most |