To tinctures of a thousand different dyes :
Till twilight last steps forth, her modest face
Half bid, beneath her gentler lucent vest.
She from their flow'ry prisons straight unlocks
The light-wing'd odours, that on sweetest range,
Drop their rich nectar'd treasures as they ily;
Catch'd, vagrant, by the sultry-soothing gale.

'Tis solemn gloom, toil'd nature's grateful hour
Of universal solace, calm and still.
The little warbler of the cheerful day
The charmer-lark, has sung bimself to rest.
Each feathery labourer has his vesper clos'd
Perch'd on his bough. But wakes in conscious man,-
Wakes still,--the deep solicitude of thought!
And now more deep, while mounted on her sphere,
Prime near attendant on her solar lord,
The star of eve lights up her diamond flames.
And the pale milder regent of the night,
Replenish'd from her brother's lucid urn,
In her filled orb, new ris'n, completely thron’d,
Pours through wide fields of sky her argent stream.
Queen of the shades, amid her lesser train
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
Pathless of human foot, she sits secure
Her arbour; by the melancholy scene

Sweetning her note; while the soft lamp of night Gleams on the burnish'd brook with liquid gold, Cheering the shade; on whose tall topmost boughs, Pal'd with the glim’ring rays, the rustling leaves Join their low whispers; clos'd with cadence deep From the drone beetle's sleep-exciting horn: And off the sharp-brow'd cliff, in murmurs faint From hence scarce heard, a distant water-fall Add's its hoarse, solemn, dying harmony. All, with confusion mix'd, with music rude, Reverberated, from the cavern'd hill; The cell where ever-waking echo keeps Her still nocturnal watch.—'Tis pleasing thus To wander, thoughtful, through the sylvan grove, At fragrant morn, scorch'd noon, or dewy eve; Oft as the season free occasion lends, Slow as the silent fowler

roves, 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. Each change affords delight. But mark! where north Shot from the pole, a new Aurora breaks With imitated dawn.-Mysterious light! Perhaps portentous of earth’s hast’ning doom, Vapour, and sanguine cloud, and pillar'd smoke, As speaks the seer inspir’d. *--And now the moon A curtain-fold of richest drapery draws O'er her dim form, that warns to due

repose.

who steps

*Joel, II. 31,

JOHN HAWKESWORTH, L.L.D.

BORN 1715.-Died 1773.

0! let me haste to yonder rustic seat
Which circles the huge trunk of that old oak
Upon the furzy heath, where memory flies
Back to the hour, when in my boyish time
I sat and listen’d to the onice of truth,
Reason and wit, and polish'd elegance,
Breath'd from the lips of one who aptly join'd
The sage's wisdom with the poet's lore.
My tutor, and my friend ! and skill'd alike
To move the fancy, and to mend the heart.
'Twas to this bench we oft repair'd; yon spire
We oft have view'd together,—now alrs !
It marks the church-yard where his reliques lie ;-
There will I speed, and bending o'er the sød,
Breathe from my grateful soul the prayer which oft
That soul has pour'd on HAWKESWORTH's undeck'd grave.

(PRATT.)

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 fout 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 for 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 trạnscriber, which may account for the term b 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 bad 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 more valuable branches of learning he was deficient. His office of curator of the Magazine, gave him great opportunities of improvement, by an extensive correspondence with men of all professions : it increased his little stock of literature, and furnished him with more than a competent share of that intelligence which is necessary to qualify a man for conversation. He had a good share of wit, and a vein of humour."

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 luinber 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 him self 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, båve 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