Hawkesworth

Hawkesworth, JOHN, miscellaneous writer, was born in London, probably in 1715, but according to another account in 1719. Little is known of his early life, but he is said to have been apprenticed successively to a clockmaker and to an attorney; and for his education he was mainly indebted to his own perseverance. In 1744 he succeeded Dr Johnson on the Gentleman's Magazine; and in 1752 he started, with Johnson and others, a successful periodical called The Adventurer, half of whose 140 numbers were from Hawkesworth's own pen. As a reward for its services in the cause of morality he received from the Archbishop of Canterbury the degree of LL.D. He afterwards published a volume of fairy tales (1761), and an edition of Swift's works and letters, with a Life that Johnson praised highly; and he was chosen by Captain Cook to prepare the account of his first voyage, which formed vols. ii. and iii. of Hawkesworth's Voyages (3 vols. 1773), for which work the editor received £6000 from government. He died on 17th November 1773. Hawkesworth was too ardent an admirer of Johnson to attempt consciously to imitate him or to avoid doing so unconsciously. Yet his chief service to literature was that he introduced into the popular oriental fictions of the 18th century the ease of familiar writing, and so put an end to the long succession of dreary and bombastic narratives that strutted far behind in the track of Rasselas.