and disquisitions of literature. The part which depends on the imagination is very well supplied, as you will find when you read the paper; for descriptions of life, there is now a treaty almost made with an author and an authoress; and the province of criticism and literature, they are very desirous to assign to the Commentator on Virgil. I hope this proposal will not be rejected, and that the next post will bring us your compliance. I speak as one of the fraternity, though I have no part in the paper, beyond now and then a motto; but two of the writers are my particular friends, and I hope the pleasure of seeing a third united to them will not be denied to, Dear Sir, your most obedient, and most humble servant, SAM. JOHNSON." Drs. HAWKESWORTH, JOHNSON, WARTON, and the author of the papers marked A, were now all incorporated in this undertaking, and the intelligence and entertainment thenceforth concentrated in the pages of the ADVENTURER, was worthy of such a constellation. The part which depends on imagination,' was furnished by HAWKESWORTH, JOHNSON, and the author of the early contributions; and the province of criticism and literature was administered by Dr. JOSEPH WARTON. Upheld by such varied and combined talent, the ADVENTURER enjoyed the full gale of popularity, and far exceeded the RAMBLER in the extent of its circulation. The frequent agitation of lighter and more captivating subjects, and a greater familiarity with the superficial of life and manners, gave it a momentary advantage over its more ponderous predecessor: but the airiness which thus availed it for a season, cannot be brought into competition with those grander ethical Essays, which have since risen into universal demand. The share of Dr. HAWKESWORTH in the ADVENTURER, amounts exactly to one half, or seventy papers. For each of these he received two guineas, but derived also from them his best fame, and the honour of a degree of LL.D. from HERRING, archbishop of Canterbury. It is no small glory to have written seventy papers, such as those of HAWKESWORTH in the ADVENTURER, which do not shrink from a comparison, either in style or diction, with the most elaborated of the compositions of JOHNSON. We will now present our readers with a short biographical memoir of this interesting and elegant writer*. JOHN HAWKESWORTH, LL.D. was born in 1715; or according to another account, three or four years later. His parents were dissenters, and moved in humble life. It has been asserted, that he was educated for a mechanical employment, but Sir JOHN HAWKINS says, that in his youth he was a hired clerk to an attorney-a situation little superior to the former. By some means, however, he qualified himself for the profession of a man of letters; and about 1744, he was appointed to succeed Dr. JOHNSON in the office of compiler of the Parliamentary Debates for the Gentleman's Magazine. To that publication he contributed, This Memoir is extracted from the General Biography' of Dr. AIKIN; but it has been copied verbatim by an obscure editor of the ESSAYISTS, without any acknowledgment. |