HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. ΤΟ THE ADVENTURER. THI HIS elegant and instructive paper was projected by Dr. JOHN HAWKESWORTH SOON after the RAMBLER was concluded, and in conjunction with Dr. JOHNSON, who, having experienced the inconveniences of solitary authorship in an undertaking of this kind, laid down a regular plan, and allotted distinct departments to certain writers. Of this plan we have some information from a letter written by Dr. JOHNSON to Mr. afterwards Dr. JOSEPH WARTON. "We have considered," says Dr. J. "that a paper should consist of pieces of imagination, pictures of life, 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." This letter is dated March 8, 1753, and about a month afterwards Mr. WARTON accepted the province of criticism and literature, for which he was certainly eminently qualified. The "part which depends on imagination" was supplied by HAWKESWORTH, BATHURST, and JOHNSON himself. Who the author and authoress about to be engaged for descriptions of life, were, does not appear, but the negociation did not take place, as the whole paper, except six or seven numbers, was written by Drs. HAWKESWORTH, BATHURST, JOHNSON, and WARTON. In respect to style, BATHURST stands alone+; his province was humour, and he was not given to studious decorations. HAWKESWORTH was a professed and most successful imitator of Dr. JOHNSON: Mr. WARTON, not without some intervals of humour, kept to his province of literature and criticism, but with occasional efforts in the solemn manner of JOHNSON, as will be specified hereafter. The first number was published on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 1752, in the folio size, and quantity of the RAMBLER, and at the same price. At the bottom of the last page is the following notice: "Printed for J. PAYNE, at Pope's Head, in Paternoster-Row, where letters to the ADVENTURER are received. These Numbers will be formed into regular volumes, to each of which will be printed a Title, a Table of Contents, and BOSWELL'S Life of JOHNSON. † It will appear afterwards that what is here advanced respecting BATHURST may admit of doubt, a Translation of the Mottos and Quotations." -The title is ornamented with an oval head of POPE, by B. R. which in few copies has escaped the merciless hands of the collectors. The days of publication were Tuesday and Saturday, and a period was put to the work in No. 140, Saturday, March 9, 1754, when by signing his name, Dr. HAWKESWORTH (to use Sir JOHN HAWKINS' phrase)" almost in terms, declared himself the Editor." The first paper written by Dr. HAWKESWORTH is chiefly a play on the name ADVENTURER, which was probably his own choice. When republished, he omitted a very long and not very perspicuous passage in the original, supplying its place by these words only: "He who, at the approach of evil betrays his trust, or deserts his post, is branded with cowardice; a name, perhaps more reproachful than any other that does not imply much greater turpitude; he, who patiently," &c. Dr. HAWKESWORTH was a man of considerable fame in his day, yet his friends have unaccountably neglected to preserve any memorials of his life. The following meagre account from the Biographical Dictionary, is all we have upon record. "JOHN HAWKESWORTH, an English writer of a very soft and pleasing cast, was born about the year 1719, though his epitaph, as we find it in the Gentleman's Magazine for August 1781, makes him to have been born in 1715. He was brought up to a mechanical profession, that of a watchmaker, as is supposed. He was of the sect of Presbyterians, and a member of the celebrated Tom Bradbury's meeting, from which he was expelled for some irregularities. He afterwards devoted himself to literature, and became an author of considerable eminence. In the early part of life, his circumstances were rather confined. He resided some time at Bromley, in Kent, where his wife kept a boarding-school. He afterwards became known to a lady, who had great property and interest in the East-India Company; and through her means was chosen a director of that body. As an author, his ADVENTURER is his capital work; the merits of which, if we mistake not, procured him the degree of L.L.D. from HERRING, Archbishop of Canterbury. When the design of compiling a narrative of the discoveries in the South Seas was on foot, he was recommended as a proper person to be employed on the occasion; but, in truth, he was not a proper person, nor did the performance answer expectation. Works of taste and elegance, where imagination and the passions were to be affected, were his province; not works of dry, cold, accurate narrative. However, he executed his task, and is said to have received for it the enormous sum of 6,000l. He died in 1773: some say, of high living: others, of chagrin, from the ill reception of his "Narrative;" for he was a man of the keenest sensibility, and obnoxious to all the evils of such irritable natures.” Then follows a copy of the inscription on his monument. On the authority of Sir JOHN HAWKINS, it appears he was not brought up to a mechanical profession. He was in his youth a hired clerk |