8o Extracts from
��does now and then stoop very low in quest of game. Then he is so exceedingly religious and grave as to abhor mirth, except it is printed in the old black letter, and then he calls the most vulgar ballad pleasant and full of humour. He thinks nothing can be sublime but an anthem, and Handel's choruses heaven upon earth. However he writes with great moderation, temper and good sense, and the book is a very valuable one. I have begged his Austerity to relax in one point, for he ranks comedy with farce and pantomime. Now I hold a perfect comedy to be the perfection of human composition, and believe firmly that fifty Iliads and ^Eneids could be written sooner than such a character as FalstafFs.'
On Feb. 28, 1782, Walpole wrote to Mason (Ib. viii. 169): ' I am sorry you will fall on my poor friend Sir John, who is a most inoffensive and good being. Do not wound harmless simpletons, you who can gibbet convicts of magnitude.' Mason replied that Hawkins has shown himself petulant and imper tinent in several parts of his history, and especially on the subject of honest John Gay.' Ib. p. 170.
Bentham, speaking of about the year 1767, said: ' I liked to go to Sir John Hawkins' : he used to talk to me of his quarrels, and he was always quarrelling. He had a fierce dispute with Dr. Hawkesworth, who wrote the Adventurer and managed the Gentleman's Magazine^ which he called his Dragon. He had a woman in his house with red hair; and this circumstance, of which Hawkins availed himself, gave him much advantage in the controversy. Hawkins was alway tormenting me with his disputatious correspondence ; always wondering how there could be so much depravity in human nature ; yet he was himself a good-for-nothing follow, haughty and ignorant, picking up little anecdotes and little bits of knowledge. He was a man of sapient look.'
' Dr. Percy (writes Malone) concurred with every other person I have heard speak of Hawkins, in saying that he was a most detestable fellow. Dyer knew him well at one time, and the Bishop heard him give a character of Hawkins once that painted him in the blackest colours. Dyer said that he knew instances of his setting a husband against a wife, and a brother against a brother ;
fomenting
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