fomenting their animosity by anonymous letters. I had some conversation with Sir J. Reynolds relative to both Hawkins and Dyer. He observes that Hawkins, though he assumed great outward sanctity, was not only mean and grovelling in disposi tion, but absolutely dishonest. After the death of Dr. Johnson, he, as one of his executors, laid hold of his watch and several trinkets, coins, &c., which he said he should take to himself for his trouble. Sir Joshua and Sir Wm. Scott, the other executors, remonstrated against this, and with great difficulty compelled him to give up the watch, which Dr. Johnson's servant, Francis Barber, now has ; but the coins and old pieces of money they could never get. The executors had several meetings relative to the business of their trust. Hawkins was paltry enough to bring them in a bill, charging his coach hire for every time they met. With all this meanness, if not dishonesty, he was a regular churchman, assuming the character of a most rigid and sanctimonious censurer of the lightest foibles of others. He never lived in any real intimacy with Dr. Johnson, who never opened his heart to him, or had in fact any accurate knowledge of his character.' Prior's M alone , p. 426.
Sir Joshua Reynolds perhaps had Hawkins in his mind when he said that 'Johnson appeared to have little suspicion of hypocrisy in religion.' Life, i. 418, n.
That the two men were not intimate is confirmed by Boswell's statement, who says: 'I never saw Sir John Hawkins in Dr. Johnson's company I think but once, and I am sure not above twice. Johnson might have esteemed him for his decent, religious demeanour and his knowledge of books and literary history ; but from the rigid formality of his manners it is evident that they never could have lived together with companionable ease and familiarity.' Life, i. 27.
Johnson himself said of him: ' As to Sir John, why really I believe him to be an honest man at the bottom ; but to be sure he is penurious, and he is mean, and it must be owned he has a degree of brutality, and a tendency to savageness, that cannot easily be defended.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary > i. 65.
The story of the watch got abroad, and was thus sarcastically dealt with by Person in the Gentleman s Magazine for Sept. 1787,
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