Page:Studies of a Biographer 1.djvu/126

biographer had been such a one as Sir John Hawkins, of whom it is recorded by his venerated friend that he was 'an honest man at bottom'; though, '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.' His rivals, who agreed in little else, agree in their judgment of Hawkins. We may explain away Boswell's antipathy: 'Hawkins,' he writes to his friend Temple, 'is, no doubt, very malevolent. Observe how he talks of me "as quite unknown"!' Boswell, according to Miss Hawkins, wished to be described as 'The Boswell,' whereas he had only appeared as 'a native of Scotland,' Hawkins's meanness and malignity, however, are asserted on less suspicious evidence. He was turned out of the club for rudeness to Burke. Jeremy Bentham calls him a 'good-for-nothing fellow,' who was always wondering—which Bentham oddly seems to regard as an inconsistency—at the depravity of other people. The amiable Bishop Percy called him a 'most detestable fellow': and the suave Reynolds told Malone that he was not only 'mean and grovelling' but 'absolutely dishonest.' He tried to cheat Johnson's black servant, Barber,