Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/227

 ham, iii. 371). He had bought materials collected by Pepusch, which he presented to the British Museum in 1778. After leaving Twickenham he visited the Bodleian and other Oxford libraries in 1771, taking an engraver to copy portraits in the Music School. In 1772–3 he visited William Gostling [q. v.] at Canterbury, from whom he received much intelligence. The book was finally published in 1776 as ‘The General History of the Science and Practice of Music.’ The history of Charles Burney (1726–1814) [q. v.] appeared in the same year, which gave rise to unpleasant comparisons. Hawkins's book was savagely attacked by George Steevens in the ‘St. James's Chronicle,’ to the injury of the sale (, Illustrations, v. 428). Hawkins, though a worse writer than Burney, was a more painstaking antiquary, and his book has therefore a more permanent value for students of musical history.

Hawkins's early connection with Cave and the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ had brought him the acquaintance of Johnson. He was one of the nine members of the club formed by Johnson in the winter of 1748–9 at the King's Head, Ivy Lane. He was also one of the original members of the famous club founded in 1763. The other members showed so much annoyance at his rudeness to Burke upon one occasion that he ceased to attend the meetings. Johnson called him a ‘most unclubable man.’ He stated his belief that Hawkins was ‘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’ (, Diary, i. 65). Hawkins persuaded Johnson to execute a will in 1784, and drew it up for him. Hawkins was one of the executors, and Johnson left him a copy of ‘Baronius.’ He afterwards undertook to write Johnson's life and to edit his works. The life and works appeared in 1787–9 in eleven volumes. The works were carelessly edited and the life soon extinguished by Boswell's. It was ridiculed by Porson in a ‘panegyrical epistle’ to Hawkins (Gent. Mag. 1787, ii. 652, 751, 847), and in the ‘Critical Review,’ vols. lxxvi. lxxvii. The rival biographers were comically jealous of each other. Hawkins's book preserves a few anecdotes which would otherwise have been lost, but is pompous and feeble. Hawkins was a man of coarse fibre, absurdly proud of ‘my coach,’ rough to inferiors, and humble to men like Walpole, but not without solid good qualities. A portrait (very bad according to his daughter) was painted for the Music School at Oxford. A silhouette profile is prefixed to her memoirs. He also published two charges to the grand jury of Middlesex (1770 and 1780), and a ‘Dissertation on the Armorial Ensigns of the County of Middlesex and the Abbey and City of Westminster’ (1780). Hawkins left a son, John Sidney Hawkins [q. v.], and a daughter, Letitia Matilda, who published a volume of anecdotes in 1822. 

HAWKINS, JOHN (1758?–1841), miscellaneous writer, born about 1758, was the youngest son of Thomas Hawkins of Trewinnard, S. Erth, Cornwall, and M.P. for Grampound, by Anne, daughter of James Heywood of London. Hawkins was a man of considerable means, and devoted his long life to the study of literature, science, and art. He travelled in Greece and the East, and wrote dissertations ‘On the Syrinx of Strabo and the Passage of the Euripus,’ ‘On the site of Dodona,’ &c., which are printed in Walpole's ‘Memoirs of European and Asiatic Turkey’ (1818), and Walpole's ‘Travels in various Countries of the East.’

In 1806 Hawkins purchased Bignor Park, Sussex, the residence of the poetess Charlotte Smith. He rebuilt the house (1826–30), and collected a great number of valuable paintings, drawings, and antiquities.

Hawkins, who was a fellow of the Royal Society, wrote a number of papers on scientific subjects, most of them connected with the geology of Cornwall (a full list is given in and  Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, i. 222, 223, iii. 1224). In 1826 he served the office of sheriff of Sussex. He died on 4 July 1841 at his seat, Trewithan, Cornwall. He married Hester, daughter of Humphrey Sibthorpe, M.P. for Lincoln, and had four sons and two daughters. The eldest, John Heywood, was M.P. for Newport, Isle of Wight, from 1833 to 1841.

[Boase and Courtney's Bibliotheca Cornubiensis; Gent. Mag. September 1841, pp. 322, 323; Davies Gilbert's Hist. of Cornwall, i. 358.] 

HAWKINS, JOHN SIDNEY (1758–1842), antiquary, born in 1758, was the eldest son of Sir John Hawkins [q. v.], author of the ‘History of Music.’ While living in Westminster he often accompanied his father