Chapter XXX: Hawkesworth. 1715-1773

Best known as the editor of _The Adventurer_--a periodical in imitation of the _Spectator_, _Rambler_, &c.--which appeared twice a week during the years 1752-54. Johnson, Warton, and others assisted him in this undertaking, which has the honour of being one of the first periodicals which have ventured to denounce the cruel barbarism of “Sport,” and the papers by Hawkesworth upon that subject are in striking contrast with the usual tone and practice of his contemporaries and, indeed, of our own times.

In 1761 he published an edition of Swift’s writings, with a life which received the praise of Samuel Johnson (in his _Lives of the Poets_), and it is a passage in that book which entitles him to a place here. In 1773 he was entrusted by the Government of the day with the task of compiling a history of the recent voyages of Captain Cook. He also translated the _Aventures de Télémaque_ of Fénélon. The coarseness and repulsiveness of the dishes of the common diet seldom have been stigmatised with greater force than by Dr. Hawkesworth. His expressions of abhorrence are conceived quite in the spirit of Plutarch:--

“Among other dreadful and disgusting images which Custom has
rendered familiar, are those which arise from eating animal food.
He who has ever turned with abhorrence from the skeleton of a
beast which has been picked whole by birds or vermin, must confess
that _habit_ alone could have enabled him to endure the sight of
the mangled bones and flesh of a dead carcase which every day
cover his table. And he who reflects on the _number_ of lives that
have been sacrificed to sustain his own, should enquire by _what_
the account has been balanced, and whether his life is become
proportionately of more value by the exercise of virtue and by the
superior happiness which he has communicated to [more] reasonable
beings.”[186]