Life

He was born in or near Market Bosworth

Market Bosworth

Market Bosworth is a small market town and civil parish in Leicestershire, England. It formerly formed a district known as the Market Bosworth Rural District. In 1974 it merged with the Hinckley Rural District to form a new district named Hinckley and Bosworth...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, and was educated at the town grammar school

Grammar school

A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and some other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching classical languages but more recently an academically-oriented secondary school.The original purpose of mediaeval...

 under Anthony Blackwall, and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge

Emmanuel College, Cambridge

Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay on the site of a Dominican friary...

, of which he was elected fellow in 1731. His eccentricities and frank speaking made him unpopular. His health broke down as a result of his sedentary life, and he took to bell-ringing at Great St Mary's as exercise. He was a bitter enemy of Richard Bentley

Richard Bentley

Richard Bentley was an English classical scholar, critic, and theologian. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge....

, who he declared knew nothing of Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

 except from indexes.

In 1738, Dawes was appointed to the mastership of the Royal Free Grammar School

Royal Grammar School, Newcastle

Royal Grammar School Newcastle upon Tyne, known locally and often abbreviated as RGS, is a long-established co-educational, independent school in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It gained its Royal Charter under Queen Elizabeth I...

, Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...

, combined with that of St Mary's Hospital. His mind seems to have become unhinged; his continual disputes with his governing body ruined the school, and in 1749, he resigned and retired to Heworth

Heworth, Tyne and Wear

Heworth is a village in the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England. The village's name appears in written records from 1091 as Hewarde, and later as Hewrtha, and in 1300 as Hewrthe....

, where he spent most of his time boating.

Works

The book on which Dawes' fame rests is his Miscellanea critica (1745), which gained the commendation of L. C. Valckenaer and Johann Jakob Reiske

Johann Jakob Reiske

Johann Jakob Reiske was a German scholar and physician. He was a pioneer in the fields of Arabic and Byzantine philology as well as Islamic numismatics.-Biography:Reiske was born at Zörbig, in Electoral Saxony....

. The Miscellanea, which was re-edited by T. Burgess (1781), Gottlieb Christoph Harless

Gottlieb Christoph Harless

Gottlieb Christoph Harless was a German classical scholar and bibliographer.-Biography:He was born at Culmbach in Bavaria. He studied at the universities of Halle, Erlangen and Jena...

 (1800) and Thomas Kidd (1817), for many years enjoyed a high reputation. Some of the "canons" proved untenable and few were accepted universally; but it remains a monument of English scholarship.

External links