Life

He was eldest son of William Hawkins

William Hawkins (serjeant-at-law)

William Hawkins was a barrister and serjeant-at-law, best known for his work on the English criminal law, Treatise of Pleas of the Crown....

, serjeant-at-law

Serjeant-at-law

The Serjeants-at-Law was an order of barristers at the English bar. The position of Serjeant-at-Law , or Sergeant-Counter, was centuries old; there are writs dating to 1300 which identify them as descended from figures in France prior to the Norman Conquest...

, by his first wife, a daughter of Sir Roger Jenyns and sister of Soame Jenyns

Soame Jenyns

Soame Jenyns was an English writer.- Biography :He was the son of Sir Roger Jenyns and his second wife Elizabeth Soame, the daughter of Sir Peter Soame. He was born in London, and was educated at St Johns College, Cambridge. In 1742 he was chosen M.P...

. Through his grandmother he was descended from Thomas Tesdale, one of the founders of Pembroke College, Oxford

Pembroke College, Oxford

Pembroke College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England, located in Pembroke Square. As of 2009, Pembroke had an estimated financial endowment of £44.9 million.-History:...

, and he matriculated there on 12 November 1737. He graduated B.A. on 26 February 1742, and on 2 March following was admitted a fellow on the Tesdale foundation. James Boswell

James Boswell

James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland; he is best known for the biography he wrote of one of his contemporaries, the English literary figure Samuel Johnson....

 mentions Hawkins as one of the distinguished alumni of Pembroke College, when commenting on Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

's description of the college as ‘a nest of singing-birds.’ The serjeant lived in the city of Oxford, and for some years his son lived at the university, composing of sermons, poems, and tragedies. On 10 April 1744 he proceeded M.A., and, when Robert Lowth

Robert Lowth

Robert Lowth FRS was a Bishop of the Church of England, Oxford Professor of Poetry and the author of one of the most influential textbooks of English grammar.-Life:...

 vacated the professorship of poetry

Oxford Professor of Poetry

The chair of Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford is an unusual academic appointment, now held for a term of five years, and chosen through an election open to all members of Convocation, namely, all graduates and current academics of the university; in 2010, on-line voting was allowed....

 in 1751, Hawkins succeeded to the chair (6 June 1751 to 1756).

He had been ordained in the English church, and was instituted on 27 August 1764 to the small rectory of Little Casterton

Little Casterton

Little Casterton is a small village and civil parish in Rutland. It is about two miles north of Stamford on a minor road that runs to the south of the River Gwash between Great Casterton and Ryhall.The village has a church ....

, Rutland

Rutland

Rutland is a landlocked county in central England, bounded on the west and north by Leicestershire, northeast by Lincolnshire and southeast by Peterborough and Northamptonshire....

. He moved at the close of 1764 to the rectory of Whitchurch Canonicorum

Whitchurch Canonicorum

Whitchurch Canonicorum or Whitechurch Canonicorum is a village in south-west Dorset, England, situated in the Marshwood Vale five miles northwest of Bridport.The village has a population of 647 ; 10.1% of dwellings are second homes...

, Dorset

Dorset

Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

, which he retained until his death. He held the prebendal stall of Combe (seventh) in Wells Cathedral

Wells Cathedral

Wells Cathedral is a Church of England cathedral in Wells, Somerset, England. It is the seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who lives at the adjacent Bishop's Palace....

 from his collation on 7 March 1767 to his death.

Throughout his life Hawkins was indefatigable in writing and preaching, and he was one of the earliest Bampton lecturers. He died in a fit at Oxford on 13 October 1801.

Works

Early in life Hawkins contributed pieces to magazines, and in 1743, when he was only twenty-one, he published his first work, The Thimble, an heroi-comical Poem in four cantos, by a Gentleman of Oxford, which was reissued in the following year. This imitation of Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

's Rape of the Lock was dedicated toAnna Maria Woodford, ‘the compleatest housewife in Europe.’ His next venture was in play-writing, and it remained his passion for nearly twenty-five years. Henry and Rosamond, a Tragedy, was published in 1749, and was at once pirated by the Dublin printers. It was offered to the managers of Drury Lane Theatre

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...

 and declined; it is an attempt in the manner of Shakespeare, whose play of Cymbeline, with alterations by Hawkins, was acted at Covent Garden Theatre but condemned as being ‘entirely ruined by his unpoetical additions and injudicious alterations.’ The mangled play was printed in 1759. Of a third play, the Siege of Aleppo, which was never acted, Hawkins alleged that it had met the approval of ‘Judge Blackstone, Mr. Smart of Cambridge, Mr. Samuel Johnson, and Mr. Thomas Warton.’ David Garrick

David Garrick

David Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...

, to whom it was submitted, rejected the piece as ‘wrong in the first concoction,’ and an account of his quarrel with its author appears in Boswell's Johnson. Hawkins had further correspondence with Garrick respecting three more plays, ‘The Queen of Lombardy, or the Ambitious Lover,’ ‘Troilus and Cressida,’ and ‘Alfred.’ Hawkins accounted for the rejection of his pieces by alleging that he had given Garrick some offence in connection with the previous play of ‘Henry and Rosamond.’

A volume issued in 1754 under the pseudonym of Gyles Smith, containing ‘Serious Reflections on the Dangerous Tendency of the Common Practice of Card-playing,’ is attributed to Hawkins. In 1758 he collected and published in three volumes his separate publications. The first volume consisted of tracts on divinity; the second of dramatic and other poems, including the ‘Thimble,’ ‘Henry and Rosamond,’ and the ‘Siege of Aleppo;’ and the last of his lectures on poetry and his Creweian orations, delivered as professor of poetry at Oxford. Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer, poet and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village , and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer...

 wrote a review of these productions for the Critical Review. On most of them he was severe, but he singled out the play of ‘Aleppo’ as deserving applause. Hawkins replied in a maladroit defence, signed ‘Veridicus,’ and styled ‘A Review of the Works of the Rev. W. Hawkins and of the Remarks made on the same in the “Critical Review” for August and in the “Monthly Review” for September 1759.’ Goldsmith rejoined in the ‘Critical Review’.

The translation by Hawkins of the first six books of the Æneid appeared in 1764; though the translation of the rest was ready for the press, the reception did not warrant the printing of the remainder. Hawkins's failures did not restrain him from issuing in 1781 a collection of ‘Poems on Various Subjects.’

Hawkins was a constant writer of sermons, and he printed:

• ‘A Sermon before the University of Oxford on 30 Jan.,’ 1752.
• ‘The Nature, Extent, and Excellence of Christian Charity’ (a Colston sermon), 1755.
• ‘The Reasonableness of our Belief in Christianity’ (two sermons at St. Mary's, Oxford), 1756.
• ‘Pretences of Enthusiasts considered and confuted’ (two sermons preached at St. Mary's, one on 26 June 1768 and the other on 6 August 1769). The first was answered by ‘The Oxford Confutation confuted, by Philologos,’ Cambridge [1769].
• ‘Discourses on Scripture Mysteries’ (Bampton lectures, 1787, which led him into a controversy with Samuel Palmer.
• ‘Regal Rights consistent with National Liberties,’ 1795.