AN "UNCLUBABLE MAN"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 728, 26 June 1953, Page 13

AN "UNCLUBABLE MAN"

THE LIFE AND ACTIVITY OF SIR JOHN HAWKINS, by Percy A. Scholes; Oxford University Press. English price, 35/-. STUDENTS of the history of music are already deeply in debt to Dr. Scholes for many learned works, among them the Oxford Companion to Music and the Life of the great Dr. Burney. Dr. Scholes has now turned his 18th Century researches to the second of that century’s historians of music. Hawkins as a writer was discursive and voluminous, and wrote im too many fields to be aceepted as an expert in any. Five volumes on the history of music, a 600page life of Dr. Johnson, editions of Johnson and The Compleat Angler, pamphlets on prison reform, and innumerable articles make a formidable amount of print to be written in the intervals of the life of a busy magistrate. Dr. Scholes has manfully coped with the evidence for this massive and dispersed activity, fighting a rearguard action all the while against Hawkins’s detractors both in the 18th Century and later. ‘The result is a book which in some ways has the same kind of discursiveness as the writings of his subject. It is difficult to make a unified biography of a man who could hardly be said to have a unified career. Hawkins was an_ honourable and public-spirited man, but a considerable quarreller. He bickered with his rival historian Dr. Burney; he’ was so rude to Burke that he had to leave Dr. Johnson’s famous literary club; he threw George Steevens, the editor of Shakespeare, out of his house. "A very unclubable man," was Johnson’s verdict. But when, Johnson was sick, it was to Hawkins he turned. Hawkins drew up his will, and became one of his executors. There ate times when a man of honour and ability is needed rather than a good fellow. Dr. Scholes has described his life- and works with his usual care and scholarship, and there are plenty of good stories for the lover of gossip. The picture of the Hawkins family hastily emptying their house of books and furniture and leaving the empty shell for the Gordon rioters to wreck is a lively piece of writing. Scholars will probably read the book for the light it casts on their own speciality, whether music, social history, or literature. In spite of its detail and length, I found myself asking for more on mine. Hawkins contributed considerably to 18th Century

annotations of Shakespeare. Some of his contributions were quoted in editions for over a century. Little information of this is given by the author. But this is a minor complaint. The book is a solid contribution to our growing knowledge of the 18th Century in Eng- =

land.

I.A.

G.