He then further, and confidentially, opened to Dr. Burney upon his past life and situation: “Every thing that I possess,” he cried, “I have earned by the most elaborate industry, except this last six thousand pounds! I had no education, and no advantage but such as I sedulously worked to obtain for myself; but I preserved my reputation and my character as unblemished as my principles—till this last year!”
Rallying a little then, from a depression which he saw was becoming contagious, he generously changed the subject to the History of Music; and begged to be acquainted with its progress; and to learn something of its method, manner, and meaning; frankly avowing an utter ignorance of the capabilities, or materials, that such a work demanded.
Dr. Burney read to him the dissertation,—then but roughly sketched,—on the Music of the Ancients, by which the History opens: and Dr. Hawkesworth, confessing its subject to be wholly new to him, warmly declared that he found its treatment extremely entertaining, as well as instructive.
After a visit, long, and deeply interesting, he left his friend very anxious about his health, and very impatient for his promised pamphlet: but, while still waiting, with strong solicitude, the appearance of a vindication that might tranquillize the author’s offended sensibility, the melancholy tidings arrived, that a slow fever had robbed the invalid of sleep and of appetite; and had so fastened upon his shattered nerves, that, after lingering a week or two, he fell a prey to incurable atrophy; and sunk to his last earthly rest exactly a month after the visit to Dr. Burney, the account of which has been related.
Had the health of Dr. Hawkesworth been more sound, he might have turned with cold disdain from the outrages of mortified slanderers; or have scoffed the impotent rage of combatants whom he had had the ability to distance:—but, who shall venture to say where begins, and where ends, the complicate reciprocity of influence which involves the corporeal with the intellectual part of our being? Dr. Hawkesworth foresaw not the danger, to a constitution already, and perhaps natively, fragile, of yielding to the agitating effects of resentful vexation. He brooded, therefore, unresistingly, over the injustice of which he was the victim; instead of struggling to master it by the only means through which it is conquerable, namely, a calm and determined silence, that would have committed his justification to personal character;—a still, but intrepid champion, against which falsehood never ultimately prevails.
KIT SMART.
If thus untimely fell he who, of all the literary associates of Dr. Burney, had attained the most prosperous lot, who shall marvel that untimely should be the fate of the most unfortunate of his Parnassian friends, Christopher Smart? who, high in literary genius, though in that alone, had a short time previously, through turns of fortune, and concurrences of events, wholly different in their course from those which had undermined the vital powers of Dr. Hawkesworth, paid as prematurely the solemn debt relentlessly claimed by that dread accomptant-general, Death!—of all alike the awful creditor!—and paid it as helplessly the victim of substantial, as Dr. Hawkesworth was that of shadowy, disappointment.
With failure at the root of every undertaking, and abortion for the fruit of every hope, Kit Smart finished his suffering existence in the King’s Bench prison; where he owed to a small subscription, of which Dr. Burney was at the head, a miserable little pittance beyond the prison allowance; and where he consumed away the blighted remnant of his days, under the alternate pressure of partial aberration of intellect, and bacchanalian forgetfulness of misfortune.
His learning and talents, which frequently, in his youth, had been crowned with classical laurels at the University of Cambridge, had seemed to prognosticate a far different result: but, through whatever errors or irregularities such fair promises may have been set aside, he, surely, must always call for commiseration rather than censure, who has been exposed, though but at intervals, to the unknown disorders of wavering senses.