deal of conversation with him relative to Mr. Dyer. He said that they all at the Club had such a high opinion of his knowledge and respect for his judgment as to appeal to him constantly, and that his sentence was final. At the same time he was so modest and unassuming that everybody loved as well as respected him. His manner was uncommonly happy. With respect to Sir John Hawkins’ character of him, that it was on the whole a gross misrepresentation.
The bishop concurred with every other person I have heard speak of Hawkins, in saying that he was a most detestable fellow. He was the son of a carpenter, and set out in life in the very lowest line of the law. Dyer knew him well at one time, and the bishop heard him give a character of Hawkins once that painted him in the blackest colours; though Dyer was by no means apt to deal in such portraits. Dyer said he was a man of the most mischievous, uncharitable, and malignant disposition, and that he knew instances of his setting a husband against a wife, and a brother against a brother; fomenting their animosity by anonymous letters. With respect to what Sir J. Hawkins has thrown in that he loved Dyer as a brother, this the bishop said was inserted from malignancy and art, to make the world suppose that nothing but the gross vices of Dyer could have extorted such a character from him; while in truth Dyer was so amiable that he never could possibly have lived in any great degree of intimacy with the other at any period of his life. After Dyer’s death, Mr. Burke wrote a character of him, which was inserted
