"So originated and was formed," says Mr. Forster, "that famous Club, which had made itself a name in literary history long before it received, at Garrick's funeral, the name of the Literary Club, by which it is now known. Its meetings were noised abroad; the fame of its conversations received eager addition, from the difficulty of obtaining admission to it; and it came to be as generally understood that Literature had fixed her social head-quarters here, as that Politics reigned supreme at Wildman's, or the Cocoa-tree. With advantage, let me add, to the dignity and worldly consideration of men of letters themselves. 'I believe Mr. Fox will allow me to say,' remarked the Bishop of St. Asaph, when the Society was not more than fifteen years old, 'that the honour of being elected into the Turk's Head Club, is not inferior to that of being the representative of Westminster or Surrey.' The Bishop had just been elected; but into such lusty independence had the Club sprung up thus early, that Bishops, even Lord Chancellors, were known to have knocked for admission unsuccessfully; and on the night of St. Asaph's election, Lord Camden and the Bishop of Chester were black-balled."
Of this Club, Hawkins was a most unpopular member: even his old friend, Johnson, admitted him to be out of place here. He had objected to Goldsmith, at the Club, "as a mere literary drudge, equal to the task of compiling and translating, but little capable of original, and still less of poetical composition." Hawkins's "existence was a kind of pompous, parsimonious, insignificant drawl, cleverly ridiculed by one of the wits in an absurd epitaph: 'Here lies Sir John Hawkins, without his shoes and stauckins.'" He was as mean as he was pompous and conceited. He forbore to partake of the suppers at the Club, and begged therefore to be excused from paying his share of the reckoning. "And was he excused?" asked Dr. Burney, of Johnson. "Oh yes, for no man is angry at another for being inferior to himself. We all scorned him, and admitted his plea. Yet I really believe him to be an honest man at bottom, though, to be sure, he is penurious and he is mean, and it must be owned that he has a tendency to savageness." He did not remain above two or three years in the Club, being in a manner elbowed out in consequence of his rudeness to Burke. Still, Burke's vehemence of will and sharp impetuosity of temper constantly exposed him to prejudice and dislike; and he may have painfully impressed others, as well as Hawkins, at the Club, with a sense of his predominance. This was the only theatre open to him. "Here only," says Mr. Forster, "could he as yet pour forth, to an audience worth exciting, the stores of argument and eloquence he was thirsting to employ upon a wider stage; the variety of knowledge, the fund of astonishing imagery, the ease of philosophic illustration, the overpowering copiousness of words, in which he has never had a rival." Miss Hawkins was convinced that her father was disgusted with the overpowering deportment of Mr. Burke, and his monopoly of the conversation, which made all the other members, excepting his antagonist, Johnson, merely listeners. Something of the same sort is said by that antagonist, though in a more generous way. "What I most envy Burke for," said Johnson, "is, that he is never what we call humdrum; never unwilling to begin to talk, nor in haste to leave off. Take up whatever topic you please, he is ready to meet you. I cannot say he is good at listening. So desirous is he to talk, that if one is speaking at this end of the table, he'll speak to somebody at the other end."