John Hawkesworth

Hawkesworth, John, LL.D. (b. 1715, and d. Nov. 1773), a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, proprietor and editor of the Adventurer, and friend of Johnson, Warton, and other literary men of note, published, in 1760, Poems and Translations, and was the author of the well-known Morning hymn "In sleep's serene oblivion laid." This hymn was composed in 1773, "about a month before his death, in a wakeful hour of the night, and dictated to his wife on rising. It appeared in the Universal Theological Magazine for March, 1802." (Miller's Singers & Songs, &c, p. 210.) It was given in Collyer's Selection, 1812; the Leeds Hymn Book, 1853; and others; and is in somewhat extensive use in America. It sometimes begins, as in the American Unitarian Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853, with stanza ii., "Newborn, I bless the waking hour."

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology