We do not know much about Dawkins. Dunlap says he was probably from England, and that he was first noticed in New York. Originally he was an ornamenter of buttons and other small bits of metal, but in America he worked at anything that offered, “suiting himself to the poverty of the arts at the time.” Dunlap dates him about 1774, evidently on the strength of the word of Dr. Anderson, who remembered to have seen “shop-bills and coats-of-arms for books,” done by him previous to 1775. However, in 1761, he engraved music for a book of Psalm Tunes published in that year in Philadelphia. His earliest dated book-plate is that of _John Burnet_ (1754). He was skilful enough to make counterfeit Continental currency, but not to avoid arrest; and in 1776 we find him suffering for this misdeed. Some time later, he forwarded the following unique petition to the Committee of Safety:-- “MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HONOURS,--The subscriber humbly relying on the known goodness and humanity of this honourable house, begs leave to lay his complaint before them, which is briefly as follows. That your petitioner was about six months past taken upon Long Island for a trespass which this house is thoroughly acquainted as by Israel Youngs he was led away to perform an action of which he has sincerely repented and your petitioner was torn away from an only son who was left among strangers without any support, or protection during the inclemency of the approaching winter, as his unhappy father hath since the first day he was taken had but one shirt and one pair of stockings to shift himself, and hath been affected during his imprisonment at White Plains with that worst of enemies hunger, and a nauseous stench of a small room where some twenty persons were confined together which hath introduced a sickness on your distressed subscriber which with the fatigue of travelling hath reduced your unhappy petitioner to a state of despondency--he therefore being weary of such a miserable life as his misconduct has thrown him into begs for a termination by death to be inflicted upon him in what manner the honourable House may see fit. The kind compliance of this honourable House will ever lay an obligation on your distressed humble servent HENRY DAWKINS.” We do not know in what manner the honorable house received this extraordinary petition; but, as book-plates are in existence in his later style, probably it was not granted. Dawkins used three distinct varieties of the Chippendale style. The plates of _Benjamin Kissam_, the _Ludlow_ and _Roome_ plates, the _Whitehead Hicks_ and the _James Duane_ are examples of the debased [Illustration: Whitehead Hicks Esq.]