# Eight Friends of the Great/3

THE REVD. JOHN WARNER, D.D.
The faults of Dr. Warner lay on the surface. They were open to the gaze of the least curious in his circle and even if he possessed the power, he had not the desire to conceal them. His virtues lay beneath the surface, and only his most intimate friends possessed the means of discovering them. His portrait has been painted by two masters of description who were wont to dwell with especial keenness on the weaknesses of English nature. By both John Forster and Thackeray he was selected as the type among the clergy or the easy-going hangers-on of the great, and to the ordinary reader the sentences in which these satirists have pilloried him are the sole recollections of his life which linger in the memory. Warner had a genius for making friends, and early in life attached himself to George Selwyn. For the sake of that wit and his associates poor Warner discharged many duties without receiving any reward for his labours. For many years his means were scanty. Yet through all his days and, in spite of poverty, with undimmed cheerfulness he retained his independence of political judgment, did his duty to his relations and bestowed much kindness on many outside that circle. His tone is on the whole "frank and manly." He does not hesitate at times to express his disapproval of a good deal that he saw in the fashionable life around him. Still, and especially through Thackeray's genius for satiric portraiture, his name has come down to us as the leading example of the clerical "parasite" under the third George.
"Jack" Warner was born in London and probably in ​1735. His father, a man of some reputation both in the church and in literature, was the Revd. Ferdinando Warner who claimed to be of the same family with bishop Warner of Rochester but is said to have been educated at a "dissenting academy" at Findern, near Derby, which for many years was directed with great reputation by Ebenezer Latham, M.D. He held the vicarage of Ronde in Wiltshire from 1730 to 1747, became the rector of the London parish of St. Michael, Queenhythe, in February 1746-7, and, through the gift of the dean and chapter of St. Paul's cathedral, held with it from 1758 the rectory of Barnes. He died on the 3rd of October 1768 aged 64, leaving behind him a reputation for preaching and for ability but nothing more substantial. Many years previously he had published the "scheme of a fund for the better maintenance of the widows and children of the clergy, 1752" which had more than once been submitted to the Archbishop of Canterbury and had received some alterations from him. He illustrated in his own case the necessity for such a scheme of assistance, for he left his family without any resource save that which they might receive from his son.
The chief works of Ferdinando Warner in literature related to Ireland. In 1763 he published the first volume, bringing the narrative down to the year 1171, of a history of that country. His preface sets out the assistance which he had received, especially the generous hospitality of Trinity College, when examining the foundation-libraries and the private collections at Dublin. But he was disappointed in his expectations of a grant from the Irish Parliament towards its continuance, and it went no farther. In 1767 he brought out the narrative "of the rebellion and the civil war" which devastated that land. Lecky speaks of this work as "very valuable" and praises him as "a very honest, moderate and painstaking writer." His pen was often in request by the ​booksellers of his day and it was recognised by that body that the tasks assigned to him were discharged with labour and judgment. The value of his work is corroborated by the testimony of other writers of the present generation. The rev. J. H. Lupton in his edition of Sir Thomas More's Utopia (1895) states that the most noticeable of all the issues of bishop Burnet's translation of that work was the edition appended in 1758 to Warner's memoirs of More. The reprint had been suggested by the bishop's son, the judge of the court of common pleas. Warner was the "reputed author of the Letters of an Uncle to his nephew" a work which I have in vain endeavoured to find.
Ferdinando Warner had taken leave of the public as a writer, but with the desire of increasing "the happiness of a vast number of fellow sufferers" he signed at Barnes on 20 Oct. 1767, the preface to a treatise entitled "a full and plain account of the gout" (1768). His first touch of that disease was at the age of 17, and he had made observations on its ways for above 30 years. Many medical practitioners had been known to him. He was well acquainted with Mead, and he praised sir John Hill as "an ingenious man and an excellent botanist" who did himself honour in withdrawing his advertisement of the "Elixir of Bardana" as a specific. Sir Edward Hulse had described the gout as a disorder beyond his understanding; but Warner claimed that he could mitigate its attacks. Opium produced some relief. The Bath waters were very beneficial and Warner often wished that he lived near them. He recommended the practice of early rising and of riding on horseback, in the summer for two or three hours both morning and evening, and in winter in the middle of the day. About 1764 he began to drink whey at dinner and gradually reduced the period during which he was a martyr to the gout from 3 or 4 months to as many weeks. This was ​in the autumn of 1767. Next year he was dead, and the comment was that "fate had verified his own observation that arthritic complaints are never to be totally cured." Many letters by him are in the Newcastle correspondence at the British Museum; two are printed among the correspondence of Garrick. His son knew Garrick well and was much attached to the great actor.
"Jack" was admitted at St. Paul's School, London, on 30 March, 1747, at the age of 11, when his father was living on Bread Street hill, and was a Pauline exhibitioner at the school in 1755. Warner, according to F. [no doubt William Fiend, who suffered for his opinions at the hands of Jesus College, Cambridge] the writer of his memoir in the Monthly Magazine for 1800, pp. 167—9, went from school to Lisbon to be trained in commercial life but soon found the life of a city-office uncongenial to his disposition and returned to England. From 1755 to 1760 he was a Perry exhibitioner from the school to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he had been admitted sizar under the tutorship of the rev. Stephen Whisson, on 6 November, 1754 his father being then resident at Lewisham. His degrees were B.A. 1758, M.A. 1761, and he proceeded as D.D. in 1773. Between 1758 and 1761 he was ordained in the English Church. He had the reputation, says Jack Taylor, of being a "good Greek, Latin, and French scholar."
When the Rev. Dr. James Trail, by his appointment to the bishopric of Down and Connor, resigned his livings of West Ham and Horslydown, Warner was appointed, on 10 October 1765 by the crown to the vicarage of West Ham, and his jovial friend, the rev. Richard Penneck of the British Museum, to the rectory of Horslydown. On this Essex benefice he remained until 1775, and in November 1768 his mother and sisters came to dwell with him in the parsonage house. A good son and brother he bore, for the ​sake of those "nearest and dearest to him" many privations, which made subsequent affluence more welcome. To improve his preaching he had studied elocution from Sheridan, the father of Richard Brinsley, though he thought that his tutor could not " exemplify his own very good rules." While in this suburban village, for such it then was, his lectures from the pulpit were described as " spirited and fervent, and his manners not less striking. His behaviour appeared quite frank and sociable, and indeed he is generally esteemed by his parishioners." Evidently he was acquiring in Essex the gifts and qualities which were fated to give him distinction in the wider circles of the metropolis. From 1776, when the notorious doctor Dodd was appointed to the united rectories of Hockliffe and Chalgrave in Bedfordshire, Warner seems to have done occasional duty at the former parish, and he was residing there in the summer of 1779. When he took up his abode at Hockliffe, George Selwyn sent a kindly description of his character to Lord Ossory, which that peer "found true in all particulars."
Warner's knowledge of Spanish led to his translating for the booksellers one of the leading romances in that language. This was the "history of the famous preacher Friar Gerund de Campazas," the composition of which was declared in the dedication to be the work of Francisco Lobon de Salazar, the name of the parish priest of St. Peter, at Villagarcia. It was in reality written in that town by his friend, Father Jose Francisco de Isla, a Jesuit who, after the expulsion of his order from Spain was exiled to Bologna, and died there in 1781 at the age of 78. This satire was directed against the popular style of preaching, which aimed at attracting the attention of the congregation at the outset through the quotation of a proverb, a popular jest or some pot-house witticism. From the first this romance was eagerly devoured, and the sobriquet of Friar Gerund was at once given to ​anyone who indulged in that form of pulpit oratory. Its plan is said to be a resemblance of Don Quixote; its style to be a reminiscence of Rabelais.
The first volume was published in 1758, and eight hundred copies were sold in 24 hours. After two years of uninterrupted circulation this picaresque story came under the condemnation, perhaps the unwilling condemnation, of the Inquisition. The second volume lingered in manuscript for several years. Baretti, the Italian friend of Dr. Johnson, asserted that it was his property, alleging that de Isla had given him "his only copy of this second volume, partly written by a careful amanuensis and partly with his own hand." When it appeared in print for the first time the title-page bore the imprint of En Campazas, but this was of course a jest, and Ticknor, the careful chronicler of Spanish literature, adopted, after an examination of the type and the paper, the current conviction that it had been printed in our country. The English translation was published by T. Davies, in two volumes, in 1772; another issue of the same date, purported to have been published at Dublin by Thomas Ewing. A copy at the British Museum which formerly belonged to that omnivorous reader, the rev. John Mitford, editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, contains a few notes in his neat handwriting. This anonymous rendering into English is assigned to Warner by Richard Twiss in his travels through Portugal and Spain, 1775, p. 442, by the writer in the European Magazine for 1800, p. 174, by the cataloguer of Archdeacon Wrangham's English library, and by F. in the Monthly magazine, where it is called "a work to be read by everyone who cultivates the eloquence of the pulpit." ​Warner's opportunity for the full display of that talent in preaching which he had practised in a suburban village of Essex came to him when he acquired the proprietary building of Tavistock chapel, in Broad court off Drury Lane. Many descriptions of his style in oratory have come down to us. One was from his friend, and in some respects his rival, "Jack " Taylor of the Sun, who describes him as taking " two oratorical boxes into the pulpit, one filled with virtues and the other with vices," and avoiding the dry doctrine of the theological controversialist. Another is given in that "diary of a visit to England by an Irishman in 1775 " which was discovered in a " dusty hiding-place in one of the ofhces " of the supreme court of New South Wales, and published at Sydney in 1854. The diarist, the Rev. Doctor Thomas Campbell, on the 26 March 1775, heard from Warner's lips for the first time a good specimen of preaching in England. It was an ideal discourse, delivered in the best possible manner, just such a sermon as his hearer would have given " had it been his lot to be a preacher in any great city." Warner had redeemed in Campbell's eyes the honour of his nation. He did not rely solely on his notes. " He makes excursions and unwritten effusions, which prevail over the warmest, the boldest com- positions ; and then, when he hath exhausted such senti- ments as present themselves, he returns to his notes and takes up the next head, according to his preconceived arrangement. By this discreet conduct he avoids the frozen, beaten track of declamation and keeps clear of the labyrinth of nonsense into which those enthusiasts wander, whose vanity or hypocrisy rejects the clue of composition." George Selwyn, the friend whom Warner served with such absolute devotion, testifies to his great congregation at Tavistock chapel and his many admirers. Personally he was not one of them. Warner had preached in his chape ​at Matson, his estate near Gloucester, " and the neighbour- hood flocked to hear him but his style and manner," says Selwyn, " were very different from my ideas of pulpit eloquence. He intended by his intimacy with Garrick to improve them, but it has to my impressions had a very different effect. I love great simplicity in everything, but most in reading and preaching." Richard Warner, of Bath, no relation of our Doctor, narrates in his work describing the chief excursions from that city (1801) that he found the parishioners at Stourton still mindful of his namesake's " impressive pulpit eloquence, his kindness of heart and courtesy of manners." The doctor passed much time at Stourton in the company of sir Richard Colt Hoare, to whom he was indebted for his presentation to the living in 1790. He charmed all persons with his society, for few " equalled him in companionable gaiety." It mattered not in what circle he moved. He was the delight of the guests in the dining-room, and after he had taken his "usual" quantity of wine, " he would descend into the servants' hall with his pipe to which he was addicted and pour out with his vigorous puffs the finest strokes or wit and brightest scintillations of conceit." " Jack " Warner used to pay frequent visits to Hampshire, dividing his favours between two houses, noted for their hospitality, near Christchurch. One of them, The Priory, belonged to a well-known antiquary called Gustavus Brander. The other, Stourfield House, about three miles from that town had been built for his own abode by Edward Bott, who published in 1771 a " collection of cases relating to the Poor laws." Brander's entertainments were moderate in style and broke up in reasonable time. Those of Bott were protracted far into the night and the wine flowed freely. Warner had consented to preach one Sunday morning at Christchurch and the news spread throughout the parish. ​It was known that he was stopping with Bott, and the character of his host's parties was common gossip in the neighbourhood. By service time, the fact that a party of the usual character, lasting far into Sunday morning, had been given by Bott, was the open secret of every member of the congregation. But it was concealed from them that Warner had retired "unharmed in decorous time to his apartment." His appearance in the pulpit was therefore eagerly expected. Punctual as clockwork he mounted the stairs and delivered a "beautiful and touching discourse on the story of the Shunamite woman and her son." At the close of the service many of those present crowded around the preacher with expressions of delight on the sermon. But one old dame who had not forgotten the details of the debauch at Bott's muttered, "Ey, ey—the sarmant was a fine one to be zure; and when I heard un in the pulpit, I thought he wur an angel, but when I hears his rigs out o't, I thinks he is a devil."
Campbell was astonished to find that "according to the custom of London" a duly-ordained clergyman could by a licence from the bishop perform divine service in a chapel which had been built as a speculation. He erred in the statement that the custom was peculiar to this diocese, for proprietary chapels could be found in other cities where wealthy and fashionable congregations met together, and notably at Bath. The preacher's income would be drawn from the pew-rents, and in Warner's case they would bring "a goodly revenue," for Tavistock chapel was "capacious of the square figure, and well-filled." Campbell afterwards learnt that Warner had sold the building for four thousand five hundred pounds, and he naively pens the reflection, "so these shops for preaching are bought and sold like other warehouses or theatres." It has been said that the purchase was made by the rev. John Glen King, D.D., who had held the position of chaplain at St. Petersburgh, and the date of ​the transaction has been given as 1786. But that year is probably incorrect, for Selwyn, writing in 1781 fixed Warner's income " at about four hundred pounds a year .... the greatest part is the interest of some money in the funds, saved when he was a preacher at Tavistock chapel, which was a very beneficial occupation to him." It is with George Selwyn that we chiefly connect the name of our Doctor, and many of the " most agreeable letters " in Jesse's collection of that wit's correspondence were written by him, including one in French to M. Garenne, the landlord of the hotel at Montreuil. They can be supplemented by Selwyn's letters to Lord Carlisle in the appendix, part VI. to the fifteenth report of the historical manuscripts commission. He was Selwyn's junior by about 17 years, and "dear George " was nearing sixty when their friendship is first recorded in print. From Warner's first letter written at Padua in August, 1778, it would seem that Selwyn and he had travelled from London to Milan together, and had just parted. Padua was a delight to him, and Selwyn must join in his joy. True that the " grass grows in the streets," but how much better was that than the noise of the " unruly rabble " of Milan. Later in the month he was at Venice, when he gives an amusing account of John Strange, the British Resident, and from the Grand canal saw the city in all her beauty. " Howard, of Bedford, the jail man," whose acquaintance he must have made at Venice, had just left that city, and this passing reference is of some importance in the life of Warner for a few years afterwards he was conspicuous in starting a movement for honouring the career of that philan- thropist. A little later in 1778 Warner is found in Paris, where he was playing the spy in Selwyn's interest upon some lady. There he stayed prattling in his letters to Selwyn on the literature and politics of the day until early in April 1779. One of his sisters was with him for we learn that ​through the arguments of a priest at the church of St. Eustache, she had become a convert to roman Catholicism. Warner was not displeased — " all the portion she asks is only my picture on a snuff box," he says, but he supposes that he " must make a little addition and put some- thing in the box " — for when she took up her abode in a nunnery there would be a larger share of his small means for each of his other sisters and his nephews. That he did not attach much importance to differences in religious observ- ances may be realised from the statement of " Jack" Taylor (records of my life. Vol. L, 177-8) that he was one of the company at dinner with the Rev. Richard Penneck in his rooms at the British Museum, who agreed that a Roman catholic priest might accept from Mr. Townley, himself a Roman catholic, the offer of a " good benefice " in the English church which was in his gift. The priest is said to have been duly instituted, to have become " a favourite preacher with his congregation and to have performed his duties with exemplary zeal and piety." At the beginning of April, 1779, Warner was once more in England, in his bachelor's den at Barnard's Inn, on the south side of Holborn, and one of his first acts in London was to endeavour to see the corpse of poor Miss Ray at the Shakespeare Tavern, so as to send Selwyn an account of it but he " had no interest with her keepers and could not get admittance for money." He had therefore to content him- self by forwarding some details of Hackman, her murderer. Later on, however, he saw Hackman's dead body a " fine corpse " at Surgeon's Hall, and found him a " genteel, well- made young fellow of four and twenty." In his " little cabin," as Warner called his rooms in Barnard's Inn or in his country residence in Bedfordshire, his life ebbed away, in social enjoyment, in preaching, and in the performance of kind acts. He loved good living and his game ​at cards and he did not demur, when he had finished his Sunday duty, to pass to the pleasures of the table and to the rubber at whist with bolted doors, that followed. " Ay sir !" he cries to Selwyn in impassioned language, " that game of whist of an evening, and its events, is a vast thing. Last night, by a lucky deal, I gave myself eight trumps, and my partner the other five. I won the first trick and led a trump, when, upon my adversary on the left hand renouncing, his partner (a grave divine with a large black wig, and a solemn face with a pipe stuck in it), gave with an impetuosity which made him drop his said pipe that had been newly lighted, a ' what ! ' of such sharp, shrill astonishment, that you could not but have laughed at it if present, and have remembered it in future." His friends allowed that he was a prodigious smoker and that in his rooms he was rarely seen without a pipe in his mouth. In that pastime they could even claim for him equality with the other whig doctor of divinity, Dr. Parr. But they insisted that he was a gourmet in eating and not given to excess over his wine. Some of the more enthusiastic of his friends went beyond these assertions. The chronicler in the Gentleman's Magazine for January 1800 laid down that Warner was " moderate to an extreme at the table and equally abstemious at the bottle ; a book and a pipe and cheerful conversation (in which he eminently excelled) were his supreme delight." Against this must be set Warner's own account to Selwyn of his dinner with Henry Hoare of the banking family and Philip Champion Crespigny, King's proctor and M.P. for Sudbury, a wit and diner-out. " The whim took them, as it sometimes will, to have a blackguard scheme of dining in my cabin, and ordering their dinner ; and a very good one they had : mackerel, a delicate neck of veal, a piece of Hamborough beef, cabbage and salad, and a gooseberry tart ; and when they had drunk the bottle of white wine, and of port, which accompanied the dinner, and ​after that the only double bottle of Harry's claret that I had left, I found in an old corner (as they could not again descend to port, or, as the boys at Eton call it, black-strap) one of the two bottles of Burgundy which I took from your cellar when you gave me the key of it ; and, by Jove ! how they did abuse my modesty, finding it so exquisite, that instead of two I did not take two dozen. But having no more, we closed the orifice of the stomach with a pint of Dantzic cherry-brandy, and have just parted in a tolerable state of insensibility to the ills of human life." On another night he dined at Camberwell at the house of sir Claude Crespigny, " Phil's elder brother." His comment was " An immense dinner and an ocean of claret ! " (George Selwyn and his contemporaries, by J. H. Jesse, 1844, IV., pp. 131-2, 365). Warner varied such entertainments by trips on horseback into the country. We find him at one time amid the pleasant fields of Warwickshire. At another he was on a visit to his cousin, George Warner, who lived at Milton near Abingdon, and there through " mauvaise honte " he caught a " most terrible cold." Next month (November 1779) when recovered from this illness he went a-hunting, his horse fell into a ditch " and dashed his rider against the opposite bank." So he was again in bed at Milton, with what might be " a broken rib " and with the news that his old uncle, who had predicted his own death for ten years, had died at last and without leaving him " sixpence to buy a stick of the black wax " with which his letter was sealed. On a third occasion he journied to Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire the seat ot Dymoke, England's champion, and with the head of that family he must have been on very friendly terms, as he held from August to November 1777 the vicarage of Scrivelsby. This was the expedition on which " the brilliant and magnificent exploit of leading a lame horse with a pair of panniers an hundred and sixty miles in five days, was ​achieved, — not without some suffering of the hero, or it would not have been worth recording." On that expedition, each night that he stopped at an inn, the landlord, " put me into a common room, with my brethren of the bag, who (as these fellows have all their walks like the cock-robins, and are as jealous of interference,) were presently solicitous to know what I dealt in ; — " a very light commodity," was the answer; which was repeated until it grew stale to myself, and which produced many ingenious guesses : but with the dark saying I was obliged to give the interpretation, and tell them I meant words, which, as they found I was no com- petitor, was a good joke, and we sat down very sociably, and settled the affairs of the nation." He had his joke on his arrival. He came to Scrivelsby on a Friday evening. " Why ! because I know it is a trick of my old friends the neighbouring parsons, to hold a convocation on Saturdays, —as we shall do to-morrow, — and then for whist, back- gammon, and tobacco, till we can't see, hear, or speak ! By this trick of their's hangs a tolerable tale. Roger the servant of one of them, who is not remarkable for the happiest enunciation, asked Humphrey, the servant of another, what the deuce could be the meaning that their masters met so on Saturdays, of all days? "Why! what do'st think, fool," cried Numps, archly, " but to change sarmunts among one another ? " " Neay, then," said Roger, " I'm zure as how they uses my measter very badly, for he always has the worst." Another visit was to Blundeston in Suffolk, pre- sumably to Blundeston House, at that time occupied by Norton Nicholls, the friend of Gray. Warner would find in him a parson of congenial habits and a fellow-traveller who had seen many cities. The house and grounds formed one of the chief interests in the life of Nicholls, and to their beauti- fying he devoted his time and his money. (George Selwyn and his Contemporaries, by J. H. Jesse, 1844, IV., pp. 244-6.) ​Warner's deeds of kindness and sympathy were undoubted. He was exerting himself at one period in his life for the benefit of his nephew. At another time he was flying "directly across country" from Hockliffe to Eton to help a friend's son "now in his last year and with a certainty of King's " who had got into a scrape and was threatened with expulsion. He was full of anxiety in an attempt to secure the post of governess in an English family of quality for a poor Frenchwoman aged 50. In October 1787 he sped from Gloucester to Bath to attend the remains of "his poor departed friend, sir Richard Hoare, to their place of rest at Barnes, in Surrey." When he returned to England about 1794 and took up his abode in Clerkenwell, he witnessed the distress brought upon that district by the watch tax, and exerted himself to the utmost extent to relieve the necessities of the poor workmen around him. He was one of a small set of four persons, three of them being clergymen, who recognised that individual help by small doles was of no avail, and consequently united their resources in order that they might be able by their collective offerings to render effective help to any worthy person in distress. Many good offices were done by and through their co-operation. Penneck of the British Museum was the survivor of these Samaritans. His kindly jocularity broke out in the lines to Mademoiselle Fagnani, the child that Selwyn and some other rakes of the period claimed the parentage of, on her eighth birthday. The opening lines " The morn that gave to Mie Mie birth Provokes the dullest son of earth, Provokes a snail, prosaic creature 1 To try for once, to crawl in metre " are a sufficient specimen of his efforts in poetical compliment. He himself must have thought well of the effusion, for after- wards he signs some of his letters and speaks of himself as F.G. E ​the " poor snail," " snail," or " your loving snail." He rushes off to the duke of Queensberry, another of the claimants of the child's being and reads to him Selwyn's letter on Mie Mie. But it was perhaps not the first occasion on which he had wearied " old Q " with such strains, for by his want of interest in the communication the Doctor rushed away in a huff. Warner's name crops up repeatedly in the letters of George Selwyn in the Carlisle manuscripts. The peer was very grateful for the services which Warner had rendered to him and Selwyn was very anxious that the doctor should receive some preferment in return for his exertions. The witty George with his great talents and abundant acuteness, had formed a just opinion of his friend's literary style and of his character. He loved " too much ornament in his writing." The letter which he had written to lord Carlisle was so full of compliments that it had been torn up, and conciseness had been recommended. " Parsons, University men and Templars," says Selwyn in his jargon of French and English, " r envoy ent bien loin la simplicity and when they would talk agreeably or write to obtain approbation give you such a hash of all their reading and such quaint compliments as make me sick. But one ought not to be angry with them. Cest le ton du corps and when ycu would set them right you have leur esprit d decroter before you can make them compre- hend that all their attempts to be notable are ridiculous." But Warner was a perfectly honest man, " uncommonly human and friendly and most actively so." He had too great a flow of spirits for his profession; "there is more buckram in that than he can digest or submit to. The archbishop who has been applied to in his favour by the late Mr. Townshend said he was too lively, but it was the worst he could say of him." Lord Bessborough had on one occasion rendered him an essential service and held him in great ​esteem. The banking family of Hoare, whose head as the squire of Barnes, had known the circumstances of the family for many years, had assisted him and with such help Warner had " been able to support his mother and his nearest relations whom his father, with a great deal of literary merit had left beggars." If the doctor could only get a piece of preferment that would add two or three hundred pounds a year to his income he would be of all men the most happy. Ireland existed at this moment for the benefit of impecunious Englishmen and Selwyn suggested that some preferment in that country, which he might afterwards exchange, should be bestowed upon him. If Selwyn's own benefice of Ludgershall were vacant, he would not ask for Carlisle's services. But the present incumbent was his relation, whom he had brought into the church with the hope of preferments from him. Otherwise he would certainly have given Warner that living and have consigned his kinsman to the good offices of Mr. Townshend. All this was written in the January and February of 1781. Next month Warner was to set off to Aix to " conduct home the Dowager Countess of Carlisle, a lady of very whimsical character," who was infatuated with an adventurer styling himself a German baron. In June he was with her in France and ere the summer was out had returned to his own land. The letters which he wrote during one of his expeditions to meet that countess were " highly diverting " but were so free in their nature that when the rev. Richard Penneck, the jovial superintendent of the reading-room at the British Museum had read them to "Jack " Taylor after a tete-a-tete dinner they were " successively committed to the flames." It would seem that in the late autumn of 1781 Warner was working for peace between France and England. He was to e 2 ​set out for that country on the 3rd of October, "in company with Messieurs de la Borde and de Comeyras. Lord North was for detaining them longer on account of this experiment. Many" said Warner "have been in treaty for the secret." Late in October Warner was at Versailles, writes Selwyn in his mixture of languages, on "the day of the accouchement de la Reine. They are preparing a great fête pour les relevailles and the shops are filled with things à la Dauphine. They talk much there of peace."
On the morning of the 13 November 1781 Selwyn received a visit from Warner. It had taken him exactly a week to pass from Paris to London and he had come in high spirits. Selwyn hoped that he would make no more excursions "for although he is more a cosmopolite than any man I ever knew, yet I think as the Maréchal de Biron once said to me on n'est jamais bien que chez soi."
Selwyn continued to think of Warner's interests. They dined together in the following February with Fawkener, a son of sir Everard Fawkener, the jolly old postmaster-general, at the house of Crespigny and the dinner was pronounced "a very agreeable one indeed." "You will not forget," continues Selwyn in his accustomed jargon, " Warner, I hope, when the opportunity comes à fin qu'il soit dans le cas d'en tirer de sa propre cave." Next month he again expresses his wish to lord Carlisle that he may not leave office before the "occasion will happen to serve poor Warner." Alas, it was too late; the time had slipped away. But the doctor bore his misfortune like a man. "Poor Warner!" writes Selwyn in ten lines of English without a word of French "He is very cheerful and declares with great generosity of mind and justice to you [lord Carlisle] that he shall not complain of his lot; he is persuaded that if you could help him you would, and that there are disappointments which a man must reconcile himself to."
​"Howard of Bedford, the jail-man " and Warner met again in the streets of Rome in the early spring of 1786. A letter from Warner under the disguise of " Anglus ' J and with the date of 21 May was circulated in private and inserted in the Gentleman's Magazine for that year (1786, pt i, 359 — 60). It proposed the erection of a statue of Howard in com- memoration of his efforts to help unfortunate humanity. The proposal was adopted at once by Lettsom, the benevolent physician, and John Nichols, the printer, and by the 22nd of November the subscription for the statue amounted to £1418. 17. 6. The design was however checked by a letter from Howard, penned at Venice on 15 December. His modesty forbade the erection of such a monument and the scheme was abandoned. The list of subscribers printed at this date showed promises amounting to £1512. 7. 6. Some of them withdrew their offers but the balance, by far the larger proportion of that total, was duly paid and invested in the funds, in the names of Lettsom, Warner & Nichols. Various propositions were put forward by which the money could be usefully employed, and the sum of £200 was appropriated towards relieving persons confined for small debts. Their liabilities were small indeed, for with that sum no less than 55 debtors were set free. On Howard's death the original scheme was revived and an agreement for a statue of him was con- cluded with John Bacon on 3 Feby. 1792. It was unveiled on the 23rd Feby. 1796 and was the first memorial of that kind placed in St. Paul's Cathedral. This monument led to the friendship of Warner with the Swan of Lichfield. Its erection attracted universal attention, both in the journals of the day and the separate productions of the industrious poetasters. Among these ephemeral pieces was one printed anonymously and entitled " The Triumph of benevolence occasioned by the national design of erecting a ​monument to John Howard " which Warner thought he had identified as the composition of Miss Seward. This was an error ; the lines were by Samuel Jackson Pratt, a still more dreary bard in that generation, who sets out in his "Gleanings" vol I p. 226 et seq. a long conversation with Howard on the subject. As a consequence of this erroneous belief the Swan of Lichfield and the Hermit of Barnard's Inn were drawn together and soon became friends. " The ingenious, benevolent and energetic Dr. Warner " the lady required at least three epithets for an ally, passed a few days in Lichfield in the autumn of 1786. From that year until March 1791 they corresponded and Warner sent her some " delightful letters," which no doubt contained many a stratum of flattery. Silence then ensued but Miss Seward still thought of her friend. She enquired of everybody about him. " Nobody tells me where he is " was her exclamation in November of 1794. Through this friendship the Doctor was admitted into the circle surrounding William Hayley, her colleague in the art of puffery. Mr. Alfred Morrison was the proud owner of the rough copy of a letter and notes, seven and a half quarto pages in length, which that poet sent in 1786 to Warner on the subject of John Howard's statue. This subject was the beginning of their intimacy and as Warner loved to enjoy the friendship of others he retained the acquaintance until his death. In April of the following year Hayley came from his retreat in Sussex to stay with his new friend in the rooms at Barnard's Inn. The poet's favourite term for them was the "cell"; the pet title for his host was "dear rambling divine." At one time it looked as if this place of retreat would be lost to him, but fortunately the fire caused by the Gordon riots stopped at the next door. In these rooms Warner every morning, between six and seven, made breakfast for him and for Romney the painter. On one occasion Warner ​took lord Thurlow to Romney's studio and he proved a very good friend to the artist. On another his eloquence brought George Selwvn to see Hay ley who " was much pleased with the courteous old man." Later in that year of 1787 Hayley on another visit to London took rooms, " airy and tranquil," immediately over Warner's set. He was again under the same roof with his friend during the winter of 1788 — 89, when the object of his visit to London was to encourage and assist Romney. When Hayley brought out in 1789 his novel of " The young widow or the history of Cornelia Sedley," his agent with the book- seller was Warner, who displayed such business faculty in the transaction that the author received the sum of £200 for his manuscript. Needless to say that the purchaser lost by his bargain. Warner, " the studious and sprightly," was in need in June 1789 of a change to quiet country life and Hayley fitted up a " cell " for him in a gardener's old quarters. " That room having been cleaned and whitewashed makes a most cheerful and quiet apartment for a studious hermit, and there the good doctor" writes his host "is now settling himself to read and write about ten hours a day." Unfor- tunately for his health he abandoned the use of tobacco and wine, in imitation of Hayley who remonstrated in vain, for " both had contributed not a little to his excellent health and to his florid and comely appearance." A " low obstinate fever " was the result of this precipitate experi- ment and the recluse speedily repaired to London to resume his old habits. While sojourning in this retreat of Eartham he was wont to preach in its parish church to an audience augmented by the attraction of his sermons. Hayley's experience of this intimacy emphasised his conviction that " Warner was pleasant and useful in no common degree. He was a good classical scholar, and perfectly master ​of the three attractive modern languages, French, Italian and Spanish." Warner went to Paris in 1790 to attend, in the position of domestic chaplain, lord Gower, afterwards the marquis of Stafford, who was then the english ambassador at Paris. He had been recommended for the post by his old friends and patrons lord Carlisle and George Selwyn and some of the wits afterwards insinuated that this was a manoeuvre of the opposition. Romney, too, may have taken part in the recom- mendation, for lord Gower's father had been very friendly with the artist and he had painted for the ambassador him- self " that wonderful picture of his dancing children" which formed the chief glory of the art-treasures at Trentham. Warner pressed upon his friends his eagerness to see them in the French capital. Three of them, Romney, Hayley and the rev. Thomas Carwardine, met at Eartham in July 1790. They crossed from Brighton to Dieppe and arrived by slow stages at Paris on the 31st of that month. But they did not go by themselves for the parson was the only member of the trio " unaccompanied by a fair but unwedded companion." Their friend received them most cheerfully in the rooms in the Hotel de Modene which he had provided for their accom- modation. They stayed for three weeks and Romney through the kindness of Madame Sillery, afterwards Madame de Genlis, was gratified by seeing the famous pictures of the duke of Orleans, in the Palais Royal, in which establishment she held the position of governess. They visited the studios of David and Greuze and in their turn entertained those artists at dinner. David also took them to the Luxem- bourg to study the Marie de Medicis series of Rubens. Carwardine's friends included Romney, Hayley, Cowper, Opie and Richard Cumberland. His tastes were for art and his sister Penelope, Mrs. Butler, was famous for her minia- tures, but on the advice of Thurlow he was ordained in the ​english church. His wife was Ann Holgate, the heiress of Colne Priory and he held the livings of Earls Colne and Little Yeldham, in Essex and a prebendal stall at St. Pauls. Romney's pictures of him and his wife are famous. Their descendant was Mrs. Gilchrist whose husband wrote the lives of Blake and Etty. Selwyn had a letter from Warner on the 23rd of August, 1790, when he thought it probable that war might be declared by France against England. Four days later he heard that Warner might be expected in England in about three weeks time. In September came the news that he could not leave the hotel de Monaco until the 20th of that month, and that he was full of chagrin at the course which events had taken. Warner as a strong Whig in politics had sympathised with the destruction of the Bastille and, unlike a good many of his associates in politics, he did not allow the excesses that followed to have a material effect upon his opinions. Towards the close of October news came to Anthony Storer, another of the little set that attached them- selves to lord Carlisle, that he had been dismissed from his post. " What was the ground of their misunderstanding " he writes to lord Auckland, " I know not.' ; Definite news on this point soon arrived. He had been deprived of his office because he had delivered from the pulpit of the embassy chapel in the rue St. Dominique a sermon in which he justified the proceedings of the Revolution. Through Selwyn's friendly offices, who knew them both, Warner had long been on friendly terms with Robert Gem, the english physician to the embassy. They were both of them economical in their habits and careful in guarding against the advent of evil days. They were rivals, but friendly rivals, in serving the interests of Selwyn. So far back as 1778 Warner was apprehensive lest Gem should suspect him of endeavouring to divert the favour of Selwyn. ​In 1790 William Huskisson, the grand-nephew of Gem, was staying with him in Paris for the purpose of studying medicine. He was introduced by Warner to lord Gower and a glowing account was given of his merits. Huskisson was quickly appointed to the post of private secretary to the ambassador, abandoned the study of medicine and went to live in the house of his official master. Thus began a friend- ship of 40 years, which proved of the highest use to Huskisson in his subsequent career. Hayley tried to use .Warner's influence in the French capital for his literary advantage. He began in January 179 1 the composition in the French language of a comedy in five acts " les prejuges abolis " which he hoped that his friend might be able to get on the boards of the theatre francais, but it was never produced. Warner's affection for Selwyn led him in the following April to write to his old friend John Nichols for insertion in the Gentleman's Magazine a long letter stating that from his friendship with Selwyn for forty years — this must be an exaggeration — he could contradict the current belief propagated in the pleasantries of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams and lord Chesterfield, that Selwyn delighted in attending executions. He had never in his life attended but one and that rather accidentally from its lying in his way than from design. A subsequent communication from P. T., the initials of the notorious Philip Thicknesse, stated that the solitary execution was that of Damiens who was broken on the wheel in March 1757 for attempting to assassinate Louis XV. Later in life Warner seems to have receded from this statement. Francis Grose, the Falstaff among antiquaries, records in his " Olio " the doubt of Warner whether Selwyn " ever purposely went to three executions in his life." That a love of the gruesome existed in Selwyn's mind is above dispute. It was in the month of August 1791 that Thicknesse met ​the doctor in Paris. He was then on the point of returning to England to take up his residence on the rectory of Stourton which had been conferred on him by his warm friend sir Richard Colt Hoare. He did leave Paris to cross to the shores of Albion but an embargo was laid on him just as he arrived at Boulogne and he prudently did not draw on him the observation of the authorities by any attempt to depart from France. He took up his abode " in a village about two leagues from Boulogne " where he stayed in strict retirement until the tyrannous days of Robespierre had passed over. A glimpse of Warner under the Revolution is given to us in a little volume entitled "leisure-moments in the camp and in the guard-room, by a veteran British officer " which was printed at York in 1812. The dedication to Francis Wrangham is signed J. F. N. and a previous owner of the copy in the library of the British Museum gives the author's name as Neville. He was according to his daily custom taking an early morning walk " on the memorable twenty- first of June" in the Tuileries gardens when he met La Fayette on his milk-white steed, attended by his usual crowd of admirers in a state of more than usual excitement. Neville hastened to convey to Warner the news that the Royal Family had escaped from their jailers but it was not received in the spirit that he expected. The doctor exclaimed " Damn the Miscreants ! Have they escaped ? well, that they may be brought back to Paris before evening and be guillotined before to-morrow morning, are the two wishes next to my heart." Warner was introduced by this friend to the author Mercier, presumably Louis Sebastien, and was taken by him to dine at Mercier's rooms at Mont Rouge. Neville asserts that Warner " could not speak a single word of French," a statement which seems incredible considering the number of occasions on which he had visited the continent, the testimony of ​other friends and that he had to act as interpreter. Guest and host agreed admirably in their principles and prejudices and the doctor " who was a great gourmet " was delighted with the Burgundy which was set before him but alas ! he was summoned back to the embassy before the repast was over. For " three long English miles " did Warner and Neville trudge back through the pouring rain, but " nothing could damp the Chaplain's ardour " while he expatiated on his new friend's " easy manners, refined ideas, and above all his politics." Neville dwells on the doctor's subsequent detention at Boulogne for eighteen months and declares that he recanted his opinions. But this too cannot be accepted without great reserve. It was during this enforced sojourn in France that Warner sent to the Gentleman's Magazine the two lively letters of portentous length, which open its volume for the first half of 1792. He advocated a subscrip- tion for the best English imitation of Juvenal's eighth satire, and hoped that England and France would unite their efforts to bless the world by the arts of peace. His conclusion was a poem " When Reason now at heaven's command," a parody of Thomson's Britannia. Some years before this time Warner fell under the lash of that once-famous satirist, Mathias. In one of his frank moments he spoke of the anonymous author of the " Heroic epistle [in verse] to Dr. Watson " as a vile poetaster and imitator of his friend Macgreggor, the pseudonym of the rev. William Mason, the poet and friend of Gray. This reached the ears of the virulent Mathias who thereupon in his " Heroic address in prose " to the same Doctor spoke of the depreciator of his poetic merits as " commonly known by the name of J k W r, a d — mn'd clever fellow at college. The suspicion however has now subsided. He affects to give himself airs because George Augustus Selwyn . . . chose him for his companion in a tour to ​France and Italy." This did not exhaust the abuse. He quoted as applicable to Warner, the sentence of Gray on Eusden, once poet-laureate. "Eusden was a person of great hopes in his youth, though at last he turned out a ———." The words in the original are "drunken parson," and the reference seems to me a hit below the belt.
In 1797 our Doctor published without his name a little work, issued at 3s. sewed, with the grand title of "Metronariston, or a new pleasure recommended in a dissertation upon a part of Greek & Latin prosody." He had been drawn to a study of the subject by a chance walk with "a learned ecclesiastic at Rome" in the Campo Vaccino, the old Forum, and the Via Sacra. In the latter quarter the priest naturally quoted the Horatian line "Ibam forte via sacra, sicut meus est mos" and quoted it with a "quantity too new and pleasing to my ear to be passed unnoticed." Through his old friend, John Nichols, the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, the brochure was reviewed in that periodical [March 1797 p. 232] as endeavouring "with much good sense & great pleasantry wholly to explode the present long-established doctrines of quantity and accent and apparently with very great success." Warner wished, to use his own words, that Greek and Latin verses should be read "with a strict observance of the Measure, or as we commonly call it, the Quantity of the syllables." The dedication, a wordy dedication of twelve pages, to Jacob Bryant, the well-known classical scholar, was signed "a disciple of Mekerchus" and prefixed to the volume was a portrait of that worthy. Thereupon the editor of that journal inserted in the April number an account of Mekerchus and a reproduction of his portrait. His name was Meetkercke, derived from an estate almost half-way between Bruges and Blankenberghe. This was possibly the estate with a glorious mediæval barn, about a mile from the station, and about the same distance from ​the famous church of Lisseweghe, the tower of which rears itself aloft over the dunes of that coast. Meetkerke died in London in 1591. The question which Warner discussed in this tract was the subject of much controversy in the reign of the third George and this little treatise attracted the attention of that age's chief classical scholars. Payne Knight, one of the Holland House and Edinburgh Review set, wrote that he had perused it " with equal delight and satisfaction " and bore witness to the "learning and ingenuity employed upon so dry a subject and enlivened by so much wit and humour." Uvedale Price, a country gentleman and neighbour of Payne Knight, and like him a devotee of classical literature, in his " essay on the modern pronunciation of the Greek and Latin languages " praised it for " many just remarks and apt examples and illustrations which I have freely made use of" but censured the absence of plan and its style "as diffuse and full of singularities." George Dyer puts on record that Matthew Raine, one of the greatest heads of Charterhouse, " adopted much of this theory of Metronariston into the Charterhouse school" and Thomas Green, the author of an obsolete "diary of a lover of literature " which enjoyed abundant popularity in its day confessed (p. 209) that the arguments of Warner had convinced him, but that the book was " teasingly written." The reviewer in the British Critic for Sept. 1797, speaks of the style as defying " all description, rambling beyond example, continually aiming at wit or humour, with the unhappiest effect " and pronounces the dedication to Jacob Bryant " written, if possible still worse than the book." In our time, just two years ago, T. S. Omond, in a valuable work on " english metrists " (pp. 83-84) refers to his prede- cessor's volume as " ascribed to a Dr. John Warner, whom I cannot otherwise identify," who pokes fun all round, even at such venerable names as Bentley, Handel and Horsley. The ​book he goes on to say, " is a medley of sense and nonsense, the latter largely predominating, since his fundamental position is that we cannot accentuate a short vowel, without lengthen- it ! But the wit and versatility of the writing make it unique among the dreary tomes of this controversy." Mathias again fastened on his old enemy. This time it was in the fourth dialogue of the " Pursuits of literature." The lines themselves were feeble, and stingless. The venom was in the note and Mathias loved a lengthy note. His point was that the Metronariston was dedicated " without any permission and I think with considerable effrontery to Mr. Bryant in a style perfectly new." He dubs each page of the tract "sillier wilder and more extravagant" than the preced- ing, and sums it up as a " farrago of learned nonsense." Mrs. Thicknesse in her " school for fashion " (1800, 2 vols.) quotes that "late worthy and most respectable character" Dr. Warner as writing some lines of poetry on his return to England, " a three years' stranger to my native land " on the altered disposition of the ladies of his country. He had left them behind in 1790 the " coyest and loveliest of the female kind." They were then " as chaste and modest as the unsunn'd snow " and they came in his view " To angels nearest in this world below." When he came back to Dover's strand in 1793 they were without waist and without modesty. Some of his observations on returning to England were couched in prose and in satire. The country from which he had escaped was depicted on this side of the channel as in the direst straits of poverty, while England revelled in affluence. " Bread " said Warner, writing in London, " costs me fifteen-pence the quartern loaf, a beefsteak and a bottle of wine drains my pocket of between five and six shillings — for fifteen pence I had in this famished country on the other side of the water, my soup, my fish, my gtgot, and my dessert, ​and tenpence more gave me an excellent bottle of claret." This was not the conventional language of the time. But the doctor lived and spoke on his own lines. He even went so far, oh grievous offence against propriety ! as " to walk in the streets without gloves." Whatever the " British Fair " may have become, their satirist was restored to them without a change. He was the same genial, kind-hearted, honest old fellow. Hayley was much attached to an illegitimate child, Thomas Alphonso Hayley, a young sculptor and Warner also became fond of him. He addressed the youth in a sportive billet and deter- mined to devote himself to the private education, in a similar manner, of another very promising boy. When this young sculptor came to London to perfect himself in his profession the doctor continued his kindness. His intimacy with Hayley was unbroken. He seems to have paid a visit to Eartham in the summer of 1795. He was there again in April 1796 and had then been engaged to attend the new ambassador to Denmark as his secretary and chaplain. The date of departure was fixed for the 15th of May but I do not find that the appointment was ever carried into effect. Warner's portrait in water colour was painted by Jeremiah Meyer, R.A. the well known artist, particularly in miniatures, who brought Romney and Hayley together in 1776 and as the painter had " a lively friendship " with his subject it was painted con amore. The original was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1776, and in order that it might be preserved for the youth whom Warner was educating it was entrusted to the keeping of Hayley. The young Hayley made a copy of it, but as the picture was not to his satisfaction he made a second attempt and this time succeeded completely. His father took the work on his next visit to town to Warner's rooms in S'- John's Square, and diverted himself in the ​absence of his friend by suspending it over the mantelpiece in the place of an oval print. Before Hayley left the house its owner had returned and the poet had the satisfaction of seeing and hearing his friend's delight over his new acquisition. Warner was "a good looking man" but rather short in person.
Two characteristic letters from him to George Cumberland, poet and artist are in the Additional MS. No. 36498 at the British Museum. That dilettante had sent him a copy of his tale entitled "Lewina, the Maid of Snowdon" which he had published with his etchings and in the same volume with "a poem on the landscapes of Great Britain" in 1793. They could not have been without favour in the eyes of the public for the publisher paid no less than £56 for the profits of the sale, and offered to buy the copyright for £50 more. Cumberland declined this flattering offer, as he was dissatisfied with his productions, and resolved never to republish them. Warner, however, administered to him a strong dose of flattery on the merits of "Lewina." He had never seen "in so small a compass a happier mixture"—at this point his fondness for drollery broke in with the parenthesis "not a nappier mixture for that would make one sleep instead of weep"— "of the Beautiful, Philosophical and Pathetic." Cumberland at this time had never been outside the united kingdom, but Warner put forward the pleasing surmise that the Glen had been drawn "from the enchanting one near Basle called Munster Dale, exalting its rivulet to a foaming flood." These stimulants were effective. Cumberland acknowledges in his memorandum prefixed to the presentation copy of "Lewina" to the rev. John Eagles which is now at the British Museum, that through Warner's persuasion it was included, after correction, in the second volume of his collection of Original Tales. This was not the only piece by Cumberland that Warner took some pleasure in. He ​was delighted with the " Captive." Nothing but Terrour could restrain a patriotic publisher from printing it. But this was what the reactionary followers of Pitt were aiming at " nothing presently would be published beyond a Primer or a Child's guide." So, with Warner's praise the " Captive " occupied the whole of volume I. of Cumberland's collection of Original Tales. The last sentence of Warner strikes the keynote of his life during the dying years of that century. The war with France which ended after long years of a wasteful contest with the return of the Bourbons to temporary power, and the repressive measures of the Tory ministry to crush out the opposition of their antagonists, were distasteful to the doctor who strenu- ously advocated the cause of parliamentary reform and threw himself with augmented zeal into the arms of the advanced liberals. The claims of Home Tooke to public recognition went home to his heart. He adjured Cumberland if he knew " any opulent friend whose children do not call for all he can spare in such times as these and has still, in spite of Mr. Pitt, money enough to make a patriotic present, now is his time by contributing to raise an annuity — too much wanted — for the most meritorious Public man in the Kingdom . . . and that man I need not tell you is our friend Home Tooke." Warner and his colleagues in the movement hoped to make the fund worth Home Tooke's acceptance. The subscriptions ranged from £50 to £300. Cumberland duly responded to the invitation and received from Warner, who was then staying at Wimbledon with Home Tooke, warm thanks for his letters " and for their very agreeable accompaniments." His attention was also drawn to Tooke's "tight little correspondence" with the clerk to the income tax commissioners. The patriot at Wimbledon had filled up the schedule of his income with great minuteness of detail and had ended with the statement " I have been ​thus particular in order to shorten an Odious correspondence of which we ought all to be ashamed." A drawing of the Doctor hung on the wall of one of the parlours in Home Tooke's house at Wimbledon. In his life- time Warner had given a very handsome sum as a subscrip- tion for the publication of the " Diversions of Purley," and he did not forget, when dying, the patriot and philologer with whom he had spent many happy hours. He left "to my very old friend, John Home Tooke, the use of my Tankard at his cheerful board during his life " as well as a mourning ring. If the youth whom Warner had designated as his heir died before the age of 25, Tooke was to receive the substantial bequest of £500 but " if my old friend should go over to the majority before me, his £500 is to be divided between Miss Hart and her sister Charlotte." This was the wording of Warner's will dated four days before his death. Major Cartwright, the prominent reformer, was the recipient of another ring, and one of the Doctor's last literary productions was the memoir of him which appeared in the volume of " Public Characters " for 1799- 1800. Warner's death was due to his fellow-feeling with a politician who had suffered for his opinions. Benjamin Flower, the editor of the "Cambridge intelligencer," a paper which was conspicuous in denouncing the folly of the governing class in 1799, had been imprisoned by the House of Lords in Newgate for an alleged libel upon bishop Watson. The proceedings, says Dr. Garnett ninety years later, had been " of a very arbitrary nature." He married soon after his release a lady who had been herself a martyr for her politics, and Warner caught cold in carrying out his promise of officiating at the ceremony. After a few days' illness " and preserving his recollection and calmness to the last," he died at his house, 14 S c John's Square, Clerkenwell, on the 22nd of January 1800 and was buried F 2 ​in a vault under the church in the square on the 30th of that month. The date of the commencement of the new century was an amiable weakness of the Doctor. He originated at a convivial party the view that it began with the year 1800, and boldly maintained his opinion in argument against all comers. Oddly enough the bets were decided in his favour by the two referees and, what is not odd to those acquainted with Warner " many cheerful parties arose out of it." His friends who held the contrary sentiment used jocularly to say that he ought to lie "perdu for that year. They little imagined that their raillery was to be converted into a fatal prediction." The new-year came, and on the 22nd day of its first month Warner lay dead. Warner's will contains many points of interest. Two out of the three executors and trustees were the rev. Dr. Raine, of the Charterhouse, a very distinguished scholar, and his brother Jonathan Raine, of equal eminence in the law. Mourning rings were left to many illustrious persons. The list included, besides Tooke and Cartwright, the names of sir Richard Colt Hoare, Robert Fergusson, William Hayley, William Bosville, William Frend, Thomas Wakefield and his brother, Gilbert Wakefield and bore striking witness to his friendship with those prominent in the cause of reform. His sisters Frances Mary S l John, Louisa Henrietta Warner and a third woman, Susanna Lambert, received £100 a year for life " not to be under the control of present or future husbands." Warner as we have seen, had determined to apply the bulk of his substance to the education and training of a promising youth. His name is set out in the will as " Philip Courtenay, now of the Charterhouse School, whom I have chosen to be my heir and residuary legatee." The books of Warner were to be kept in some place until the heir had a ​dwelling to receive them, and he hoped that the youth would "have a partiality to them, though neither rich nor rare, from my having first acquainted him with Letters by their help."
Philip Courtenay was admitted pensioner of Trinity College Cambridge on 3rd July 1799 at the age of 17 and was then described as the son of John Courtenay of Bath. He became a scholar of his college on the 30th of April, 1802 and graduated B.A. 1805, M.A. 1808. He went to the bar, was admitted at Lincoln's Inn in 1803 and transferred himself to the Inner Temple in 1807. Next year he was duly called and became King's Counsel in 1833, reader of his Inn in 1840 and treasurer in 1841. He went the northern circuit and died at Liverpool on 10 Dec. 1842. For some years he was counsel to the mint. Romney painted in January, 1792, a portrait of Madame de Sillery, his kind friend in Paris, which he gave to Hayley. It was bequeathed by him to Courtenay, by whose daughter it was lent to the Grafton gallery in the spring of 1900 (No. 85).
Such was the career of the rev. John Warner, D.D. His life was passed in a calling for which he had little liking and his friends were allowed to know his feelings. But he conscientiously held strong opinions in politics, which he did not hide from view and they did not tend to his advancement in his profession. He expressed them and he suffered for them. For Selwyn's sake he may sometimes have played a part which was not lofty in its character but he liked his master and was liked by him. Forster and Thackeray have brought out in passages which will never be forgotten the defects of his life, but even they were not blind to the elements of good in his character. To Thackeray he was "kindly and good natured in secret" and the more we know of him, the more cordially can we endorse these words. ​A word of sympathy was expressed for Warner by G. S. Street in his "miniatures and moods" (1893). A kindly appreciation by Katherine Prence, of his character is in "Temple Bar" for December 1897. And an account of his life is inserted by Mr. John Fyvie in his pleasant volume of "Wits, beaux and beauties of the Georgian Era."