Tittlebat Titmouse, Oily Gammon, and Mr. Quicksilver (Lord Brougham)—established the book as one of the most popular novels of the century.
In 1847 Warren published, under his name, ‘Now and Then,’ a story of some 125,000 words, which was written, according to its author, between 20 Nov. and 9 Dec. 1847, and was published on 18 Dec. The book rapidly went through three editions, and Warren was ‘inundated with congratulations;’ but it had a success of esteem only. Warren wrote to Blackwood suggesting, with charming ingenuity, the terms in which a review might fittingly be couched (William Blackwood and his Sons, 1897, ii. 238). His sole remaining essay in imaginative literature was ‘The Lily and the Bee: an Apologue of the Crystal Palace,’ written in honour of the Great Exhibition (London, 1851, 8vo). The style suggests comparison with Martin Tupper, but it is more absurd than anything Tupper wrote.
Warren published three more legal manuals of some value: ‘A Manual of the Parliamentary Law of the United Kingdom’ (London, 1852; again 1857), which was followed by ‘A Manual of the Law and Practice of Election Committees’ (London, 1853), and ‘Blackstone's Commentaries, systematically abridged and adapted to the existing State of the Law and Constitution with Great Additions’ (London, 1855 and 1856). He also published several lectures and tracts: ‘The Moral, Social, and Professional Duties of Attorneys and Solicitors’ (London, 1848 and 1852), four lectures delivered before the Incorporated Law Society; ‘The Queen or the Pope: the Question considered in its Political, Legal, and Religious Aspects,’ in a letter to Spencer Walpole (London, 1851; several issues); and ‘Labour: its Rights, Difficulties, Dignity, and Consolations’ (London, 1856, 8vo).
In the meantime Warren's progress at the bar was not rapid, and he consoled himself with the flattering belief that the attorneys were revenging themselves on him for the severe picture which he had drawn of their practices in his account in ‘Ten Thousand a Year’ of the firm of Quirk, Gammon, & Snap. He went the northern circuit regularly until 1851, when he was made a Q.C. and became a bencher of his inn, of which he subsequently acted as treasurer. The return of the conservatives to power in 1852 enabled his friend Spencer Walpole, the home secretary, to confer upon him the recordership of Hull, where shortly after his appointment he delivered an elaborate lecture upon the ‘Intellectual and Moral Development of the Present Age’ (printed in 1853).
On 9 June 1853, on the occasion of Lord Derby's installation as chancellor of the university, Warren (who had been elected F.R.S. on 2 April 1835) was made an honorary D.C.L. of Oxford, along with Macaulay, Lytton, Alison, Aytoun, and other men of letters. He sat in parliament for the borough of Midhurst from February 1856 to April 1859. A staunch upholder of the established church, the protestant interest, and religious education, he signalised himself in July 1858 by his protest against Baron Rothschild taking the oath in the abridged form. He was equally opposed to the extension of the franchise. He vacated his seat with some reluctance in 1859 when a mastership in lunacy (with a salary of 2,000l. a year) was offered him by Lord Chelmsford. The vaticination of Sir George Rose was thus partially fulfilled:
Though envy may sneer at you, Warren, and say,
‘Why, yes, he has talent, but throws it away;’
Take a hint, change the venue, and still persevere,
And you'll end as you start with Ten Thousand a year.
A report that he had rejected Lord Chelmsford's offer elicited from Disraeli the remark that a writ de lunatico inquirendo would have to be issued for Mr. Warren (see Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 15 Oct. 1877; cf. Law Times, 20 Oct., where a different version of Rose's epigram is given).
Warren retained his recordership down to 1874, but he wrote no more and devoted himself wholly to his profession. His appointment as master in lunacy was amply justified by the ability with which he fulfilled his functions. The masterly brevity with which he addressed the jury in the Windham inquiry (December 1861) branded as practically irrelevant the mass of the evidence produced at the trial, and prepared the public mind for the third section of the Lunacy Regulation Act of 1862, in which it is laid down that in the case of legal inquiry the question shall be confined to whether or not the alleged lunatic is of unsound mind at the time of such inquiry (Warren, Miscellanies, ii. 254; Olliver, Windham Trial, 1862; cf. Encycl. Brit. 9th ed., s.v. ‘Warren’).
Warren died at his house, 16 Manchester Square, London, on 29 July 1877, aged 70. He married, in 1831, a daughter of James Ballinger of Woodford Bridge House, Essex. His eldest son, Samuel Lilchendy Warren, was educated at Eton, became a scholar of Wadham College, Oxford, whence he gra-
