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
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EIGHT FRIENDS OF THE GREAT
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