Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/89

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THE REVD. JOHN WARNER, D.D.
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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.