Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/12

 vi been able to add many additional details of interest. This will be apparent by a reference to the memoir of Dr. Warner. Though his career has been set out, both in the dictionary and in several other publications, by writers of exceptional skill, it has been reserved for me to make the first mention of many, and not the least important, circumstances in his life. His translation of a novel from the Spanish, the various descriptions of his style of preaching, his appointment to the vicarage of Scrivelsby, his acts of charity with Penneck and others, his friendship with Miss Seward, Dr. Gem, and William Huskisson, the dinner at Mont Rouge with Mercier, the quarrel with T. J. Mathias, the names of the scholars who appreciated his Metronariston, his communications with George Cumberland, his gifts to John Home Tooke and friendship with the leading Reformers, the cause of his death, his adoption of a youth afterwards a K.C., these are some of the points which have been reserved for my narration.

The omissions in our great dictionary are Philip Metcalfe, Scrope Davies, lord Webb Seymour, Lydia White, and lord John Townshend. The reader, after a perusal of the succeeding narratives, will not hesitate, I hope, to corroborate my assertion that each of these eight memoirs contains many incidents of general interest and that all of these neglected persons lived lives which are worthy of description in detail.

Rundle was the central figure of a theological contest which raged as fiercely as the battle fought a century later over the appointment of Doctor Hampden to an English bishopric and the energies of Pope and Swift were enlisted on his behalf. Metcalfe was the companion of Johnson in his rambles at home and of Sir Joshua Reynolds in his art-travels through the Low-countries. He took a leading part in the differences which broke out over the erection of