Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/55

 THE REVD. JOHN WARNER, D.D. 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