Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/61

 Rh Warner's opportunity for the full display of that talent in preaching which he had practised in a suburban village of Essex came to him when he acquired the proprietary building of Tavistock chapel, in Broad court off Drury Lane. Many descriptions of his style in oratory have come down to us. One was from his friend, and in some respects his rival, "Jack " Taylor of the Sun, who describes him as taking " two oratorical boxes into the pulpit, one filled with virtues and the other with vices," and avoiding the dry doctrine of the theological controversialist. Another is given in that "diary of a visit to England by an Irishman in 1775 " which was discovered in a " dusty hiding-place in one of the ofhces " of the supreme court of New South Wales, and published at Sydney in 1854. The diarist, the Rev. Doctor Thomas Campbell, on the 26 March 1775, heard from Warner's lips for the first time a good specimen of preaching in England. It was an ideal discourse, delivered in the best possible manner, just such a sermon as his hearer would have given " had it been his lot to be a preacher in any great city." Warner had redeemed in Campbell's eyes the honour of his nation. He did not rely solely on his notes. " He makes excursions and unwritten effusions, which prevail over the warmest, the boldest com- positions ; and then, when he hath exhausted such senti- ments as present themselves, he returns to his notes and takes up the next head, according to his preconceived arrangement. By this discreet conduct he avoids the frozen, beaten track of declamation and keeps clear of the labyrinth of nonsense into which those enthusiasts wander, whose vanity or hypocrisy rejects the clue of composition." George Selwyn, the friend whom Warner served with such absolute devotion, testifies to his great congregation at Tavistock chapel and his many admirers. Personally he was not one of them. Warner had preached in his chape