Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/62

 42 at Matson, his estate near Gloucester, " and the neighbour- hood flocked to hear him but his style and manner," says Selwyn, " were very different from my ideas of pulpit eloquence. He intended by his intimacy with Garrick to improve them, but it has to my impressions had a very different effect. I love great simplicity in everything, but most in reading and preaching." Richard Warner, of Bath, no relation of our Doctor, narrates in his work describing the chief excursions from that city (1801) that he found the parishioners at Stourton still mindful of his namesake's " impressive pulpit eloquence, his kindness of heart and courtesy of manners." The doctor passed much time at Stourton in the company of sir Richard Colt Hoare, to whom he was indebted for his presentation to the living in 1790. He charmed all persons with his society, for few " equalled him in companionable gaiety." It mattered not in what circle he moved. He was the delight of the guests in the dining-room, and after he had taken his "usual" quantity of wine, " he would descend into the servants' hall with his pipe to which he was addicted and pour out with his vigorous puffs the finest strokes or wit and brightest scintillations of conceit." " Jack " Warner used to pay frequent visits to Hampshire, dividing his favours between two houses, noted for their hospitality, near Christchurch. One of them, The Priory, belonged to a well-known antiquary called Gustavus Brander. The other, Stourfield House, about three miles from that town had been built for his own abode by Edward Bott, who published in 1771 a " collection of cases relating to the Poor laws." Brander's entertainments were moderate in style and broke up in reasonable time. Those of Bott were protracted far into the night and the wine flowed freely. Warner had consented to preach one Sunday morning at Christchurch and the news spread throughout the parish.