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who shall support the ecclesiastical establishment of England." Owing to some demur on the part of this college, these scholars were first placed in Gloucester hall (now Worcester college), and there was a design to have made that a college for their use; but, in the mastership of Dr. Thomas Good, in 1672, they were removed to Baliol.

Bishop Warner is said to have been an accurate logician, philosopher, and well versed in the fathers and schoolmen. He was a man of a decided character, equally cheerful and undaunted. In his manner he had less of the courtier than of the kind friend, always performing more than he professed. Of his religious principles the only evidence we have is in a letter addressed to bishop Jeremy Taylor, in defence of the doctrine of original sin, which that prelate had endeavoured to explain away in a manner totally inconsistent with the tenets of the church, as laid down in her liturgy, articles, and homilies. Warner was of the school of Abbot, and less likely to adopt Arminianism, although he was personally attached to its great friend archbishop Laud.'

WARNER (JOSEPH), an eminent surgeon, was born in the island of Antigua, in 1717, on the family estate, which he inherited, together with a ring, famous in history, as the one given by queen Elizabeth to the earl of Essex, and which in the hour of impending danger he entrusted to the countess of Nottingham, who never delivered it to the queen, and this, according to the story, was the cause of Essex's losing his life. By some means this ring had regularly descended, together with the estate, in the Warner family. Mr. Warner was sent to England at an early age, and educated at Westminster school. At the age of seventeen he was apprenticed to the celebrated surgeon, Samuel Sharpe, and after residing seven years with him, was admitted joint lecturer in anatomy at St. Thomas's hospital with Mr. Sharpe, after whose resignation Mr. Warner continued the lectures for several years. In 1746, during the rebellion in Scotland, he volunteered his professional services, and joined the royal army under the duke of Cumberland. In the course of that campaign he was recalled to London to fill the office of surgeon to Guy's hospital, a situation which he held, with increasing reputation, and

1 Ath. Ox. vol. II.-Burnet's Own Times.-Biog. Brit.-Fuller's Worthies.Barwick's Life.-Lysons's Environs, in which is the first engraved portrait of Warner.-Chalmers's Hist. of Oxford.-Bunney's Life of bishop Taylor.

great professional success, for the long period of forty-four years. During this time his private practice became extensive, and his fame was increased by his valuable treatises on the cataract, the hydrocele, &c. and his still more valuable volume of " Cases in Surgery," 1754, &c. In 1756 he was elected a fellow of the royal society, in whose Transactions a number of his communications were published. In 1764 he was elected a member of the court of assistants of the then corporation of surgeons, and in 1771, became one of the court of examiners, in which office he continued to discharge his duty most punctually until the last month of his life.

He died at his house in Hatton-garden, July 24, 1801, in the eighty-fifth year of his life, without much illness, but of the mere effects of age, and retained his faculties to the last. He left a very estimable character, both as to professional and private merit. He was among the earliest teachers of anatomy, whose labours have greatly contributed to lessen the necessity of going abroad, and have rendered London at the present day the first chirurgical school in the world.1

WARNER (RICHARD), who merits notice for his regard to the science of botany, and the respect and honour he ever shewed to the lovers of it, was the son of John Warner, a banker, who is somewhere mentioned by Addison or Steele, as having always worn black leather garters buckled under the knee, a custom most religiously observed by our author, who in no other instance affected singularity. He was born in 1711, educated at Wadham college, Oxford, and being bred to the law, had chambers in Lincoln's Inn, but possessing a genteel fortune, he principally resided in an ancient family seat with an extensive garden belonging to it, on Woodford Green, in Essex. Here he maintained a botanical garden, was very successful in the cultivation of rare exotics, and was not unacquainted with indigenous plants. The herborizations of the company of apothecaries were, once in the season, usually directed to the environs of Woodford, where, after the researches of the day, at the table of Mr. Warner, the products of Flora were displayed. The result of the investigations made in that neighbourhood was printed for private distribution by Mr. Warner, under the title "Planta Woodfordienses; or a

1 Gent. Mag. vol. LXXI.

catalogue of the more perfect plants growing spontaneously about Woodford in Essex," Lond. 1771, 8vo. As none of the graminaceous or cryptogamous tribes are introduced, the list does not exceed 518 species. The order is alphabetical, by the names from Ray's Synopsis; after which follow the specific character at length, from Hudson's "Flora Anglica," the Linnæan class and order, and the English name, place, and time of flowering.

Mr. Warner was also distinguished for polite learning, and eminently so for his critical knowledge in the writings of Shakspeare. He published "A Letter to David Garrick, esq. concerning a glossary to the Plays of Shakspeare," &c. 1768, 8vo. He had been long making collections for a new edition of that author; but on Mr. Steevens's advertisement of his design to engage in the same task on a different plan, he desisted from the pursuit of his own. In his youth he had been remarkably fond of dancing; nor till his rage for that diversion subsided, did he convert the largest room in his house into a library. To the last hour of his life, however, he was employed on the "Glossary" already mentioned, although it never was completed. At his death, which happened April 11, 1775, he bequeathed all his valuable books to Wadham college, Oxford, where he received his education; and to the same society a small annual stipend to maintain a botanical lecture. He also translated the comedies of Plautus left untranslated by Thornton, which were published in 1772 and 1774. The books he left to Wadham college form a good, although not a complete collection of the old English poets, with many editions of Shakspeare, some of which are interleaved with writing paper, obviously intended for annotations, &c. had he pursued his design of a new edition. 1

WARNER (WILLIAM), an old English poet, is called by Phillips, "a good honest plain writer of moral rules and precepts, in that old-fashioned kind of seven-footed verse, which yet sometimes is in use, though in different manner, that is to say, divided into two. He may be reckoned with several other writers of the same time, i. e. Queen Elizabeth's reign: who, though inferior to Sidney, Spenser, Drayton, and Daniel, yet have been thought by some not unworthy to be remembered and quoted : namely George Gascoigne, Thomas Hudson, John Markham, Thomas

I Pulteney's Botany.-Nichols's Bowyer.-Lysons's Environs.

Achely, John Weever, Charles Middleton, George Turberville, Henry Constable, sir Edward Dyer, Thomas Churchyard, Charles Fitzgeoffry."

William Warner was a native of Oxfordshire, and born, as Mr. Ellis is inclined to think, about 1558, which sup poses him to have published his first work at the age of twenty-five. He was educated at Oxford, but spent his time in the flowery paths of poetry, history, and romance, in preference to the dry pursuits of logic and philosophy, and departed without a degree to the metropolis, where he soon became distinguished among the minor poets. It is said, that in the latter part of his life, he was retained in the service of Henry Carey, lord Hunsdon, to whom he dedicates his poem. Mr. Ritson adds to this account, that by his dedications to Henry and George, successive barons of Hunsdon, he appears to have been patronized by, or in some manner connected with, that family.

In the fourth edition of Percy's Ballads, we find the following extract from the parish register of Amwell, in Hertfordshire, communicated by Mr. Hoole, although first given by Scott, in his poem of "Amwell," edit. 1776. 66 ' 16081609-Master William Warner, a man of good yeares and of honest reputation; by his profession an atturnye of the Comnon Pleas; author of Albion's England, diynge suddenly in the night in his bedde, without any former complaynt or sicknesse, on Thursday-night beeinge the ninth day of March, was buried the Saturday following, and lyeth in the church at the corner, under the stone of Walter Ffader."

His "Albion's England" was his principal work; and was not only a favourite with his own age, but has received very high praise from the critics of our own time. It is an epitome of the British history, and, according to the editor of the "Muses Library," Mrs. Cooper, is written with great learning, sense, and spirit; in some places fine to an extraordinary degree, of which an instance is given in the story of Argentili and Curan, a tale which, Mrs. Cooper adds, is full of beautiful incidents, in the romantic taste, extremely affecting, rich in ornament, wonderfully various in style, and in short one of the most beautiful pastorals she ever met with. To this opinion, high as it is, Dr. Percy thinks nothing can be objected, unless perhaps an affected quaintness in some of his expressions, and an indelicacy in some of his pastoral images. Warner's con

temporaries ranked him on a level with Spenser, and called him the Homer and Virgil of their age. But Dr. Percy remarks, that he rather resembled Ovid, whose Metamorphosis he seems to have taken for a model, having deduced a perpetual poem from the deluge down to the reign of queen Elizabeth, full of lively digressions and entertaining episodes. And though he is sometimes harsh, affected, and indelicate, he often displays a most charming and pathetic simplicity.

He was numbered in his own time among the refiners of the English tongue, which "by his pen was much enriched and gorgeously invested in rare ornaments, and resplendent habiliments." Such is the opinion of Meres, in his "Wit's Treasury;" but the progress Warner made in refining the English tongue was certainly very inconsiderable. He owed his simplicity to his taste; but he had not the courage to abandon the uncouth and quaint expressions so peculiar to his time, and to shew that wit and point might exist without them. His style, however, was then thought elegant, and such was his power of pleasing, that "Albion's England" superseded that very popular work "the Mirror of Magistrates."

Warner was a writer of prose. His work was entitled 66 Syrinx, or a seauenfold Historie, handled with varietie of pleasant and profitable, both comical and tragical argument," printed in 1597. Warton calls it a novel, or rather a suite of stories, much in the style of the adventures of Heliodorus's Ethiopic romance. He appears also to have translated Plautus's "Menæchmi," published in 1595. Ritson informs us, that by an entry in the Stationers'book, on the 17th of October, 1586, "The Wardens, upon serche of Roger Ward's house, dyd find there in printing, a book in verse, intytled "England's Albion, beinge in English, and not aucthorised to be printed, which he had been forbidden to prynte, aswell by the L. archb. of Canterburye, as also by the said wardens at his own house;" and forasmuch as he had done this "contrary to the late decrees of the hon. court of Starre-chamber, the said wardens seised three heaps of the said England's Albion'." Why this work was prohibited, except for the indelicacies already noticed, is not very apparent. We know that bishop Hall's satires incurred the displeasure of the guardians of the press at no long distance from this time.

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