Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Warner, John (1736-1800)
WARNER, JOHN (1736–1800), classical scholar, son of Ferdinando Warner [q. v.], born in London in 1736, was admitted into St. Paul's school on 30 March 1747, and became Pauline exhibitioner and Perry exhibitioner in 1755. Proceeding to Trinity College, Cambridge, he graduated B.A. in 1758, M.A. in 1761, and D.D. in 1773. For many years he enjoyed an unusual degree of popularity as an eloquent preacher at a chapel, his private property, in Long Acre, London. He was instituted in 1771 to the united rectories of Hockcliffe and Chalgrave, Bedfordshire; and was afterwards presented by his friend Sir Richard Colt Hoare [q. v.] to the valuable rectory of Stourton, Wiltshire. In 1790 he went to Paris as chaplain to the English ambassador, and he there became somewhat imbued with revolutionary ideas. Warner was an excellent scholar, and the reputation for wit that he enjoyed among his contemporaries is fully borne out by his agreeable letters, several of which are printed in Jesse's ‘Selwyn and his Contemporaries’ (iii. 306–18). He was an ardent admirer of John Howard, and it was principally owing to his exertions that the statue in St. Paul's Cathedral was erected to the memory of the philanthropist. Warner died in St. John's Square, Clerkenwell, on 22 Jan. 1800.
He was the author of ‘Metronariston; or a New Pleasure recommended, in a Dissertation upon a part of Greek and Latin Prosody’ (anon.), London, 1797, 8vo.
[Gardiner's Registers of St. Paul's School, p. 85; Gent. Mag. 1797 i. 232, 273, 1800 i. 92; Memoirs of Thomas Alphonso Hayley, pp. 28, 136, 452, 493; Johnson's Memoirs of W. Hayley, i. 351, 388; Monthly Mag. (1800), ix. 80; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ii. 416, 644; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. xii. 474, Quarterly Review, xxxi. 296, 297.]