He went the Northern Circuit, and if none of those splendid chances which sometimes lift a man at one stroke from obscurity to wealth and professional advancement presented themselves to him, a still more propitious fortune gave him an opportunity of winning for himself a place in the first rank of the authors of the day. His law books, which had met with fair success, showed that amid the greater attractions of literature his professional studies were not being neglected. In 1851 he was made a queen's counsel, and became a bencher of his inn, of which he subsequently acted as treasurer. The return of the Conservatives to power in I852 gave his friend Mr. Walpole, the home secretary, an opportunity of recognizing Warren's merits in the way that was most agreeable to his feelings, and he was made recorder of Hull. We cannot doubt that the office was a congenial one, and that Warren spared no pains to augment the dignity and character of his bench; and we can easily suppose that his charges to the grand jury would be very fine addresses in point of law as well as in point of rhetoric. In 1853, on the occasion of Lord Derby's installation as chancellor of the university, he was made an honorary D. C. L. of Oxford, along with Lord Lytton, Sir Archibald Alison, and Professor Aytoun, his fellow contributors to the magazine. He was returned to Parliament for the burgh of Midhurst in 1856, and continued to sit for that place until he vacated his seat in 1859.
His Parliamentary career does not call for many remarks. His self-consciousness was, perhaps, against his success in the House; perhaps he felt that he had already achieved too great triumphs to be content to submit to the novitiate which has to be undergone before a member can take his place as a party leader. But he left pleasant recollections behind him in the Commons, and a popularity which was not bounded by the ministerial benches. When the offer of a mastership in lunacy was made to him by Lord Derby in 1859, it was not accepted without some natural regrets for the attractions of a Parliamentary career, and the possibilities which he was leaving behind him. But prudence came to his assistance, and he accepted an office which he of all men, by his psychological experience, his keen perception of character, and his unswerving conscientiousness, was so well qualified to fill. And thus was partially fulfilled the vaticination which had been spoken of him by Sir George Rose: —
Though envy may sneer at you, Warren, and say
"Why, yes, he has talent, but throws it away;"
Take a hint, change the venue, and still persevere
And you'll end as you start with "Ten Thousand a-Year."
That in his new office he was a valuable public servant, doing his work with zeal and fidelity, we know well; and it does not speak little for the man that he should have devoted himself to the labors of an unostentatious office, nor allowed himself to be distracted from his duties by work which would have kept his name more prominently before his public.
Of Warren we are almost tempted to say that we are never so conscious of the novelist as when he is penning a law treatise, or of the lawyer as when he is moulding the structure of one of his novels. But if he has not left so lasting a mark upon the literature of the bar as upon that of his country, few of its members have done more to vindicate its honor, or to elevate its professional standards. Almost the only occasions when he really dips his pen in gall are when he has to deal with those who lower its position by their lives, or abuse its forms in their practice. But not only has he painted for us the character of Mr. Toady Hug that all may take warning by him, but he has presented the aspiring lawyer with some noble ideals like that of the attorney-general in "Ten Thousand a-Year." The respect which he invariably shows for the bench, and the zealous care which he exercises to assert its dignity, by his representations not only of the justice of its decisions but of the exemplary lives and characters of those who occupy it, deserve to be kept in honorable remembrance. The fact that his sketch of Lord Widdrington is more or less a portrait, does not detract from the skill with which it had been executed, or make us less proud that it can be said of the English bench this man was of it. And where shall we go for a nobler, a more touching picture of a struggle between justice and mercy, of the strivings of a lenient mind charged with the execution of stern decrees, than in the description of the chief justice in "Now and Then," when he is appealed to for a respite to Adam Ayliffe?
No critic is likely to do justice to the works of Samuel Warren who fails to see that he has to do with a moralist as well as a novelist. A generation less acquainted with the rules of literary art, used to apply to their books the simple
