Born, in Denbighshire, 1807. Studied medicine for a short time at Edinburgh University. Student of Inner Temple, 1828; Special Pleader, 1831–37; called to Bar, 1837. Contrib. to “Blackwood’s Mag.” from Aug. 1830. Q.C., 1851. Bencher of Inner Temple, 1851. Recorder of Hull, 1852–74. Hon. D.C.L., Oxford, 9 June 1853. M.P. for Midhurst, 1856–59. Master in Lunacy, 1859–77. Died, 29 July 1877. Works: “Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician” (3 vols.), 1832–38; “Popular and Practical Introduction to Law Studies,” 1835; “The Opium Question,” 1840 (4th edn. same year); “Ten Thousand a Year” (anon.), 1841; “Now and Then,” 1847; “The Moral, Social and Professional Duties of Attorneys and Solicitors,” 1848; “Correspondence … relative to the trial of Courvoisier,” 1849; “Letter to the Queen on a late Court Martial,” 1850; “The Lily and the Bee,” 1851; “The Queen, or the Pope?” 1851; “Manual of the Parliamentary Election Law of the United Kingdom,” 1852; “Intellectual and Moral Development of the Present Age,” 1852; “The Law and Practice of Election Committees,” 1853; “Charge to the Grand Jury,” 1854, “Miscellanies” (from “Blackwood’s Mag.;” 2 vols.), 1854–55; “Works” (5 vols.), 1854–55; “Labour,” 1856. He edited: “Select Extracts from Blackstone’s Commentaries” (with J. W. Smith), 1837; “Blackstone’s Commentaries Systematically Abridged,” 1855.

Personal

  Mr. Warren, of the “Ten Thousand a Year,” was in court,—a pale, thin, intelligent face, evidently a nervous man, more unquiet than anybody else in court,—always restless in his seat, whispering to his neighbors, settling his wig, perhaps with an idea that people single him out.

  It was a curious coincidence that his first instructor in law should have been Samuel Warren, author subsequently of “Ten Thousand a Year.” One might have presupposed that there would have been an almost perfect assimilation between the brain that conceived Tittlebat Titmouse and that which evolved Triplet. Yet, sad to relate, the two of a trade failed to agree, and after a year of Mr. Samuel Warren, Charles Reade shifted his seat to the chambers of Mr. Matthew Fortescue, a warm friend of his brother.

  It has been a temptation difficult to resist, to refrain from weaving into this history the most amusing record of the life of Warren, which is to be found in these pages. He was always the chief figure in those pleasant episodes of London life which diversified the story of the brothers, from the very first outset of Alexander and Robert; the most lively and diverting figure, often disapproved of, sometimes quite exasperating in his play with life and literature, never remembering that there were (usually) only thirty days in a month, and only so many pages in a magazine, almost always too late, too long, keeping the Editors on tenter-hooks of expectation, furious with them when they cut short his papers or excised some favourite passage, as we have seen the young men do with a courage almost super-editorial: though every controversy ended in tears and laughter of reconciliation, and the vain, overweening, open-hearted, and simple-minded man conquered all grievances with his exuberance of life and jest, the magnanimity with his vanity, and the real affection and friendship that lay under all.

  In his colossal literary vanity Warren resembled Boswell. The stories in which he appears as the butt of Sergeant Murphy and other experienced wags are numerous; but when his literary reputation was not involved he was one of the gentlest, best-hearted, and most reasonable of men. He was popular as a bencher of the Inner Temple.

Diary of a Late Physician, 1832–38

  The nature of these narratives may easily be guessed from their title, and Warren very skillfully maintained the disguise of a medical man, gained chiefly by his own early introduction into a humble branch of that profession. The tales themselves are of various lengths, and very unequal degrees of merit. They are all, with the exception of one or two (which are not important enough to change the general impression on the reader), of a very tragic and painful nature—dark and agonising pages from the vast book of human suffering…. The style, though occasionally rather too highly coloured, is very direct, powerful, and unaffected; and the too great prevalence of a tone of agony and extreme distress, which certainly injures the effect of the whole, by depriving the work of relief, which is, above all, indispensable in painful subjects, is perhaps rather attributable to the nature of the subjects than to any defect of the artist.

  So intense was the air of reality about these sketches that one of Mr. Warren’s critics found fault with them as a betrayal of professional confidence.

  His “Diary of a Late Physician” produced a great effect, partly, I think, under the mistaken impression that it had been bequeathed to the world by a real practising physician, and therefore dealt with interesting facts, and not only with amusing fancies. But partly also because, though somewhat rough, if not course in texture, it gave evidence of talent, and was reasonably held to be a work of promise.

  Printed in collective form (1832, and complete 1838), they went through numerous editions, were translated into several European languages, and extensively pirated in America, while they still sell largely in paper covers for sixpence. Their literary merit is slight, but their melodramatic power is considerable.

Ten Thousand a Year, 1841

  I finished yesterday the first volume of “Ten Thousand a Year,” the commencement of which, as Aunt Margaret intends to testify in her next epistle, is very unpromising. As it proceeds however it becomes splendid; and, having completed the volume, I laid it down with the impression that it was equal to Dickens.

  This work portrays the unexpected elevation to immense wealth and importance of one of the most contemptible beings that the imagination can conceive, Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse, a vulgar, ignorant, coxcomb of the lowest order, a linen-draper’s shopman in Oxford-street, and suddenly exalted, through the instrumentality of some rascally attorneys, who have discovered a defect in a pedigree, to the third heaven of English aristocracy. The book is crowded with “scenes of many-coloured life,” and with an infinity of personages, all vigorously, and some admirably drawn. The gradual development of the plot is carried on, not only with considerable skill and probability, but with a great deal more attention to detail than is usual in modern fiction; and many of the scenes are highly dramatic and natural…. Mr. Warren is a barrister, and a distinguished writer on legal education; and we cannot, therefore, be surprised that he should exhibit great and accurate knowledge, not only of the profession itself, but of the habits of its members. The work is undeniably a production of great skill and genius, and setting aside a little political partiality (for all Mr. Warren’s good people are Tories, and his bad ones as invariably Whigs), must be considered as giving a vivid, well-drawn, and impressive picture of modern English society.

  Shows considerable power of comic, or rather grotesque, picturing, and might take a high rank in fiction but for the terribly virtuous and high-flown characters which were apparently the pride of the author’s heart. Aubrey, his favourite hero, was chosen by Thackeray as an excellent example of several branches of snobbishness.

General

  He possesses, in a remarkable manner, the tenderness of heart and vividness of feeling, as well as powers of description, which are essential to the delineation of the pathetic, and which, when existing in the degree in which he enjoyed them, fill his pages with scenes which can never be forgotten. His “Diary of a Physician” and “Ten Thousand a Year” are a proof of this; they are, and chiefly for this reason, among the most popular works of imagination that this age has produced. Mr. Warren, like so many other romance writers of the age, has often filled his canvas with pictures of middle and humble life to an extent which those whose taste is fixed on the elevating and the lofty not altogether approve. But that is the fault of the age rather than the man. It is amply redeemed, even in the eyes of those who regard it as a blemish, by the gleams of a genius which shine through the dark clouds of melancholy with which his conceptions are so often invested; by the exquisite pathetic scenes with which they abound; and the pure and ennobling objects to which his compositions, even when painting ordinary life, are uniformly directed.

  Few, if any, writers of fiction of the present century, hold a more powerful pen than Samuel Warren. In vivid painting of the passions, and in faithfully depicting scenes of modern life, his tales have enjoyed a very great and deserved popularity.

  Turned from the study of Medicine to that of Law…. At the beginning of the reign Samuel Warren published, in 1838–40, a series of tales or sketches of life called “The Diary of a Late Physician” which first appeared in “Blackwood’s Magazine.” In this there were touches of pathos; and there was comic power in his very successful novel “Ten Thousand a Year,” which followed in 1841. “Now and Then,” in 1848, sustained the author’s credit; but in 1851 the opening of the great Exposition suggested a rhapsody of neither prose nor verse called “The Lily and the Bee” that showed how a clever novelist with a good sense of the ridiculous, and a clear headed lawyer to boot, may make himself ridiculous by failing to see the limits of his power.

  If anything was ever written which could startle and horrify the imagination, and create in it an alarmed expectation of revelations to come, it was the paper called “The Man about Town,” herein discussed, which for sheer horror exceeded anything that had been written, at least let us say since “Frankenstein.” It is very possible it may have been a salutary revelation: there is no doubt it was a very dreadful one.