[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In the letter signed
" C. H.," which is to be found in the last issue of the Spectator, under the above heading, Samuel Warren is described, to my amazement, as a Doctor, whereas he was a Barrister. I think he was the author of The Diary of a Physician, as well as of the novel quoted, and that your correspondent was thus led to mis-describe his profession. Only . last night I was reading Dr. Pearce's Life and Works of Edward John Hopkins, Organist. of the Temple Church. On page 27 of that most interesting book I find the following quotation from the Church Family News- paper of February 18th, 1898
Sam Warren, of Ten Thousand a Year celebrity, was a member of the choir committee, and was desirous of having rather more than his fair share of the choice of music. It came to the ears of one of the Benchers (a Temple wag of the sympathetic Frank Lockwood type), who sent up to the organ loft the following rhyme
' Sam moves in a mysterious way To get his anthems sung,
And worries Hopkins so each day,
He wishes Sam were hung.' "
I think it is in Sergeant Ballantine's Reminiscences that I read various amusing stories of Sam Warren, and that it was at dinner in my father's house that. with his characteristic but
inoffensive conceit, he made a speech which he concluded by proposing the health of the author of Ten Thousand a Year.—
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