Dates

• Existence: 1795 - 1846

Biography

(William) Sidney Walker (1795-1846), Classical and Literary Scholar. Sidney Walker was born on 4 December 1795, the eldest child of a naval officer, John Walker, and his wife Harriet, née Falconar. In 1811 (the year of his father's death) he entered Eton, where his small stature, slovenly appearance, and awkward manners led to his being bullied; but he also acquired a group of loyal friends with literary tastes similar to his own, won several school prizes, and published a volume of verse, Gustavus Vasa, and other poems (1813). In October 1814 he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge as a sizar; and during the next few years pursued a very successful undergraduate career, winning a college scholarship, a Craven scholarship, and the Porson prize for Greek verse; as well as publishing poems and translations. His abilities as a classicist led to his election to a fellowship at Trinity in 1820. He lived quietly in college throughout the 1820s, writing essays and reviews for the periodical press, editing a Corpus poetarum latinorum, and taking a major part in preparing for publication a newly-discovered Latin treatise by Milton. In the autumn of 1825, at the suggestion of several friends, he appeared as a candidate for the vacant Regius Professorship of Greek, and does not seem to have been much perturbed by his failure to be elected. Four years later, having decided that his scepticism on certain points of doctrine precluded him from taking holy orders, he resigned his fellowship. In 1831 he moved to London, where he lived in lodgings for the remainder of his life, supported by small pensions from Trinity and from his old friend W.M. Praed, and the proceeds of occasional literary work. He became increasingly interested in Shakespeare, and left at his death a large collection of essays and notes on the plays and poems. He died in London on 15 October 1846, after suffering for some years from intermittent mental illness.

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