Life

Born at Pembroke

Pembroke, Pembrokeshire

Pembroke is an historic settlement and former county town of Pembrokeshire in west Wales. The town and the county derive their name from that of the cantref of Penfro: Pen = "head" or "end", and bro = "region", "country", "land", and so it means essentially "Land's End".-History:The main point of...

 in Wales, on 4 December 1795, he was the eldest child of John Walker, a naval officer, who died at Twickenham

Twickenham

Twickenham is a large suburban town southwest of central London. It is the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and one of the locally important district centres identified in the London Plan...

 in 1811 from the effects of wounds received in action. The boy was named after his godfather, Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, under whom his father had served. His mother's maiden name was Falconer. William Sidney, always called Sidney, spent some years at a school at Doncaster

Doncaster

Doncaster is a town in South Yorkshire, England, and the principal settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster. The town is about from Sheffield and is popularly referred to as "Donny"...

, kept by his mother's brother, and with a private tutor at Forest Hill; he then entered Eton College

Eton College

Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....

 in 1811. At Eton he learnt the whole of Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

 by heart, and wrote Greek verse with facility. There, too, he began lifelong friendships with Winthrop Mackworth Praed

Winthrop Mackworth Praed

Winthrop Mackworth Praed was an English politician and poet.-Early life:He was born in London. The family name of Praed was derived from the marriage of the poet's great-grandfather to a Cornish heiress. Winthrop's father, William Mackworth Praed, was a serjeant-at-law. His mother belonged to the...

 and John Moulton.

Walker, small, uncouth and absent-minded, was bullied at school. He was entered as a sizar

Sizar

At Trinity College, Dublin and the University of Cambridge, a sizar is a student who receives some form of assistance such as meals, lower fees or lodging during his or her period of study, in some cases in return for doing a defined job....

 at Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

, on 16 February 1814, but did not come into residence until the following year. He won the Craven scholarship in 1817, and the Porson prize for Greek verse in 1818, and he was admitted scholar of Trinity on 3 April of the latter year. Although his weak mathematics rendered his passing the examination for the degree of B.A. in 1819 difficult, he was elected for his classical attainments to a fellowship at his college in 1820. He maintained close relations with Praed and Moultrie, and formed a friendship with Derwent Coleridge

Derwent Coleridge

Derwent Coleridge , third child of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was a distinguished English scholar and author.-Early life:Derwent Coleridge was born at Keswick, Cumberland, 14 Sept. 1800 . He was sent with his brother Hartley to be educated at a small school near Ambleside...

.

In 1824 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Greek professorship at Cambridge. He made no other effort to engage in educational work. While a fellow of Trinity he lived in seclusion in his college rooms, reading desultorily.

As an undergraduate Walker had religious doubts, and had applied for guidance to William Wilberforce

William Wilberforce

William Wilberforce was a British politician, a philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming the independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire...

. During 1818–19 Wilberforce wrote him letters in which he endeavoured to confirm his beliefs. The influence of Charles Simeon

Charles Simeon

Charles Simeon , was an English evangelical clergyman.He was born at Reading, Berkshire and educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge. In 1782 he became fellow of King's College, and took orders, receiving the living of Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, in the following year...

 helped him for a time; but he deemed himself disqualified by his sceptical views regarding eternal punishment from taking holy orders

Holy Orders

The term Holy Orders is used by many Christian churches to refer to ordination or to those individuals ordained for a special role or ministry....

. As a consequence he resigned his fellowship in 1829.

Without income, he fell into debt. His friend Praed came to his assistance in 1830, and, after paying his debts, settled on him an income for life of £52 a year; Trinity College added £20. Walker moved to London in 1831, lodging at first in Bloomsbury

Bloomsbury

-Places:* Bloomsbury is an area in central London.* Bloomsbury , related local government unit* Bloomsbury, New Jersey, New Jersey, USA* Bloomsbury , listed on the NRHP in Maryland...

, and then in the neighbourhood of St. James's Street. He lived entirely alone, and suffered from mental illness. He neglected himself, and social life.

He died of the stone

The Stone

The Stone is a not-for-profit experimental music performance space located in the Alphabet City neighborhood in New York City. It was founded in April 2005 by musician John Zorn, who serves as the artistic director.-Location:...

 at his lodging, a single room on the top floor of 41 St. James's Place, on 15 October 1846. He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery

Kensal Green Cemetery

Kensal Green Cemetery is a cemetery in Kensal Green, in the west of London, England. It was immortalised in the lines of G. K. Chesterton's poem The Rolling English Road from his book The Flying Inn: "For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen; Before we go to Paradise by way of...

. On the tomb were engraved some lines from his friend Moultrie's poem The Dream of Life.

Works

In 1813, when he was seventeen, he published by subscription the first four books of an epic in a volume entitled ‘Gustavus Vasa, and other Poems.’ After leaving school, he made some contributions to the Etonian, which Praed edited. In 1815 he published ‘The Heroes of Waterloo: an Ode,’ as well as translations of ‘Poems from the Danish, selected by Andreas Andersen Feldborg.’ In 1816 appeared another ode by Walker, ‘The Appeal of Poland.’

He contributed philological essays to the Classical Journal, and both verse and prose to Charles Knight

Charles Knight (publisher)

Charles Knight was an English publisher and author.-Early life:The son of a bookseller and printer at Windsor, he was apprenticed to his father...

's Quarterly Magazine. In 1823 he prepared for publication John Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

's newly-discovered treatise De Ecclesia Christiana, of which Charles Richard Sumner

Charles Richard Sumner

Charles Richard Sumner Charles Richard Sumner Charles Richard Sumner (22 November 1790 - 15 August 1874, born at Kenilworth, was an English bishop.-Life:Sumner was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge and graduated BA in 1814, MA in 1817. Later on he was ordained deacon and priest...

, then librarian at Windsor, was the ostensible editor. In 1828 he edited for Knight a Corpus Poetarum Latinorum (other editions 1848 and 1854).

John Moultrie published in 1852 a collection of his letters and poems, as ‘The Poetical Remains of William Sidney Walker, formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, with a Memoir of the Author.’

Walker left voluminous manuscripts, examined by William Nanson Lettsom

William Nanson Lettsom

William Nanson Lettsom was an English man of letters. He was the son of John Miers Lettsom, M.D. , by Rachel, daughter of William Nanson, born 4 February 1796. He passed from Eton College to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1818 and M.A...

, who published in 1854 ‘Shakespeare's Versification, and its Apparent Irregularities explained by Examples from Early and Late English Writers.’ This volume was printed at the expense of George Crawshay, who made Walker's acquaintance just before he left Cambridge; it reached a second edition in 1857, and a third in 1859. There followed in 1860, in three volumes, which Lettsom also edited, ‘A Critical Examination of the Text of Shakespeare, with Remarks on his Language and that of his Contemporaries, together with Notes on his Plays and Poems.’ Walker's two Shakespearean works mainly deal with minute points of Shakespearean prosody

Prosody (linguistics)

In linguistics, prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance ; the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of...

 and syntax

Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

, but with a wealth of illustrative quotation from Elizabethan literature.