_, and he will hear of
something greatly to his advantage.' But alas! Walker descended to
Hades, and most ingloriously as _we_ contend, before _Blackwood_ had
dawned upon a benighted earth. We differ therefore by an inexpressible
difference from Wordsworth's estimate of this old fellow. And we close
our account of him by citing two little sallies from his only known
literary productions, viz., two letters, one to a friend, and the other
to the Archbishop of York. In the first of these he introduces a child
of his own under the following flourish of rhetoric, viz., as 'a pledge
of conjugal endearment.' We doubt if his correspondent ever read such a
bit of sentiment before. In the other letter, addressed to the
Metropolitan of the province, Walker has the assurance to say that he
trusts the young man, his son (_not_ the aforesaid cub, the pledge of
conjugal endearment) will never disgrace the _paternal_ example, _i.e._,
Walker's example. Pretty strong _that_! And, if exegetically handled, it
must mean that Walker, junr., is to continue spinning and spelling, as
also once a week reading the _Town and Country Magazine_, all the days
of his life. Oh, Walker, you're a very sad fellow! And the only excuse
for you is, that, like most of your brethren in that mountainous nook of
England, so beautiful but so poor, you never saw the academic bowers of
either Oxford or Cambridge.

Both in prose and verse, much prose and a short allowance of verse, has
Wordsworth celebrated this man, and he has held him aloft like the
saintly Herbert[10] as a shining model of a rural priest. We are glad,
therefore, for Wordsworth's sake, that no judge from the Consistorial
Court ever happened to meet with Walker when trudging over the Furness
Fells to Ulverston with a _long_ cwt. (120 lb. avoirdupois) of wool on
his back, a thing which he did in all weathers. The wool would have been
condemned as a good prize, and we much fear that Walker's gown would
have been stripped over his head; which is a sad catastrophe for a
pattern priest. Mr. John Coleridge came much nearer to Chaucer's model
of a _Parish_ Priest, whilst at the same time he did honour to the
Academic standard of such a priest. He loved his poor parishioners as
children confided to his pastoral care, but he also loved his library.
But, on the other hand, as to Walker, if ever _he_ were seen burning the
midnight oil, it was not in a gentleman's study--it was in a horrid
garret or cock-loft