Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 097.djvu/132

122 W. N. Lettsom, many eager expectants are on the alert. Mr. Moultrie tells us that a very large mass of Walker's miscellaneous criticism is still waiting for an editor, and goes so far as to intimate that his friends are justified in anticipating in his behalf, the eventual reputation of a Hermann or a Porson in English literature. When the time came for him to resign his Fellowship, on conscientious scruples, a dreary lot remained; his pen was his only bread-winner, and its swiftest, strongest service realised but a hard crust. Mental derangement crippled his powers. His high-hearted friend, W. Mackworth rraed, generously and most delicately redeemed him from utter destitution. His days were now passed chiefly in London, in squalid lodgings; though at intervals he re-visited Cambridge, Eton, Rugby, and other abodes of his past friendships and present friends. His tormenting consciousness of his physical peculiarities kept him within doors for weeks together, and hallucinations of painful intensity and variety preyed on his every-day life. Like Socrates, he had his demon, but one of more baleful presence. A distressing bodily malady attacked him, and, being neglected, made irreparable inroads on his constitution. His days grew darker and darker unto the perfect night. Just before the last scene of all, a brief though right pleasant solace cheered him, in the shape of a handsome pecuniary donation, designed for him by a Mr. Crawshay. This was in 1846. But before the whole of the proposed change in his circumstances could be effected—a principle feature in which was his removal to the house of his benefactor—William Sidney Walker was, as we say, no more. As his life, so his death was that of one disquieted and unresting—of one tossed with tempests, and not comforted. For he wasted away, and died in the dank cell of Doubting Castle, if not by the club of Giant Despair himself.

Scepticism was in many respects the bane of his existence—the head and front of his offending. And in him we have one more instance of the possibility, by many still doubted, if not denied, of the co-existence of a strong sceptical tendency with whatsoever is lovely and of good report in the moral life—with purity of heart, and even a pervading presence of devout religious principle. His biographer, a man of undisputed orthodoxy, observes that Walker, "like some of the most distinguished heresiarchs of the present day, combined with a highly sensitive conscience, and with deep and pure religious affections, a morbidly sceptical understanding." Whatever laxity of creed may have been his, it produced "no external change of conduct." His morals as a free-thinker were not in any wise those of a free-liver. "Never was scepticism more involuntary," and never, we are assured, would a cordial conviction of the orthodox system have been more gratefully welcomed than by this outcast from its pale. Saith Sir Thomas Browne, "There are, as in philosophy so in divinity, sturdy doubts, and boisterous objections, wherewith the unhappiness of our knowledge too nearly acquainteth us. More of these hath no man known than myself. … It is impossible that, either in the discourse of man, or in the infallible voice of God, to the weakness of our apprehensions there should not appear irregularities, contradictions, and antinomies: myself could show a catalogue of doubts, never yet imagined nor questioned, as I know, which are not resolved at the first hearing; not fantastic queries or objections of air; for I cannot