Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/516

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Walker
502
Walker

the public trust and state life insurance offices have flourished; women's franchise, proposed by him in 1887, became law in 1893; the conservation of the New Zealand forests, which he unsuccessfully prayed for, is now a recognised necessity; the extension of British influence in the South Seas, advocated by him in 1874, then dismissed as a dream by the colonists, and which, when he attempted it at Samoa in 1886, was thwarted by the colonial office, was a scheme the scouting of which most Australasians now regret. Vogel's imperialism, as set out in many magazine and newspaper articles, though vague and dreamy, was in effect an anticipation of the views of a subsequently popular school. Curious mixture as he was of visionary and financier, his visions were often tinctured with realism, just as his finance was inspired by imagination. Industrious as well as original in administration, he was a persuasive and copious rather than a brilliant or incisive talker and speaker. He wrote clearly and easily on political matters, though his solitary novel, ‘Anno Domini 2000, or Woman's Destiny,’ written late in life, has little merit. His other publications were: ‘Great Britain and her Colonies’ (London, 1865, 8vo) and ‘New Zealand and the South Sea Islands’ (London, 1878). He also edited the ‘Official Handbook of New Zealand’ for 1875.

Vogel, who was a Jew of the Ashkenazi rite, married, on 19 March 1867, Mary, daughter of William Henry Clayton, colonial architect, New Zealand, and left two sons and a daughter. Another son was killed when cut off with Major Wilson's force by the Matabele in 1894.

[Gisborne's New Zealand Rulers and Statesmen (1840-97), 2nd edit. London, 1897; Rusden's History of New Zealand, 2nd edit. Melbourne. 1896; Anthony Trollope's Australia and New Zealand, London, 1873; Times, Daily Telegraph, Daily News, 14 March 1899; Jewish Chronicle, 16 March 1899; Reeves's Long White Cloud, London, 1898; Burke's Colonial Gentry, ii. 518.]

W

WALKER, JOHN (1692?–1741), a Cambridge scholar and coadjutor of Bentley in his proposed edition of the Græco-Latin Testament, was son of Thomas Walker of Huddersfield, and was educated, like Bentley, at Wakefield school, where he was under Edward Clarke. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a pensioner on 24 May 1710, at the age of seventeen. He was Craven scholar in 1712. He graduated B.A. in 1713, and was elected minor fellow on 28 Sept. 1716 (see E. Rud, Diary, ed. Luard, Cambridge, 1860). He took his M.A., and was elected socius major and sublector tertius in 1717.

Walker was amiable and attractive, and ready to work with others, as well as learned. The firstfruits of his studies that have come down to us are emendations on Cicero, ‘De Natura Deorum,’ printed at the end of the edition of Dr. John Davies, master of Queens' College, in 1718, and honourably mentioned in the preface. They are mostly bold or ingenious conjectures, after the manner of Bentley, and show a wide range of reading. Pearce also incorporated some notes of Walker's in his edition of the ‘De Officiis’ in 1745 (see p. xiv). While working for the New Testament he also helped Bentley with various readings of manuscripts of Suetonius and Cicero's ‘Tusculans.’ For his own part he was preparing an edition of Arnobius, and left large materials for the purpose to Dr. Richard Mead [q. v.] One valuable volume of this collection now belongs to Professor J. E. B. Mayor of Cambridge, and contains notes and conjectures well worthy of attention, as well as collations of the Paris and Antwerp manuscripts, the second of which is a copy from the first, and was then at Brussels.

In the summer or autumn of 1719 he went to Paris, as Bentley's emissary, for the purpose of collecting various readings for the proposed Græco-Latin New Testament, which had been projected by Bentley about 1716. J. J. Wetstein had been first employed; but, after Wetstein's return to Switzerland, Bentley was naturally glad to have one of his own scholars as his confidential assistant. Walker was kindly received at Paris, especially by the Benedictines, and, after some suspicion of a clash of literary interests between their project for an edition of the ‘Versio Itala’ and Bentley's undertaking, he was aided by them in his work. Thuillier, Sabatier, Mopinot, and Montfaucon were his chief friends, and the latter regarded him as a son. He remained in Paris apparently nearly a year. Bentley thus writes of him at the end of his ‘Proposals,’ published in 1720: ‘The work will be put in the press as soon as money is contributed to support the charge of the impression. . . .