(1731? - 1821), author and inventor, s. of a woollen manufacturer of Patterdale, Westmor.; in London from 1778.
1787 [dep. England 21 Aug.] Venice (15 - 17 Sep.), Loreto (22 Sep.), Rome ( - 9 Oct.), Siena, Florence, Milan, Turin (21 Oct.) [England 10 Nov.]
Walker's boundless energy and curiosity were amply demonstrated in his six-week tour of Italy. He visited all the principal cities (less Naples and Genoa), and described his journey in his Ideas suggested on the Spot in a Late Excursion through Flanders, Germany, France, and Italy [1790]. Having no Italian he conversed throughout his tour in Latin. In Venice he claimed to have visited twenty churches in a morning, and his commentaries ranged over Palladian architecture, peasant costume, farm implements, geology and opera. Although he admitted lacking the taste to appreciate the fine arts, he made a number of observations: St Peter's, for example, was 'a piece of gingerbread work' when compared with the Baths of Diocletian or the Pantheon. Not surprisingly on such a hectic itinerary, he commented in Rome that he 'began to grow sick of palaces, pictures, and statues - the numbers of the last we have seen in some hundreds of these beautiful churches makes one indifferent to all degrees of excellence'. But he was particularly moved by Leonardo's manuscripts in the Ambrosian Library at Milan: 'a prodigious folio, with mathematical, mechanical, and optical sketches', which he did not have sufficient time to study, but enough to 'trace much genius, invention, and embrio conceptions, that might have rose to something of consequence': he also noticed that the few subjects from natural history were 'in bad order'. Walker had travelled with his son and an unnamed friend; his book is much given to 'idle narrative', but the author pleads for indulgence, assuring his critics that it was not worth their while 'to discharge Artillery upon such a Fly'.