THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

(_Library of Entertaining Knowledge_, vol. viii.)


The concluding portion of this volume has lately appeared, and is entitled
to equal commendation with its predecessors. Among the most important of
the anecdotical lives are, Roger Bacon, Herschel, Watt, and
Arkwright--names nearly and dearly allied with the triumphs of science in
this country. In Arkwright's Memoir are some important as well as
interesting particulars of the Cotton Manufacture in England. Our
quotation is, however, from another portion of the volume, illustrating,
as we conceive it does, a species of character which can scarcely be
estimated in too amiable a light.

The wonderful Robert Walker, as he is still called in the district of the
country where he resided, was curate of Seathwaite in Cumberland during
the greater part of last century. The fullest account that has appeared of
Mr. Walker is that given, in the notes to his series of sonnets entitled
"The River Duddon," by Mr. Wordsworth, in whose poem of the Excursion the
worthy clergyman is also noticed with the commendations due to his
singular virtues. From this memoir it appears that Walker was born in the
parish of Seathwaite in 1709; that being of delicate constitution, it was
determined by his parents, whose youngest child he was, to breed him a
scholar; and that accordingly he was taught the elements of reading,