Gilbert Walmisley

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Gilbert Walmisley or Walmesley[1] (1680–1751) was an English barrister, known as a friend of Samuel Johnson.

Life

Walmisley was descended from an ancient family in

called to the bar at the Inner Temple
, and became registrar of the ecclesiastical court of Lichfield. He was probably a near relative of William Walmisley, prebendary of Lichfield from 1718 to 1720, and dean from 1720 to 1730.

Walmisley, ″the most able scholar and the finest

whig with all the virulence and malevolence of his party,″ but polite and learned, so that Johnson could not name ″a man of equal knowledge,″ and the benefit of this intercourse remained to him throughout life. He endeavoured in 1735 to procure for Johnson the mastership of a school at Solihull, near Warwick, but without success. A tribute to his memory was paid by Johnson in his ″Life″ of Edmund Smith.[2]

Walmisley died at Lichfield on 3 August 1751, and his widow died on 11 November 1786, aged 77. Both are buried in a vault near the south side of the west door in Lichfield Cathedral.

Legacy

A poetical epitaph by

Gentleman's Magazine.[3]
It is said that Johnson promised to write an epitaph for him, but procrastinated until it was too late. A prose inscription to Walmisley's memory is on the south side of the west door of Lichfield Cathedral. Johnson's eulogy from his Life of Smith was also inscribed on an adjoining monument.

Walmisley's library was sold by Thomas Osborne of Gray's Inn in 1756. The Latin translation of John Byrom's verses, beginning "My time, O ye muses", printed in the Gentleman's Magazine (1745, pp. 102–3) as by G. Walmsley of "Sid. Coll. Camb.", and sometimes attributed to Gilbert Walmisley, is now thought by Galfridus Walmsley, B.A. from that college in 1746. Some correspondence between Garrick and Johnson and Walmisley was printed in Garrick's Private Correspondence,[4] and in Johnson's Letters, ed. Hill.[5]

References

  1. ^ Boswell, James. The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. (Routledge's Standard Library ed.). George Routledge and Sons. p. 12.
  2. Lives of the Poets
    , ed. Cunningham, ii. 57–8)
  3. ^ 1785, i. 166
  4. ^ i. 9–12, 44–5
  5. ^ i. 83 sq.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Walmisley, Gilbert". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

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