PREFACE

TO A

DIALOGUE CONCERNING WOMEN,

BEING

A DEFENCE OF THE SEX,

ADDRESSED TO EUGENIA, BY WILLIAM WALSH, ESQ.

8vo, 1691.

VOL. XVIII.

A

PREFACE

ΤΟ

A DIALOGUE CONCERNING WOMEN.

THE author of this Dialogue, as Dr. Johnson has observed, was more remarkable for his familiarity with men of genius, than for any productions of his own. He was the son of Joseph Walsh of Abberley, in Worcestershire, and was born to an easy fortune. This last circumstance may have contributed something to the extreme respect in which he seems to have been held by the most accomplished of his age. Dryden, in the Postscript to "Virgil," calls Walsh the best critic of the English. nation; and, in the following Preface, he is profuse in his commendation. But though these praises may have exceeded the measure of Walsh's desert, posterity owe a grateful remembrance to him, who, though a staunch Whig, respected and befriended Dryden in age and adversity, and who encouraged the juvenile essays of Pope, by foretelling his future eminence. Walsh's own Poems and Essays entitle him to respectable rank among the minor poets. His Essay on the Pastorals of Virgil, which he contributed to our author's version, may be found vol. xiii. p. 328.

The "Dialogue concerning Women," contains a critical disquisition upon the virtues and foibles of the sex. But though

the pleasantry be stale, and the learning pedantic, it seems to have excited some attention when published; perhaps because, as an angry defender of the ladies observes,

"To begin with Dryden's dreadful name, Should mark out something of no common fame."

I cannot omit remarking, that the Dialogue concludes with a profuse panegyric, upon a theme not very congenial to Dryden's

4

PREFACE TO A DIALOGUE CONCERNING WOMEN.

political feelings, the character of Queen Mary. [It is perhaps worth observing that this pretty piece of flattery contains a stroke or two of good-natured malice in the French sense, to prevent its being insipid. Such, for instance, is the " copy of his style." See the additional letters first published by Mr. Bell for more on Walsh.-ED.]