PREFACE TO A DIALOGUE CONCERNING WOMEN; BEING A DEFENCE OF THE SEX, ADDRESSED TO EUGENIA, BY WILLIAM WALSH, ESQ. PREFACE TO 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. 345. 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 political feelings, the character of Queen Mary. PREFACE ΤΟ WALSH'S DIALOGUE CONCERNING WOMEN. THE perusal of this Dialogue, in defence of the fair sex, written by a gentleman of my acquaintance, much surprised me; for it was not easy for me to imagine, that one so young * could have treated so nice a subject with so much judgment. It is true, I was not ignorant, that he was naturally ingenious, and that he had improved himself by travelling; and from thence I might reasonably have expected that air of gallantry, which is so visibly diffused through the body of the work, and is indeed the soul that animates all things of this nature; but so much variety of reading, both in ancient and modern authors, such digestion of that reading, so much justness of thought, that it leaves + Mr Walsh was born in 1663, and in 1691 must have been twenty-eight years old. Still he was but a youth in the eyes of Dryden, who was now advanced in life. |