Poet, critic and scholar, born in Worcestershire in 1663. A member of several parliaments, and a gentleman of the horse under the Duke of Somerset. Chiefly remembered as the friend of Dryden and Pope. Works: “The Golden Age Restored;” “Eugenia, a Defence of Women;” “Esculapius: or, the Hospital of Fools;” “A Collection of Letters, Amorous and Gallant.” Life: in Johnson’s “Lives of the English Poets.”

Personal

  About fifteen, I got acquainted with Mr. Walsh. He used to encourage me much, and used to tell me, that there was one way left of excelling: for though we had several great poets, we never had any one great poet that was correct; and he desired me to make that my study and aim.

General

  William Walsh, of Abberley, Esq., who has so long honoured me with his friendship, and who, without flattery, is the best critic of our nation.

	To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known,
	And every author’s merit but his own.
	Such lute was Walsh—the Muse’s judge and friend,
	Who justly knew to blame or to commend;
	To failings mild, but zealous for desert;
	The clearest head and the sincerest heart.

  He is known more by his familiarity with greater men, than by any thing done or written by himself…. In his “Golden Age Restored,” there was something of humour, while the facts were recent; but it now strikes no longer. In his imitation of Horace, the first stanzas are happily turned; and in all his writings there are pleasing passages. He has, however, more elegance than vigour, and seldom rises higher than to be pretty.

  Mr. Walsh’s other pieces consist chiefly of Elegies, Epitaphs, Odes, and Songs; they are elegant, tho’ not great, and he seems to have had a well cultivated, tho’ not a very extensive, understanding. Dryden and Pope have given their sanction in his favour, to whom he was personally known, a circumstance greatly to his advantage, for had there been no personal friendship, we have reason to believe, their encomiums would have been less lavish; at least his works do not carry so high an idea of him, as they have done.

  Except his encouragement of the early genius of Pope, he seems to have no claim to remembrance.

  The qualities which Pope attributes to the person of Walsh are found in his writings, which have certainly been unduly neglected. The Propertius of the Restoration, he alone among the writers of his age understood the passion of love in an honourable and chivalric sense. Dryden, however, was almost the only person who perceived the moral beauty of Walsh’s verse, and certainly was alone in praising his very remarkable “Defence of the Fair Sex,” in which the young poet, in an age given up to selfish gallantry, recommended the honourable equality of the sexes and the views now understood as the extension of women’s rights. He possessed little versatility, but much sweetness in the use of the heroic measure, and a certain delicate insight into emotion. His poem entitled “Jealousy” cannot be quoted here; but it is by far the most powerful of his productions, and a marvellously true picture of a heart tossed in an agony of jealousy and love. In studying the versification of Pope, the influence of Walsh upon the style of the younger and greater man should not be overlooked, and there will be found in Walsh couplets such as this—

	“Embalmed in verse, through distant times they come,
	Preserved, like bees within an amber tomb.”

which Pope did not disdain to re-work on his own anvil into brighter shapes. It should be noted that Walsh is the author of the only sonnet written in English between Milton’s, in 1658, and Warton’s, about 1750.

  If we search amongst contemporary authorities to discover who he was, we at last come upon his works described in the “Rambler” as “pages of inanity.”

  His own writings are insignificant…. Walsh’s chief title to fame lies in his connection with Pope, and in the tributes from the latter that resulted from it.