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THE
WORKS
OF
JOHN DRYDEN,
NOW FIRST COLLECTED
IN EIGHTEEN VOLUMES.
ILLUSTRATED
WITH NOTES,
HISTORICAL, CRITICAL, AND EXPLANATORY,
AND
A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR,
BY
WALTER SCOTT, Esq.
VOL. XVIII.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR WILLIAM MILLER, ALBEMARLE STREET,
BY JAMES BALLANTYNE AND CO. EDINBURGH.
1808.
CONTENTS
OF
VOLUME EIGHTEENTH.
| PAGE. | |
| Preface to a Dialogue concerning Women; being a Defence of the Sex, | 1 |
| Character of M. St Evremont, | 9 |
| The Character of Polybius, | 17 |
| The Life of Lucian, | 53 |
| Dryden’s Letters, | 83 |
| Appendix, | 183 |
| Index, | i |
1
PREFACE
TO
A DIALOGUE CONCERNING WOMEN;
BEING
A DEFENCE OF THE SEX,
ADDRESSED TO EUGENIA, BY WILLIAM WALSH, ESQ.
8VO, 1691.
2
3
PREFACE
TO
A DIALOGUE CONCERNING WOMEN.
The author of this Dialogue, as Dr Johnson has observed, wasmore remarkable for his familiarity with men of genius, than forany productions of his own. He was the son of Joseph Walsh ofAbberley, in Worcestershire, and was born to an easy fortune.This last circumstance may have contributed something to the extremerespect in which he seems to have been held by the mostaccomplished of his age. Dryden, in the Postscript to “Virgil,”calls Walsh the best critic of the English nation; and, in the followingPreface, he is profuse in his commendation. But though thesepraises may have exceeded the measure of Walsh’s desert, posterityowe a grateful remembrance to him, who, though a staunchWhig, respected and befriended Dryden in age and adversity, andwho encouraged the juvenile essays of Pope, by foretelling his futureeminence. Walsh’s own Poems and Essays entitle him to respectablerank among the minor poets. His Essay on the Pastoralsof Virgil, which he contributed to our author’s version, maybe found Vol. XIII. p. 345.
The “Dialogue concerning Women,” contains a critical disquisitionupon the virtues and foibles of the sex. But though thepleasantry be stale, and the learning pedant