In the year 1714 the public were obliged with a small posthumous piece of Mr. Walsh’s, entitled AEsculapius, or the Hospital of Fools, in imitation of Lucian.  There is printed amongst.  Mr. Walsh’s other performances, in a volume of the Minor Poets, an Essay on Pastoral Poetry, with a Short Defence of Virgil, against some of the reflexions of M. Fontenelle.  That critic had censured Virgil for writing his pastorals in a too courtly stile, which, he says, is not proper for the Doric Muse; but Mr. Walsh has very judiciously shewn, that the Shepherds in Virgil’s time, were held in greater estimation, and were persons of a much superior figure to what they are now.  We are too apt to figure the ancient countrymen like our own, leading a painful life in poverty, and contempt, without wit, or courage, or education; but men had quite different notions of these things for the first four thousand years of the world.  Health and strength were then more in esteem, than the refinements of pleasure, and it was accounted, more honourable to till the ground, and keep a flock of sheep, than to dissolve in wantonness, and effeminating sloth.

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.  Mr. Walsh died about the year 1710.

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THOMAS BETTERTON.

(Written by R.S.[1])

Almost every circumstance relating to the life of this celebrated actor, is exposed to dispute, and his manner of first coming on the stage, as well as the action of his younger years have been controverted.  He was son of Mr. Betterton, undercook to king Charles the Ist, and was born in Tothill-street Westminster, some time in the year 1635.  Having received the rudiments of a genteel education, and discovering a great propensity to books, it was once proposed he should have been educated to some learned profession; but the violence and confusion of the times putting this out of the power of his family, he was at his own request bound apprentice to a bookseller, one Mr. Holden, a man of some eminence, and then happy in the friendship of Sir William Davenant.  In the year 1656 it is probable Mr. Betterton made his first appearance on the stage, under the direction of Sir William, at the Opera-house in Charter-house-yard.  It is said, that going frequently to the stage about his mailer’s business, gave Betterton the first notion of it, who shewed such indications of a theatrical genius, that Sir William readily accepted him as a