Go, little book, and to the world impart
  The faithful image of an amorous heart;
  Those who love’s dear deluding pains have known,
  May in my fatal sorrows read their own: 
  Those who have lived from all its torments free,
  May find the things they never, felt by me. 
  Perhaps advis’d avoid the gilded bait,
  And warn’d by my example shun my fate. 
  Whilst with calm joy, safe landed on the coast
  I view the waves, on which I once was tost. 
  Love is a medley of endearments, jars,
  Suspicions, quarrels, reconcilements, wars;
  Then peace again.  O would it not be best,
  To chase the fatal poison from our breast? 
  But since, so few can live from passion free,
  Happy the man, and only happy he,
  Who with such lucky stars begins his love,
  That his cool judgment does his choice approve. 
  Ill grounded passions quickly wear away;
  What’s built upon esteem can ne’er decay.

Mr. Walsh was of an amorous complexion, and in one of his letters mentions three of his amours, in pretty singular terms.  ’I valued (says he) one mistress, after I left loving her; I loved another after I left valuing her; I love and value the third, after having lost all hopes of her; and according to the course of my passions, I should love the next after having obtained her.  However, from this time forward, upon what follies soever you fall, be pleased, for my sake, to spare those of love; being very well satisfied there is not one folly of that kind (excepting marriage) which I have not already committed.  I have been, without raillery, in love with the beauty of a woman whom I have never seen; with the wit of one whom I never heard speak, nor seen any thing she has written, and with the heroic virtues of a woman, without knowing any one action of her, that could make me think; she had any; Cupid will have it so, and what can weak mortals do against so potent a god?’ Such were the sentiments of our author when he was about 30 years of age.

Queen Anne constituted Mr. Walsh her master of the horse.  On what account this place, in particular, was allotted him, we know not; but, with regard to his literary abilities, Mr. Dryden in his postscript to his translation of Virgil, has asserted, that Mr. Walsh was the best critic then living; and Mr. Pope, speaking of our author, thus concludes his Essay on Criticism, viz.

  To him, the wit of Greece, and Rome was known,
  And ev’ry author’s merit, but his own. 
  Such late was Walsh:  the muses 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.