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Mr. LEWIS THEOBALD.
This gentleman was born at Sittingburn in Kent, of which place his father, Mr. Peter Theobald, was an eminent attorney. His grammatical learning he received chiefly under the revd. Mr. Ellis, at Isleworth in Middlesex, and afterwards applied himself to the study and practice of the law: but finding that study too tedious and irksome for his genius, he quitted it for the profession of poetry. He engaged in a paper called the Censor, published in Mill's Weekly Journal; and by delivering his opinion with two little reserve, concerning some eminent wits, he exposed himself to their lashes, and resentment. Upon the publication of Pope's Homer, he praised it in the most extravagant terms of admiration; but afterwards thought proper to retract his opinion, for reasons we cannot guess, and abused the very performance he had before hyperbollically praised.
Mr. Pope at first made Mr. Theobald the hero of his Dunciad, but afterwards, for reasons best known to himself, he thought proper to disrobe him of that dignity, and bestow it upon another: with what propriety we shall not take upon us to determine, but refer the reader to Mr. Cibber's two letters to Mr. Pope. He was made hero of the poem, the annotator informs us, because no better was to be had. In the first book of the Dunciad, Mr. Theobald, or Tibbald, as he is there called, is thus stigmatised,
—Dullness her image full exprest,
But chief in Tibbald's monster-breeding breast;
Sees Gods with Daemons in strange league engage,
And Earth, and heav'n, and hell her battles wage;
She eyed the bard, where supperless he sate,
And pin'd unconscious of his rising fate;
Studious he sate, with all his books around,
Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound!
Plung'd for his sense, but found no bottom there;
Then writ, and flounder'd on, in meer despair.
He roll'd his eyes, that witness'd huge dismay,
Where yet unpawn'd much learned lumber lay.
He describes Mr. Theobald as making the following address to Dulness.
—For thee
Old puns restore, lost blunders nicely seek,
And crucify poor Shakespear once a-week.
For thee I dim these eyes, and stuff this head,
With all such reading as was never read;
For thee, supplying in the worst of days,
Notes to dull books, and prologues to dull plays;
For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,
And write about it, goddess, and about it;
So spins the silk-worm small its slender store,
And labours till it clouds itself all o'er.
In the year 1726 Mr. Theobald published a piece in octavo, called Shakespear Restored: Of this it is said, he was so vain as to aver, in one of Mist's Journals, June the 8th, 'That to expose any errors in it was impracticable;' and in another, April the 27th, 'That whatever care might for the future be taken, either by Mr. Pope, or any other assistants, he would give above five-hundred emendations, that would escape them all.'
During two whole years, while Mr. Pope was preparing his edition, he published advertisements, requesting assistance, and promising satisfaction to any who would contribute to its greater perfection. But this restorer, who was at that time solliciting favours of him, by letters, did wholly conceal that he had any such design till after its publication; which he owned in the Daily Journal of November 26, 1728: and then an outcry was made, that Mr. Pope had joined with the bookseller to raise an extravagant subscription; in which he had no share, of which he had no knowledge, and against which he had publickly advertised in his own proposals for Homer.
Mr. Theobald was not only thus obnoxious to the resentment of Pope, but we find him waging war with Mr. Dennis, who treated him with more roughness, though with less satire. Mr. Theobald in the Censor, Vol. II. No. XXXIII. calls Mr. Dennis by the name of Furius. 'The modern Furius (says he) is to be looked upon as more the object of pity, than that which he daily provokes, laughter, and contempt. Did we really know how much this poor man suffers by being contradicted, or which is the same thing in effect, by hearing another praised; we should in compassion sometimes attend to him with a silent nod, and let him go away with the triumphs of his ill-nature. Poor Furius, where any of his cotemporaries are spoken well of, quitting the ground of the present dispute, steps back a thousand years, to call in the succour of the antients. His very panegyric is spiteful, and he uses it for the same reason as some ladies do their commendations of a dead beauty, who never would have had their good word; but that a living one happened to be mentioned in their company. His applause is not the tribute of his heart, but the sacrifice of his revenge.'