Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/125

 poems, are perfectly worthless. On 11 April 1715 he began in ‘Mist's Journal’ ‘The Censor,’ a series of short essays on the model of the ‘Spectator,’ which appeared three times a week, ceasing with the thirtieth number on 17 June. Eighteen months afterwards they were resumed (1 Jan. 1717) as an independent publication running on to ninety-six numbers. When they were discontinued later in the same year, they were collected and published in three duodecimo volumes. By some remarks (see vol. ii. No. xxxiii.) which he had made on John Dennis he brought himself into collision with that formidable critic, who afterwards described him as ‘a notorious idiot, one hight Whachum, who, from an under spurleather to the law, is become an understrapper to the playhouse’ (, Remarks on Pope's Homer).

Meanwhile Theobald had been engaged in other works. In 1715 appeared his tragedy, ‘The Perfidious Brother,’ which became the subject of a scandal reflecting very seriously on Theobald's honesty. It seems that Henry Meystayer, a watchmaker in the city, had submitted to Theobald the rough material of this play, requesting him to adapt it for the stage. The needful alterations involved the complete recasting and rewriting of the piece, costing Theobald, according to his own account, four months' labour. As he had ‘created it anew,’ he thought he was entitled to bring it out as his own work and to take the credit of it; and this he did. But as soon as the play was produced Meystayer claimed it as his own, and in the following year published what he asserted was his own version, with an ironical dedication to the alleged plagiarist. A comparison of the two shows that they are identical in plot and very often in expression. But as Meystayer's version succeeded Theobald's, it is of course impossible to settle the relative honesty or dishonesty of the one man or of the other. The fact that Theobald did not carry out his threat of publishing Meystayer's original manuscript is not a presumption in his favour.

His next performances were a translation of the first book of the ‘Odyssey,’ with notes (1716); a prose romance founded on Corneille's tragi-comedy ‘Antiochus,’ entitled ‘The Loves of Antiochus and Stratonice;’ and an opera in one act, ‘Pan and Syrinx,’ both of which appeared in 1717. These were succeeded in 1718 by ‘The Lady's Triumph,’ a dramatic opera, and by ‘Decius and Paulina,’ a masque, both performed at Lincoln's Inn. In 1719 he published a ‘Memoir of Sir Walter Raleigh’ which is of no importance. In 1720 his adaptation of Shakespeare's ‘Richard II,’ though it procured for him a banknote for a hundred pounds ‘enclosed in an Egyptian pebble snuffbox’ from Lord Orrery, proved that the most exquisite of verbal critics may be the most wretched of dramatic artists. Next year he led off a poetical miscellany, ‘The Grove,’ published by William Meres [see under ], with a vapid and commonplace poetical version of the ‘Hero and Leander’ of the pseudo-Musæus. Nor can anything be said in favour of his pantomimes, ‘The Rape of Proserpine,’ or his ‘Harlequin a Sorcerer’ (1725), or his ‘Vocal Parts of an Entertainment, Apollo and Daphne’ (1726). He seems to have materially aided his friend John Rich [q. v.], the manager of Drury Lane, in establishing the popularity of his novel pantomimic entertainments.

But Theobald was about to appear in a new character. In March 1725 Pope gave to the world his edition of Shakespeare—a task for which he was ill qualified. But what Pope lacked Theobald possessed, and early in 1726 appeared in a substantial quarto volume ‘Shakespeare Restored, or a Specimen of the many errors as well Committed as Unamended by Mr. Pope in his late edition of this poet: designed not only to correct the said Edition, but to restore the true Reading of Shakespeare in all the Editions ever published. By Mr. Theobald.’ It was dedicated to John Rich, the manager, who on the 24th of the following May gave Theobald a benefit (, Account of the English Stage, iii. 188). In the preface Pope is treated personally with the greatest respect. But Theobald asserted that his veneration for Shakespeare had induced him to assume a task which Pope ‘seems purposely, I was going to say, with too nice a scruple to have declined.’ In the body of the work he confines himself to animadversions on ‘Hamlet,’ but in an appendix of some forty-four closely printed pages in small type he deals similarly with portions of most of the other plays. This work not only exposed the incapacity of Pope as an editor, but gave conclusive proof of Theobald's competence for the task in which Pope had failed. Many of Theobald's most felicitous corrections and emendations of Shakespeare's text are to be found in this, his first contribution to textual criticism.

Pope's resentment expressed itself characteristically. ‘From this time,’ says Johnson, ‘Pope became an enemy to editors, collators, commentators, and verbal critics, and hoped to persuade the world that he miscarried in this undertaking only by having a mind too great for such minute employment.’ In 1728 Pope brought out a second edition of his