Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/126

 Shakespeare, in which he incorporated, without a word to indicate them, the greater part of Theobald's best conjectures and regulations of the text, inserting in his last volume the following note: ‘Since the publication of our first edition, there having been some attempts upon Shakespeare published by Lewis Theobald which he would not communicate during the time wherein that edition was preparing for the press, when we by public advertisement did request the assistance of all lovers of this author, we have inserted in this impression as many of 'em as are judged of any the least importance to the poet—the whole amounting to about twenty-five words’ (a gross misrepresentation of his debt to Theobald); ‘but to the end that every reader may judge for himself, we have annexed a complete list of the rest, which, if he shall think trivial or erroneous either in part or the whole, at worst it can but spoil half a sheet of paper that chances to be left vacant here’ (Appendix to vol. viii. of Shakespeare). Nor was Pope content with this. In March 1727–8 the third volume of the ‘Miscellanies’ containing the ‘Treatise on the Bathos’ was published, in which, in addition to three sarcastic quotations from Theobald's ‘Double Falsehood,’ L. T. figures among the swallows—‘authors that are eternally skimming and fluttering up and down, but all their ability is employed to catch flies’—and the eels, ‘obscure authors that wrap themselves up in their own mud, but are mighty nimble and pert.’ Two months afterwards appeared the first edition of the ‘Dunciad,’ of which poor Theobald was the hero (in 1741 ‘Tibbald,’ as Pope contemptuously called him, was ‘dethroned’ and Colley Cibber elevated in his place). It is, however, due to Pope to say that since the publication of ‘Shakespeare Restored,’ Theobald had been continually irritating him by further remarks about his edition. These were inserted in ‘Mist's Journal,’ to which he was in the habit of communicating notes on Shakespeare. To this Pope refers in the couplet: Old puns restore, lost blunders nicely seek, And crucify poor Shakespeare once a week (Dunciad, i. 154–5, 1st edit.).

Pope's satire is chiefly directed against Theobald's pedantry, dulness, poverty, and ingratitude. Against the charge of ingratitude Theobald defended himself. In a publication called ‘The Author,’ dated 16 April 1729, from Wyan's Court, Great Russell Street, where Theobald continued to reside till his death, he says that he had asked Pope two favours: one was that he would assist him ‘in a few tickets towards my benefit,’ and the other that he would subscribe to his intended translation of Æschylus; that to each of these requests Pope had sent civil replies, but had granted neither. The charge of ingratitude, he adds, had been circulated for the purpose of injuring him in a subscription he was getting up for some ‘Remarks on Shakespeare,’ and to prejudice the public against a play which was about to be acted at a benefit for him at Drury Lane. The work referred to as ‘Remarks on Shakespeare’ he was induced to abandon for an edition of Shakespeare; the play to which he refers was ‘The Double Falsehood,’ a tragedy, first acted at Drury Lane in 1727, and published in 1728. Theobald professed to believe that it was by Shakespeare, and a patent was granted him giving him the sole and exclusive right of printing and publishing the work for a term of fourteen years, on the ground that he had, at considerable cost, purchased the manuscript copy (for its history see Theobald's dedication of it to Bubb Dodington; and for conjectures as to its real authorship, see Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare, pp. 29–32, where it is assigned to Shirley. Malone was inclined to attribute it to Massinger. Reed thought it was in the main Theobald's own composition. To the present writer it seems all but certain that it was founded on some old play, the plot being borrowed from the story of Cardenio in ‘Don Quixote,’ but that it is for the most part from Theobald's own pen). In 1728 Theobald edited the posthumous works of William Wycherley and contributed some notes to Cooke's translation of Hesiod.

Meanwhile he was accumulating materials for his edition of Shakespeare, corresponding on the subject with Matthew Concanen, who appears to have been on the staff of the ‘London Journal,’ with the learned Dr. Styan Thirlby [q. v.], then a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and with Warburton, at that time an obscure country clergyman in Lincolnshire. His correspondence with Warburton, to whom he was introduced by Concanen, was regularly continued between March 1729 and October 1734, and is printed in Nichols's ‘Illustrations of Literature’ (ii. 204–654). In September 1730 the death of Eusden left the poet-laureateship open, and Theobald became a candidate. Lord Gage introduced him to Sir Robert Walpole, who recommended him to the Duke of Grafton, then lord chamberlain, and these recommendations being seconded by Frederick, prince of Wales, Theobald had every prospect of success. But ‘after standing fair for the post at least three weeks,’ he had ‘the mor-