bright as ultramarine and capable of standing the heat of the porcelain furnace.
Most of Thénard’s memoirs, a list of which may be found in the Royal Society’s Catalogue of Scientific Papers, were published in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique, the Mémoires d’Arcueil, the Comptes Rendus and the Mémoires of the Academy of Sciences.
THEOBALD (d. 1161), archbishop of Canterbury, was of Norman parentage, but the date of his birth is unknown. Early in life he entered the great abbey of Bee, of which he became prior in 1127 and abbot ten years later. In 1138 he was selected by Stephen, king of England, to fill the vacant see of Canter- bury. Apparently he owed this advancement to his character for meekness, and as archbishop he behaved with a moderation which is in striking contrast to the conduct of his rival, Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester. During the struggle between Stephen and Matilda it was Bishop Henry who fought for the privileges of the Church; Theobald, while showing a preference for Stephen’s title, made it his rule to support the de facto sovereign. But as Stephen’s cause gained ground the archbishop showed greater independence. He refused to consecrate the king’s nephew to the see of York, and in 1148 attended the papal council of Reims in defiance of a royal prohibition. This quarrel was ended by the intercession of the queen, Matilda of Boulogne, but another, of a more serious character, was provoked by Theobald’s refusal to crown Count Eustace, the eldest son of Stephen, the archbishop pleading the pope’s orders as the excuse for this contumacy. He was banished from the kingdom, but Pope Eugenius terrified Stephen into a reversal of the sentence. In 1153 Theobald succeeded in reconciling Stephen with Henry of Anjou, and in securing for the latter the succession to the throne. On the accession of Henry in 1154, Theobald naturally became his trusted counsellor; but ill-health prevented the archbishop from using his influence to its full extent. He placed the interests of the Church in the hands of Thomas Becket, his archdeacon, whom he induced Henry to employ as chancellor. Theobald died on the 18th of April 1161. He is said to have recommended Becket as his successor.
In history Theobald lives chiefly as the patron of three eminent men: Becket, who began life as a clerk in his household; Master Vacarius, the Italian jurist, who was the first to teach Roman law in England; and John of Salisbury, the most learned scholar of the age. Theobald’s household was a university in little; and in it were trained not a few of the leading prelates of the next generation.
See the Vita Theobaldi printed in J. A. Giles, Lanfranci Opera, vol. i. (Oxford, 1844); W. Hook, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, ii. c. vi. (London, 1862); and K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings, vol. i. (London, 1887). (H. W. C. D.)
THEOBALD, LEWIS (1688–1744), English man of letters,
playwright and Shakespearian commentator, the son of an
attorney, was born at Sittingbourne, Kent, and was baptized
on the 2nd of April 1688. He was educated under a clergyman
named Ellis at Isleworth, and became a good classical scholar.
He followed his father’s profession, but soon abandoned it for
literature. In 1713 he translated the Phaedo of Plato, and
entered into a contract with Bernard Lintot the publisher to
translate the tragedies of Aeschylus. He seems to have made
other promises not carried out, but in 1714 and 1715 appeared
versions of the Electra, the Ajax, and the Oedipus Rex of
Sophocles, and the Plutus and the Clouds of Aristophanes. He
became a regular hack-writer, contributing to Mist’s Journal,
and producing plays and poems of very small merit. The
publication of his play The Perfidious Brother (acted 1715;
printed 1716) involved Theobald in considerable difficulty. He
apparently received a rough draft of the play from Henry
Meystayer, a London watchmaker, with a commission to arrange
it for the stage. Theobald brought it out as his own work.
In the next year Meystayer produced a version, and charged
Theobald with plagiarism, but there is no means of ascertaining
the exact rights of the case. His poverty compelled him to
produce rapidly. He translated the first book of the Odyssey
(1716), wrote tragi-comedies, operas and masques, and helped
John Rich in the production of pantomimes, then an innovation at Drury Lane. But in 1726 he produced 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 (1726). However ill Theobald may have succeeded as a poet and dramatist, he showed great discrimination as a textual editor. Some of
his happiest emendations are to be found in this work, which conclusively proved Pope’s incompetence as a Shakespearian editor. Two years later a second edition of Pope’s work appeared. In it he stated that he had incorporated some of Theobald’s readings, in all amounting to about twenty-five words, and that he added the rest which could “at worst but spoil half a sheet of paper that chances to be left vacant here.” He also insinuated that Theobald had maliciously kept back
his emendations during the progress of the edition. All this was a gross misstatement of fact. He had in reality incorporated the majority of Theobald’s best emendations. In the first edition of the Dunciad (1728) Theobald figured as the hero, and he occupied the place of chief victim until replaced by Colley Cibber in 1741. In spite of the critics, Theobald’s work was appreciated by the public. In 1731 he undertook to edit Shakespeare for Tonson the publisher. The work appeared in seven volumes in 1734, and completely superseded Pope’s
edition. From 1729 to the date of its publication Theobald had been engaged in correspondence on the subject with Warburton, who after his friend’s death published an edition of Shakespeare, in the preface of which he asserted that Theobald owed his best corrections to him. Study of the correspondence proves, however, that the indebtedness was on Warburton’s side. Subsequent editors reaped, in most cases without acknowledgment or with actual scorn, the fruit of Theobald’s painstaking
labour, his wide learning and his critical genius. But Pope’s satire, as Johnson justly remarked, blasted the characters that it touched. Theobald remained the type of the dry-as-dust commentator. His merits obtained a tardy recognition on the publication of a detailed study of his critical work by Mr Churton Collins in an essay entitled “The Porson of Shakespearian Criticism” (Essays and Studies, 1895). Theobald gave proof of the same happy gift in classical scholarship
in some emendations of Aeschylus, Eustathius, Athenaeus and others, contributed to a learned journal started by John Jortin in 1731. He was a candidate for the laureateship in 1730, but Cibber gained the coveted post. His last years were harassed by poverty and disease. He began a critical edition of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, completed by Seward and Sympson after his death, which took place on the 18th of
September 1744.
His correspondence with Matthew Concanen, Styan Thirlby and William Warburton is to be found in Nichols’s Illustrations of Literature (ii. 204–654), which also gives the fullest account of his life.
THEOCRACY (Gr. θεοκρατία, the rule of God, from θεός, god, and -κρατια, κρατείν, to rule), a term applied to a form of government or to a state ruled by such a form of government, in which God or the divine power is looked to as the source of all civil power, and the divine commandments regarded as the laws of the community. The typical example of such a state is that of the Jews till the establishment of the kingship under Saul (see Jews).
THEOCRITUS, the creator of pastoral poetry, flourished in the 3rd century B.C. Little is known of him beyond what can be inferred from his writings. We must, however, handle these with some caution, since some of the poems (“Idylls”) commonly attributed to him have little claim to authenticity. It is clear that at a very early date two collections were made, one of which included a number of doubtful poems and formed a corpus of bucolic poetry, while the other was confined to those works which were considered to be by Theocritus himself. The record of these recensions is preserved by two epigrams, one of which proceeds from Artemidorus, a grammarian, who
