Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Theobald, Lewis

THEOBALD, Lewis (1688-1744), will survive as the prime butt of the original Dunciad when as a playwright, a litterateur, a translator, and even as a Shakespearean commentator, he will be entirely forgotten. The son of an attorney, Theobald was born at Sittingbourne, in Kent, in 1688, and, after a moderate education at Isleworth, studied for the profession of law,—a profession, however, which he never practised. He was a man with literary impulses, but without genius, even of a superficial kind; as a student, as a commentator, he might have led a happy and enviable life, had not the vanity of the literary idea led him into a false position. His Persian Princess (1711) and his Electra (1714) gained no distinction. In 1726 The Double Falsehood had a certain vogue, partly from Theobald's pretence that the greater part of the play was by Shakespeare. In 1717 he commenced a series of papers (uot to "The Censor," as has sometimes been stated, but under that title) which appeared in Mist's Weekly Journal; these do not seem to have been highly thought of by his contemporaries, but they were successful in gaining for Theobald not a few enemies, among whom Dennis may be named. Seven or eight years later Theobald's cen sorious tendencies had intensified rather than moderated, and in 1726 he ventured to attack the most eminent literary man of the day in his Shakespear Restored, or a Specimen of the many Errors as well committed as unamended by Mr Pope in his edition of this Poet. Two years later the censor was himself castigated severely, and, as the dedicatee of The Dunciad, he had long an unenviable notoriety; as readers of the famous satire will remember, he occupied the place of chief victim until replaced by Colley Gibber in 1743. In the matter of Shakespeare editing, however, he had the advantage of his powerful rival. When in 1733 Theobald published his edition of Shakespeare in seven volumes, that of Pope had to go to the wall. Lewis Theobald wrote other dramas besides those already men tioned, and translated plays from Sophocles and Aristo phanes, besides a rendering of Plato's Phxdo and a part translation of the Odyssey; but for none of these things is he now remembered. The student of English history might find it worth while to glance through Theobald's Life of Raleigh (1719). He died in 1744.

For plays, &c., see the Biographia Dramatica, vol. i.