After some abortive efforts in dramatic poetry, one of which, The Double Falsehood, he endeavoured to impose upon the public as a production of Shakspeare, our author fortunately directed his talents into their proper channel, and by becoming the editor of our great dramatic poet, conferred an obligation of some weight upon the numerous admirers of the illustrious bard. It was in the year 1726 that he first entered upon the subject, by publishing a pamphlet entitled "Shakspeare Restored," in which his vanity led him to affirm "that what 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;" an assertion that gave just offence to Mr. Pope, and which occasioned the immediate elevation of Mr. Theobald to the honours of the Hero of the Dunciad; a station, however, from which he was soon after hurled, to make way for the enthronement of Cibber. The year 1733 ushered in our author's Shakspeare in eight volumes; a work which, notwithstanding the abuse of Pope and Warburton, merited and acquired much reputation it is indeed, superior to any preceding attempt of the kind, and has laid a firm foundation, by pointing out the proper path of illustration, for the valuable "commentaries of Johnson and of Steevens. Theobald survived this, his best, undertaking nine years, closing in 1742 a life of poverty and literary labour. The first number of the Censor appeared in Mist's Journal on April 11th, 1715; and it was continued thrice a week, without intermission, until thirty numbers had been published; they were then collected into a volume, in the preface to which Theobald has remarked, that his papers "followed too close upon the heels of the inimitable SPECTATOR, whose excellent vein of good sense, spirit, wit, and humour, made that PAPER the entertainment of all the gay, polite, and virtuous part of mankind. It was a hard task,” he proceeds, "to come after such a writer, and avoid striking into the paths he had trod; and still a harder, to invent new subjects, and work upóir them with any degree of the same genius and delicacy. This the publishers of the Censor knew so well, that they were obliged to give a new turn both of character and dress to their performances. "Another disadvantage was, the vast multitude of papers that pretended to give an equal diversion to the town; which, though they died soon, and left no memory behind them, yet found readers heavy enough to sympathize with their dullness. That period of time may be well called the age of counsellors, when every blockhead who could write his own name attempted to inform and amuse the public." After an interval of ̧ about a year and a half the Censor was resumed thrice a week on January 1st, 1717, and closed, after completing the ninety-sixth number, on June 1st, 1717; when the whole was thrown into three volumes. Theobald discovered much want of judgment in attributing to his assumed character of Censor talents of the highest order, his very first paragraph informing us that he was lineally descended from Benjamin Johnson of surly memory, whose name, as well as a considerable portion of his spirit, he was heir to. Such a declaration excited expectations which were certainly by no means gratified; for though the work be not destitute of merit, it is far from supporting any claim to the pedigree which he chose to adopt. The rough and unsparing invective, too, which pervades many of its parts, procured him several bitter enemies, and among these was the critic Dennis, who, being represented in No 33, under the name of Furius, as "an object rather of pity, than that which he daily provokes, laughter and contempt," retorted in terms to which the language of Theobald is mildness itself; "there is," says he, in his Remarks on Pope's Homer, a notorious idiot, one hight Whacum; who, from an under-spur-leather to the law, is become an understrapper to the play-house, who has lately burlesqued the Metamorphoses of Ovid, by a vile translation, &c. The fellow is concerned in an impertinent paper called the Censor." To the style in which the Censor is composed no praise is due; it is too often bald, vulgar, and ungrammatical; there are, however, a few papers which are worthy of being rescued from oblivion; and among these I would particularly distinguish N° 60 on the Prometheus of Eschylus, N° 83 on Hope, and N° 84 on Sleep. It is some, though not an unequivocal proof of merit, that, of the numerous periodical papers which were published during the era under consideration, when Theobald produced his essays, the Censor may still be procured by research; the rest, whose mere names I have only to produce, no enquiry on my part has yet been able to detect; they are now, as the Editor of the Tatler remarks, seen but seldom, and seldomer read. The following list, if not complete, is sufficiently extensive to shew how very general this mode of publication had become, even in the first few years after the close of the Spectator. 3. THE MISCELLANY. 4. THE HERMIT. 5. THE SURPRIZE. 6. THE SILENT MONITOR. 7. THE INQUISITOR. 8. THE PILGRIM. 9. THE RESTORER. 10. THE INSTRUCTOR. 11. THE GRUMBLER. This, which was a weekly paper, was probably the production of Ducket, and is alluded to in the following lines of the quarto edition of the Dunciad, 1728: Behold yon pair in strict embraces join'd; Shall this a Pasquin, that a Grumbler write. From this barren catalogue, we now turn to a paper of a superior kind, and which, though not included, as a whole, in the number of our classical productions, yet possesses several essays which would confer honour on any work; it was conducted by Ambrose Phillips, and entitled, 12. THE FREETHINKER. Phillips, of whose *The author of these sketches would be happy to receive any information relative to these almost forgotten papers, through the medium of the Gentleman's, or any other respectable Magazine. |