Volume V Part 24 (1/2)

ROMEO and JULIET.

--Oh! so light a foot Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint.

WINTER'S TALE.

--For _Cogitation_ Resides not in the man _that does not think._

HAMLET.

--Try what repentance can, what can it not?

Yet what can it, when one _cannot repent._

Who does not see at once, the heaviest foot that ever trod cannot wear out the everlasting flint? or that he who does not think has no thoughts in him? or that repentance can avail nothing when a man has not repentance? yet let these pa.s.sages appear, with a casting weight of allowance, and their absurdity will not be so extravagant, as when examined by the literal touchstone.--

Your's, &c.

LEWIS THEOBALD.

By perusing the above, the reader will be enabled to discern whether Mr.

Pope has wantonly ridiculed the pa.s.sages in question; or whether Mr.

Theobald has, from a superst.i.tious zeal for the memory of Shakespear, defended absurdities, and palliated extravagant blunders.

The ingenious Mr. Dodd, who has lately favoured the public with a judicious collection of the beauties of Shakespear, has quoted a beautiful stroke of Mr. Theobald's, in his Double Falsehood, upon music.

--Strike up, my masters; But touch the strings with a religious softness; Teach sounds to languish thro' the night's dull ear, 'Till Melancholy start from her lazy couch, And carelessness grow concert to attention.

ACT I. SCENE III.

A gentleman of great judgment happening to commend these lines to Mr.

Theobald, he a.s.sured him he wrote them himself, and only them in the whole play.

Mr. Theobald, besides his edition of all Shakespear's plays, in which he corrected, with great pains and ingenuity, many faults which had crept into that great poet's writings, is the author of the following dramatic pieces.

I. The Persian Princess, or the Royal Villain; a Tragedy, acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane, printed in the year 1715. The author observes in his preface, this play was written and acted before he was full nineteen years old.

II. The Perfidious Brother; a Tragedy acted at the Theatre in Little Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, 1716. This play is written on the model of Otway's Orphan; the scene is in a private family in Brussels.

III. Pan and Syrinx; an Opera of one act, performed on the Theatre in Little Lincoln's Inn-Fields, 1717.

IV. Decius and Paulina, a Masque; to which is added Musical Entertainments, as performed at the Theatre in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, in the Dramatic Opera of Circe.

V. Electra, a Tragedy; translated from the Greek of Sophocles, with notes, printed in the year 1714, dedicated to Joseph Addison, Esq;

VI. Oedipus King of Thebes; a Tragedy translated from Sophocles, with notes, translated in the year 1715, dedicated to the earl of Rockingham.

VII. Plutus, or the World's Idol; a Comedy translated from the Greek of Aristophanes, with notes, printed in the year 1715. The author has to this Translation prefixed a Discourse, containing some Account of Aristophanes, and his two Comedies of Plutus and the Clouds.

VIII. The Clouds, a Comedy; translated from Aristophanes, with notes, printed in the year 1715.