[5] A lame come-off.


* * * * *


Mr. LEWIS THEOBALD.

This gentleman was born at Sittingburn in Kent, of which place his
father, Mr. Peter Theobald, was an eminent attorney. His grammatical
learning he received chiefly under the revd. Mr. Ellis, at Isleworth in
Middlesex, and afterwards applied himself to the study and practice of
the law: but finding that study too tedious and irksome for his genius,
he quitted it for the profession of poetry. He engaged in a paper called
the Censor, published in Mill's Weekly Journal; and by delivering his
opinion with two little reserve, concerning some eminent wits, he
exposed himself to their lashes, and resentment. Upon the publication of
Pope's Homer, he praised it in the most extravagant terms of admiration;
but afterwards thought proper to retract his opinion, for reasons we
cannot guess, and abused the very performance he had before
hyperbollically praised.

Mr. Pope at first made Mr. Theobald the hero of his Dunciad, but
afterwards, for reasons best known to himself, he thought proper to
disrobe him of that dignity, and bestow it upon another: with what
propriety we shall not take upon us to determine, but refer the reader
to Mr. Cibber's two letters to Mr. Pope. He was made hero of the poem,
the annotator informs us, because no better was to be had. In the first
book of the Dunciad, Mr. Theobald, or Tibbald, as he is there called, is