—­Dullness her image full exprest,
  But chief in Tibbald’s monster-breeding breast;
  Sees Gods with Daemons in strange league engage,
  And Earth, and heav’n, and hell her battles wage;
  She eyed the bard, where supperless he sate,
  And pin’d unconscious of his rising fate;
  Studious he sate, with all his books around,
  Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound! 
  Plung’d for his sense, but found no bottom there;
  Then writ, and flounder’d on, in meer despair. 
  He roll’d his eyes, that witness’d huge dismay,
  Where yet unpawn’d much learned lumber lay.

He describes Mr. Theobald as making the following address to Dulness.

  —­For thee
  Old puns restore, lost blunders nicely seek,
  And crucify poor Shakespear once a-week. 
  For thee I dim these eyes, and stuff this head,
  With all such reading as was never read;
  For thee, supplying in the worst of days,
  Notes to dull books, and prologues to dull plays;
  For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,
  And write about it, goddess, and about it;
  So spins the silk-worm small its slender store,
  And labours till it clouds itself all o’er.

In the year 1726 Mr. Theobald published a piece in octavo, called Shakespear Restored:  Of this it is said, he was so vain as to aver, in one of Mist’s Journals, June the 8th, ’That to expose any errors in it was impracticable;’ and in another, April the 27th, ’That whatever 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.’

During two whole years, while Mr. Pope was preparing his edition, he published advertisements, requesting assistance, and promising satisfaction to any who would contribute to its greater perfection.  But this restorer, who was at that time solliciting favours of him, by letters, did wholly conceal that he had any such design till after its publication; which he owned in the Daily Journal of November 26, 1728:  and then an outcry was made, that Mr. Pope had joined with the bookseller to raise an extravagant subscription; in which he had no share, of which he had no knowledge, and against which he had publickly advertised in his own proposals for Homer.

Mr. Theobald was not only thus obnoxious to the resentment of Pope, but we find him waging war with Mr. Dennis, who treated him with more roughness, though with less satire.  Mr. Theobald in the Censor, Vol.  II.  No.  XXXIII. calls Mr. Dennis by the name of Furius.  ’The modern Furius (says he) is to be looked upon as more the object of pity, than that which he daily provokes, laughter, and contempt.  Did we really know how much this poor man suffers by being contradicted, or which is the same thing in effect, by hearing another praised; we should in compassion sometimes attend to him with a silent nod, and let him go away with the triumphs of his ill-nature.