That is, he is as like me, as I am to myself.  Now I humbly conceive, in strictness of expression a man can no more be like himself, than a thing its own parallel.  But to confine myself to Shakespear.  I doubt not but I can produce some similar passages from him, which literally examined, are stark nonsense; and yet taken with a candid latitude have never appeared ridiculous.  Mr. Pope would scarce allow one man to say to another.  ’Compare and weigh your mistress with your mistress; and I grant she is a very fair woman; but compare her with some other woman that I could name, and the case will be very much altered.’  Yet the very substance of this, is said by Shakespear, in Romeo and Juliet; and Mr. Pope has not degraded it as any absurdity, or unworthy of the author.

  Pho! pho! you saw her fair, none else being by;
  HERSELF poiz’d with HERSELF in either eye. 
  But, &c.

Or, what shall we say of the three following quotations.

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 passages 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 passages in question; or whether Mr. Theobald has, from a superstitious 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 assured 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.