t 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.

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 Ki