POPE AND CIBBER, CONTAINING A VINDICATION OF THE COMIC WRITER. POPE attacked Cibber from personal motives—by dethroning Theobald, in the Dunciad, to substitute Cibber, he made the satire not apply-Cibber's facetious and serious remonstrance -Cibber's inimitable good-humour-an apology for what has been called his "effrontery"—perhaps a modest man, and undoubtedly a man of genius-his humorous defence of his deficiency in Tragedy, both in acting and writing-Pope more hurt at being exposed as a ridiculous lover than as a bad man-An account of "The Egotist, or Colley upon Cibber," a kind of supplement to the "Apology for his Life," in which he has drawn his own character with great freedom and spirit. THE Quarrel with Cibber may serve to check the haughtiness of Genius; Good-humour can gently draw a boundary round that arbitrary power, whenever the wantonness of Satire would conceal calumny. But this quarrel will become more interesting, should it throw a new light on the character of one, whose originality of genius seems little suspected. Cibber shewed a happy address in a very critical situation; and obtained an honourable triumph over the malice of a great genius, whom, while he complained of, he admired, and almost loved the Cynic. Pope, after several "flirts," as Cibber calls them, from slight personal motives, which CIBBER has fully opened,' at length from "peevish weak 1 Johnson says, that though "Pope attacked Cibber with acrimony, the provocation is not easily discoverable." The statements of Cibber, while they have never been contradicted, shew sufficient motives to have excited the poetic irascibility. Cibber's " 'fling" at the unowned and condemned comedy of the triumvirate of Wits, when he performed Bayes in the Rehearsal, incurred the immortal odium. There was no malice on Cibber's side; for it was then the custom to restore the fading colours of that obsolete dramatic tableau, by introducing some allusions to any recent theatrical event: the deep contrivance of two lovers getting access to the wife of a virtuoso, "one curiously swathed up like an Egyptian mummy, and the other slily covered in the pasteboard skin of a crocodile," was surely an incident so natural, that it seemed congenial with the high imagination and the deep plot of a Bayes! Poor Cibber, in the gayety of his impromptu, made the “fling ;" and, unluckily, it was applauded by the audience! The irascibility of Pope on that occasion too strongly authenticated one of the three authors. "In the swelling of his heart, after the play was over, he came behind the scenes, with his lips pale and his voice trembling, to call me to account for the insult; and accordingly fell upon me with all the foul language that a Wit out of his senses could be capable of, choaked with the foam of his passion." Cibber replied with dignity, and insisted on the privilege of the character, and therefore he would repeat the same jest as ness," as Lord Orford has happily expressed it, closed his insults by dethroning Theobald, and substituting Cibber; but as he would not lose what he had already written, this change disturbed the whole decorum of the satiric fiction. Things of opposite natures, joined into one, became the poetical Chimæra of Horace. The hero of the Dunciad is neither Theobald nor Cibber: Pope forced a dunce to look like Cibber; but this was not making Cibber a dunce. This errour in Pope emboldened Cibber in the contest, for he still insisted that the satire did not apply to him; and humorously compared the libel "to long as the public approved of it. Pope had certainly approved of Cibber's manly conduct, had he not been the author himself. To this, we must add the reception the Town and the Court bestowed on Cibber's "Nonjuror," a satire on the politics of the Jacobite faction; and Pope appears, under the assumed name of Barnevelt, to have published "an odd piece of wit, proving that the Nonjuror, in its design, its characters, and almost every scene of it, was a closely couched Jacobite libel against the Government." Cibber adds, that "this was so shrewdly maintained, that I almost liked the jest myself." Pope seems to have been fond of this new species of irony; for, in the Pastorals of Phillips, he shewed the same ingenuity, and he repeated the same charge of political mystery against his finest poem ; for he proved by many 66 merry inuendoes," that The Rape of the Lock' was as audacious a libel, as the other pamphlet made out the Nonjuror. 2 Cibber did not obtrude himself in this contest. Had be been merely a poor vain creature, he had not preserved so long a silence. His good temper was without anger, but |