SIR,

As you have for several Years past (particularly in your Poetical Works) mentioned my Name, without my desiring it; give me leave, at last, to make my due Compliments to Yours in Prose, which I should not choose to do, but that I am really driven to it (as the Puff in the Play-Bills says) At the Desire of several Persons of Quality.

If I have lain so long stoically silent, or unmindful of your satyrical Favours, it was not so much for want of a proper Reply, as that I thought they never needed a Publick one: For all People of Sense would know, what Truth or Falshood there was in what you have said of me, without my wisely pointing it out to them. Nor did I choose to follow your Example of being so much a Self-Tormentor, as to be concern’d at whatever Opinion of me any publish’d Invective might infuse into People unknown to me: Even the Malicious, though they may like the Libel, don’t always believe it. But since the Publication of your last new Dunciad (where you still seem to enjoy your so often repeated Glory of being bright upon my Dulness) my Friends now insist, that it will be thought Dulness indeed, or a plain Confession of my being a Bankrupt in Wit, if I don’t immediately answer those Bills of Discredit you have drawn upon me: For, say they, your dealing with him, like a Gentleman, in your Apology for your own Life, &c. you see, has had no sensible Effect upon him, as appears by the wrong-headed Reply his Notes upon the new Dunciad have made to it: For though, in that Apology you seem to have offer’d him a friendly release of all Damages, yet as it is plain he scorns to accept it, by his still holding you at Defiance with fresh Abuses, you have an indisputable Right to resume that Discharge, and may now, as justly as ever, call him to account for his many bygone Years of Defamation. But pray, Gentlemen, said I, if, as you seem to believe, his Defamation has more of Malice than Truth in it, does he not blacken himself by it? Why then should I give myself the trouble to prove, what you, and the World are already convinc’d of? and since after near twenty Years having been libell’d by our Daily-paper Scriblers, I never was so hurt, as to give them one single Answer, why would you have me seem to be more sore now, than at any other time?

As to those dull Fellows, they granted my Silence was right; yet they could not but think Mr. Pope was too eminent an Author to justify my equal Contempt of him; and that a Disgrace, from such a Pen, might stick upon me to Posterity: In fine, that though I could not be rouz’d from my Indifference, in regard to myself, yet for the particular Amusement of my Acquaintance, they desired I would enter the Lists with you; notwithstanding I am under the Disadvantage of having only the blunt and weak weapon of Prose, to oppose you, or defend myself, against the Sharpness of Verse, and that in the Hand of so redoubted an Author as Mr. Pope.

Their spiriting me up to this unequal Engagement, I doubt is but an ill Compliment to my Skill, or my Discretion; or, at best, seems but to put me upon a level with a famous Boxer at the Bear-Garden, called Rugged and Tough, who would stand being drubb’d for Hours together, ’till wearying out his Antagonist by the repeated Labour of laying him on, and by keeping his own Wind (like the Roman Combatant of old, who conquer’d by seeming to fly) honest Rugged sometimes came off victorious. All I can promise therefore, since I am stript for the Combat, is, that I will so far imitate this Iron-headed Hero (as the Turks called the late King of Sweden) as always to keep my Temper, as he did his Wind, and that while I have Life, or am able to set Pen to Paper, I will now, Sir, have the last Word with you: For let the Odds of your Wit be never so great, or its Pen dipt in whatever Venom it may, while I am conscious you can say nothing truly of me, that ought to put an honest Man to the Blush, what, in God’s Name, can I have to fear from you? As to the Reputation of my Attempts, in Poetry, that has taken its Ply long ago, and can now no more be lessened by your coldest Contempt, than it can be raised by your warmest Commendation, were you inclin’d to give it any: Every Man’s Work must and will always speak For, or Against itself, whilst it has a remaining Reader in the World. All I shall say then as to that Point, is, that I wrote more to be Fed, than be Famous, and since my Writings still give me a Dinner, do you rhyme me out of my Stomach if you can. And I own myself so contented a Dunce, that I would not have even your merited Fame in Poetry, if it were to be attended with half the fretful Solicitude you seem to have lain under to maintain it; of which the laborious Rout you make about it, in those Loads of Prose Rubbish, wherewith you have almost smother’d your Dunciad, is so sore a Proof: And though I grant it a better Poem of its Kind, than ever was writ; yet when I read it, with those vain-glorious encumbrances of Notes, and Remarks, upon almost every Line of it, I find myself in the uneasy Condition I was once in at an Opera, where sitting with a silent Desire to hear a favourite Air, by a famous Performer, a Coxcombly Connoisseur, at my Elbow, was so fond of shewing his own Taste, that by his continual Remarks, and prating in Praise of every Grace and Cadence, my Attention and Pleasure in the Song was quite lost and confounded.

It is almost amazing, that you, who have writ with such masterly Spirit, upon the Ruling Passion, should be so blind a Slave to your own, as not to have seen, how far a low Avarice of Praise might prejudice, or debase that valuable Character, which your Works, without your own commendatory Notes upon them, might have maintained. Laus propria sordet, is a Line we learn in our Infancy. How applicable to your self then is what you say of another Person, viz.

Whose Ruling Passion is the lust of Praise;
Born, with whate’er could win it from the Wise,
Women and Fools must like him, or he dies.

Epist. to Ld. Cobham Vers. 183.

How easily now can you see the Folly in another, which you yourself are so fond of? Why, Sir, the very Jealousy of Fame, which (in the best cruel Verses that ever fell from your Pen) you have with so much Asperity reproved in Addison (Atticus I mean) falls still short of yours, for though you impute it to him as a Crime, That he could

Bear, like the Turk, no Brother near the Throne.
Vers. 190 of the same Epist.

Yet you, like outragious Nero, are for whipping and branding every poor Dunce in your Dominions, that had the stupid Insolence not to like you, or your Musick! If this is not a greater Tyranny than that of your Atticus, at least you must allow it more ridiculous: For what have you gain’d by it? a mighty Matter! a Victory over a parcel of poor Wretches, that were not able to hurt or resist you, so weak, it was almost Cowardice to conquer them; or if they actually did hurt you, how much weaker have you shewn yourself in so openly owning it? Besides, your Conduct seems hardly reconcileable to your own Opinion: For after you have lash’d them (in your Epistle to Dr. Arburthnot, ver. 84.) you excuse the Cruelty of it in the following Line.

Take it for a Rule,
No Creature smarts so little as a Fool.

Now if this be true, to what purpose did you correct them? For wise Men, without your taking such Pains to tell them, knew what they were before. And that publick-spirited Pretence of your only chastising them, in terrorem to others of the same malicious Disposition, I doubt is but too thin a Disguise of the many restless Hours they have given you. If your Revenge upon them was necessary, we must own you have amply enjoy’d it: But to make that Revenge the chief Motive of writing your Dunciad, seems to me a Weakness, that an Author of your Abilities should rather have chosen to conceal. A Man might as well triumph for his having kill’d so many silly Flies that offended him. Could you have let them alone, by this time, poor Souls, they had been all peaceably buried in Oblivion! But the very Lines, you have so sharply pointed to destroy them, will now remain but so many of their Epitaphs, to transmit their Names to Posterity: Which probably too they may think a more eligible Fate than that of being totally forgotten. Hear what an Author of great Merit, though of less Anxiety for Fame, says upon this Weakness,

Fame is a Bubble, the Reserv’d enjoy,
Who strive to grasp it, as they touch, destroy.
Y Univers. Passion.

In a word, you seem in your Dunciad, to have been angry at the rain for wetting you, why then would you go into it? You could not but know, that an Author, when he publishes a Work, exposes himself to all Weathers. He then that cannot bear the worst, should stay at home, and not write at all.

But Sir That Cibber ever murmured at your Fame, or endeavoured to blast it, or that he was not always, to the best of his Judgment, as warm an Admirer of your Writings as any of your nearest Friends could be, is what you cannot, by any one Fact or Instance, disprove. How comes it then, that in your Works you have so often treated him as a Dunce or an Enemy? Did he at all intrench upon your Sovereignty in Verse, because he had now and then written a Comedy that succeeded? Or could not you bear, that any kind of Poetry, but that, to which you chiefly pretended, should meet with Applause? Or was it, that he had an equal Reputation for Acting his own Characters as for Writing them, or that with such inferior Talents he was admitted to as good Company as you, with your superior, could get into; or what other offensive Merit had he, that has so often made him the Object of your Contempt or Envy? It could not be, sure, simple Ill-nature, that incited you, because in the Preface to your Dunciad you declare that you have

“In this Poem attacked no Man living, who had not before printed,
or published some Scandal against you.”

How comes it, I say, that you have so often fallen foul upon Cibber then, against whom you have no Complaint, nor whose Name is so much as mentioned in the printed List you have given us of all those high Offenders, you so imperiously have proscribed and punish’d. Under this Class at least, you acquit him of having ever provoked you?

But in your Notes, to this Preface (that is, in your Notes upon Notes) from this general Declaration, you make an Exception, “Of two, or three Persons only, whose Dulness or Scurrility all Mankind agreed, to have justly intitled them to a Place in the Dunciad.” Here then, or no where, you ground your Pretence of taking Me into it! Now let us enquire into the Justness of this Pretence, and whether Dulness in one Author gives another any right to abuse him for it? No sure! Dulness can be no Vice or Crime, or is at worst but a Misfortune, and you ought no more to censure or revile him for it, than for his being blind or lame; the Cruelty or Injustice will be evidently equal either way. But if you please I will wave this part of my Argument, and for once take no advantage of it; but will suppose Dulness to be actually Criminal, and then will leave it to your own Conscience, to declare, whether you really think I am generally so guilty of it, as to deserve the Name of the Dull Fellow you make of me. Now if the Reader will call upon My Conscience to speak to the Question, I do from my Heart solemnly declare, that I don’t believe you do think so of me. This I grant may be Vanity in me to say: But if what I believe is true, what a slovenly Conscience do you shew your Face with?

Now, Sir, as for my Scurrility, when ever a Proof can be produced, that I have been guilty of it to you, or any one Man living, I will shamefully unsay all I have said, and confess I have deserv’d the various Names you have call’d me.

Having therefore said enough to clear my self of any Ill-will or Enmity to Mr. Pope, I should be glad he were able equally to acquit himself to Me, that I might not suppose the satyrical Arrows he has shot at me, to have flown from that Malignity of Mind, which the talking World is so apt to accuse him of. In the mean while, it may be worth the trouble to weigh the Truth, or Validity of the Wit he has bestow’d upon me, that it may appear, which of us is the worse Man for it; He, for his unprovoked Endeavour to vilify and expose me, or I, for my having or having not deserv’d it.

I could wish it might be observed then, by those who have read the Works of Mr. Pope, that the contemptuous Things he there says of me, are generally bare positive Assertions, without his any sort of Evidence to ground them upon: Why then, till the Truth of them is better prov’d, should they stand for any more, than so many gratis Dictums? But I hope I have given him fairer Play, in what I have said of him, and which I intend to give him, in what I shall farther say of him; that is, by saying nothing to his Disadvantage that has not a known Fact to support it. This will bring our Cause to a fair Issue; and no impartial Reader, then, can be at a loss on which side Equity should incline him to give Judgment. But as in this Dispute I shall be oblig’d, sometimes to be Witness, as well as Accuser, I am bound, in Conscience, not to conceal any Fact, that may possibly mitigate, or excuse the resentful manner, in which Mr. Pope has publickly treated me. Now I am afraid, that I once as publickly offended him, before a thousand Spectators; to the many of them, therefore, who might be Witnesses of the Fact, I submit, as to the most competent Judges, how far it ought, or ought not, to have provoked him.

The Play of the Rehearsal, which had lain some few Years dormant, being by his present Majesty (then Prince of Wales) commanded to be revived, the Part of Bays fell to my share. To this Character there had always been allow’d such ludicrous Liberties of Observation, upon any thing new, or remarkable, in the state of the Stage, as Mr. Bays might think proper to take. Much about this time, then, The Three Hours after Marriage had been acted without Success; when Mr. Bays, as usual, had a fling at it, which, in itself, was no Jest, unless the Audience would please to make it one: But however, flat as it was, Mr. Pope was mortally sore upon it. This was the Offence. In this Play, two Coxcombs, being in love with a learned Virtuoso’s Wife, to get unsuspected Access to her, ingeniously send themselves, as two presented Rarities, to the Husband, the one curiously swath’d up like an Egyptian Mummy, and the other slily cover’d in the Paste-board Skin of a Crocodile: upon which poetical Expedient, I, Mr. Bays, when the two Kings of Brentford came from the Clouds into the Throne again, instead of what my Part directed me to say, made use of these Words, viz. “Now, Sir, this Revolution, I had some Thoughts of introducing, by a quite different Contrivance; but my Design taking air, some of your sharp Wits, I found, had made use of it before me; otherwise I intended to have stolen one of them in, in the Shape of a Mummy, and t’other, in that of a Crocodile.” Upon which, I doubt, the Audience by the Roar of their Applause shew’d their proportionable Contempt of the Play they belong’d to. But why am I answerable for that? I did not lead them, by any Reflection of my own, into that Contempt: Surely to have used the bare Word Mummy, and Crocodile, was neither unjust, or unmannerly; Where then was the Crime of simply saying there had been two such things in a former Play? But this, it seems, was so heinously taken by Mr. Pope, that, 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 How durst I have the Impudence to treat any Gentleman in that manner? &c. &c. &c. Now let the Reader judge by this Concern, who was the true Mother of the Child! When he was almost choked with the foam of his Passion, I was enough recover’d from my Amazement to make him (as near as I can remember) this Reply, viz. “Mr. PopeYou are so particular a Man, that I must be asham’d to return your Language as I ought to do: but since you have attacked me in so monstrous a Manner; This you may depend upon, that as long as the Play continues to be acted, I will never fail to repeat the same Words over and over again.” Now, as he accordingly found I kept my Word, for several Days following, I am afraid he has since thought, that his Pen was a sharper Weapon than his Tongue to trust his Revenge with. And however just Cause this may be for his so doing, it is, at least, the only Cause my Conscience can charge me with. Now, as I might have concealed this Fact, if my Conscience would have suffered me, may we not suppose, Mr. Pope would certainly have mention’d it in his Dunciad, had he thought it could have been of service to him? But as he seems, notwithstanding, to have taken Offence from it, how well does this Soreness of Temper agree with what he elsewhere says of himself?

But touch me, and no Minister so sore.
1 Sa B. of Hor. ver. 76.

Since then, even his Admirers allow, that Spleen has a great share in his Composition, and as Thirst of Revenge, in full Possession of a conscious Power to execute it, is a Temptation, which we see the Depravity of Human Nature is so little able to resist, why then should we wonder, that a Man so easily hurt, as Mr. Pope seems to be, should be so frequently delighted in his inflicting those Pains upon others, which he feels he is not himself able to bear? This is the only way I can account for his having sometimes carried his satyrical Strokes farther, than, I doubt, a true and laudable Satyrist would have thought justifiable. But it is now time to open, what on my own part I have to charge him with.

In turning over his Works of the smaller Edition, the eldest Date I find, in print, of my being out of his Favour, is from an odd Objection he makes to a, then, new Play of mine, The Non-Juror. In one of his Letters to Mr. Jervas, . he writes thus

“Your Acquaintance, on this side the Water, are under terrible Apprehensions, from your long stay in Ireland, that you may grow too polite for them; for we think (since the great Success of such a Play as the Non-Juror) that Politeness is gone over the Water, &c.

(By the way, was not his Wit a little stiff and weary, when he strained so hard to bring in this costive Reflection upon the Non-Juror? Dear Soul! What terrible Apprehensions it gave him!) And some few Lines after he cries out

“Poor Poetry! the little that’s left of thee, longs to cross the
Seas

Modestly meaning, I suppose, he had a mind to have gone over himself! If he had gone, and had carried with him those polite Pieces, The What d’ye call it, and The Three Hours after Marriage (both which he had a hand in) how effectually had those elaborate Examples of the true Genius given, to the Dublin Theatre, the Glory of Dramatick Poetry restor’d? But Drury-Lane was not so favourable to him; for there alas! (where the last of them was unfortunately acted) he had so sore a Rap o’ the Fingers, that he never more took up his Pen for the Stage. But this is not fair, you will say: My shewing Mr. Pope’s want of Skill in Comedy, is no excuse for the want of it in myself; which his Satyr sometimes charges me with: at least, it must be owned, it is not an easy thing to hit by his missing it. And indeed I have had some doubt, as there is no personal Reflection in it, whether I ought to have mention’d his Objection to The Non-Juror at all; but as the Particularity of it may let one a good deal into the Sentiments of Mr. Pope, I could not refrain from bestowing some farther Notes upon it.

Well then! upon the great Success of this enormous Play, The Non-Juror, poor Mr. Pope laments the Decay of Poetry; though the Impoliteness of the Piece is his only insinuated Objection against it. How nice are the Nostrils of this delicate Critick! This indeed is a Scent, that those wide-mouth’d Hounds the Daily-Paper Criticks could never hit off! though they pursued it with the Imputation of every Offence that could run down a Play: Yet Impoliteness at least they oversaw. No! they did not disguise their real dislike, as the prudent Mr. Pope did; They all fairly spoke out, and in full Cry open’d against it, only for its so audaciously exposing the sacred Character of a lurking, treason-hatching Jesuit, and for inhumanly ridiculing the conscientious Cause of an honest deluded Jacobite Gentleman. Now may we not as well say to Mr. Pope, Hinc illae lachrymae! Here was his real Disgust to the Play! For if Impoliteness could have so offended him, he would never have bestowed such Encomiums upon the Beggars Opera, which whatever Beauties it might boast, Politeness certainly was not one of its most striking Features. No, no! if the Play had not so impudently fallen upon the poor Enemies of the Government, Mr. Pope, possibly, might have been less an Enemy to the Play: But he has a charitable Heart, and cannot bear to see his Friends derided in their Distress: Therefore you may have observed, whenever the Government censures a Man of Consequence for any extraordinary Disaffection to it; then is Mr. Pope’s time generously to brighten and lift him up with Virtues, which never had been so conspicuous in him before. Now though he may be led into all this, by his thinking it a Religious Duty; yet those who are of a different Religion may sure be equally excused, if they should notwithstanding look upon him as their Enemy. But to my Purpose.

Whatever might be his real Objections to it, Mr. Pope is, at least, so just to the Play, as to own it had great Success, though it grieved him to see it; perhaps too he would have been more grieved, had he then known, that his late Majesty, when I had the Honour to kiss his Hand, upon my presenting my Dedication of it, was graciously pleased, out of his Royal Bounty, to order me two hundred Pounds for it. Yes, Sir! ’tis true such was the Depravity of the Time, you will say, and so enormous was the Reward of such a Play as The Non-Juror!

This brings to my Memory (what I cannot help smiling at) the bountiful Banter, you at this time endeavoured to put upon me. This was the Fact I had, not long before, been a Subscriber to your Homer: And now, to make up our Poetical Accounts, as you call’d it, you sent me a Note, with four Guineas inclosed, for four Tickets, for the Author’s Day of such a Play as The Non-Juror. So unexpected a Favour made me conclude, there must be something at the bottom of it, which an indifferent Eye might have overlooked: However I sent you the Tickets with a written Acknowledgment; for I was willing you should think the kind Appearance had passed upon me; though every Gentleman I told it to laugh’d at my Credulity, wondering I should not see, you had plainly done this, in scorn of my Subscription to your Homer. Which, to say the Truth, I never had the least doubt of, but did not think myself so far obliged to gratify your Pride, as to shew any sign of my feeling the Hurt you intended me. Though, as this was in the Infancy of your Disinclination to me, I confess, I might have been better pleased, would your Temper have suffered me to have been upon better Terms with you: But so it is! of such insensible Stuff am I made, that I have been rated by my Friends, for not being surprized, or grieved at Disappointments. This I only offer as an early Instance of our different Dispositions. My Subscription had no Disguise, I thought it due to the Merit of Mr. Pope: But that his Bounty to me rose from the same Motive, I am afraid would be Vanity in me to suppose.

There is another whimsical Fact relating to this Play, which common Fame, just after the Run of it, charged to Mr. Pope: Had I his Sagacity in detecting concealed Authors, or his laborious Curiosity to know them, I do not doubt but I might bring my Fact to a Proof upon him; but let my Suspicion speak for itself. At this time then there came out a Pamphlet (the Title I have forgot) but the given Name of the Author was Barnevelt, which every body believed to be fictitious. The Purport of this odd Piece of Wit was to prove, that The Non-Juror in its Design, its Characters, and almost every Scene of it, was a closely couched Jacobite Libel against the Government: And, in troth, the Charge was in some places so shrewdly maintained, that I almost liked the Jest myself; at least, it was so much above the Spirit, and Invention of the Daily-Paper Satyrists, that all the sensible Readers I met with, without Hesitation gave it to Mr. Pope. And what afterwards left me no doubt of it was, that he published the same Charge against his own Rape of the Lock, proving even the Design of that too, by the same sort of merry Innuendos, to have been as audacious a Libel, as the other Pamphlet had made The Non-Juror. In a word, there is so much Similitude of Stile, and Thought, in these two Pieces, that it is scarce possible to give them to different Authors. ’Tis true, at first Sight, there appears no great Motive for Mr. Pope to have written either of them, more than to exercise the Wantonness of his Fancy: But some People thought, he might have farther Views in this Frolick. He might hope, that the honest Vulgar would take literally, his making a Libel of The Non-Juror, and from thence have a good Chance of his turning the Stream of their Favour against it. As for his playing the same game with his Rape of the Lock, that he was, at least, sure could do him no harm; but on the contrary he might hope, that such a ludicrous Self-accusation might soften, or wipe off any severe Imputation that had lain upon other parts of his Writings, which had not been thought equally Innocent of a real Disaffection. This way of owning Guilt in a wrong Place, is a common Artifice to hide it in a right one. Now though every Reader is not obliged to take all I have said for Evidence in this Case; yet there may be others, that are not obliged to refuse it. Let it therefore avail no more, than in reality it ought to do.

Since, as you say, in one of your Letters to Mr. Addison, “To be uncensured and to be obscure is the same thing;” I hope then to appear in a better Light, by quoting some of your farther Flirts at The Non-Juror.

In your Correspondence with Mr. Digby , complaining of People’s Insensibility to good Writing, you say (with your usual sneer upon the same Play)

“The Stage is the only Place we seem alive at: There indeed we
stare, and roar, and clap Hands for King George and the
Government.

This could be meant of no Play, but The Non-Juror, because no other had made the Enemies of the King and Government so ridiculous; and therefore, it seems, you think the Town as ridiculous to roar and clap at it. But, Sir, as so many of the Government’s Friends were willing to excuse its Faults for the Honesty of its Intention; so, if you were not of that Number, I do not wonder you had so strong a Reason to dislike it. In the same Letter too, this wicked Play runs so much in your Head, that in the favourable Character you there give of the Lady Scudamore, you make it a particular Merit in her, that she had not then even

Seen Cibber’s Play of the Non-juror.

I presume, at least, she had heard Mr. Pope’s Opinion of it, and then indeed the Lady might be in the right.

I suppose by this time you will say, I have tir’d your Patience; but I do assure you I have not said so much upon this Head, merely to commemorate the Applauses of The Non-juror, as to shew the World one of your best Reasons for having so often publish’d your Contempt of the Author. And yet, methinks, the Good-nature which you so frequently labour to have thought a part of your Character, might have inclin’d you to a little more Mercy for an old Acquaintance: Nay, in your Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, ver 373, you are so good as to say, you have been so humble as to drink with Cibber. Sure then, such Humility might at least have given the Devil his Due: for, black as I am, I have still some Merit to you, in the profess’d Pleasure I always took in your Writings? But alas! if the Friendship between yourself and Mr. Addison, (which with such mutual Warmth you have profess’d in your publish’d Letters) could not protect him from that insatiable Rage of Satyr that so often runs away with you, how could so frivolous a Fellow as I am (whose Friendship you never cared for) hope to escape it? However, I still comfort myself in one Advantage I have over you, that of never having deserved your being my Enemy.

You see, Sir, with what passive Submission I have hitherto complained to you: but now give me leave to speak an honest Truth, without caring how far it may displease you. If I thought, then, that your Ill-nature were half as hurtful to me, as I believe it is to yourself, I am not sure I could be half so easy under it. I am told, there is a Serpent in some of the Indies, that never stings a Man without leaving its own Life in the Wound: I have forgot the Name of it, and therefore cannot give it you. Or if this be too hard upon you, permit me at least to say, your Spleen is sometimes like that of the little angry Bee, which, in doing less Mischief than the Serpent, yet (as Virgil says) meets with the same Fate.Animasque in vulnere ponunt. Why then may I not wish you would be advis’d by a Fact which actually happen’d at the Tower Guard? An honest lusty Grenadier, while a little creeping Creature of an Ensign, for some trifling Fault, was impotently laying him on with his Cane, quietly folded his Arms across, and shaking his Head, only reply’d to this valiant Officer, “Have a care, dear Captain! don’t strike so hard! upon my Soul you will hurt yourself!”

Now, Sir, give me leave to open your Dunciad, that we may see what Work your Wit has made with my Name there.

When the Goddess of Dulness is shewing her Works to her chosen Son, she closes the Variety with letting him see, ver 235.

How, with less Reading than makes Felons ’scape Less human Genius than God gives an Ape, Small Thanks to France, and none to Rome, or Greece, A patch’d, vamp’d, future, old, reviv’d, new Piece, ’Twixt Plautus, Fletcher, Congreve and Corneille, Can make a Cibber, Johnson, or Ozell.

And pray, Sir, why my Name, under this scurvy Picture? I flatter myself, that if you had not put it there, no body else would have thought it like me, nor can I easily believe that you yourself do: but perhaps you imagin’d it would be a laughing Ornament to your Verse, and had a mind to divert other Peoples Spleen with it, as well as your own. Now let me hold up my Head a little, and then we shall see how far the Features hit me! If indeed I had never produc’d any Plays, but those I alter’d of other Authors, your Reflexion then might have had something nearer an Excuse for it: But yet, if many of those Plays have liv’d the longer for my meddling with them, the Sting of your Satyr only wounds the Air, or at best debases it to impotent Railing. For you know very well that Richard the Third, The Fop’s Fortune, The Double Gallant, and some others, that had been dead to the Stage out of all Memory, have since been in a constant course of Acting above these thirty or forty Years. Nor did even Dryden think it any Diminution of his Fame to take the same liberty with The Tempest, and the Troilus and Cressida of Shakespear; and tho’ his Skill might be superior to mine, yet while my Success has been equal to his, why then will you have me so ill-favouredly like the Dunce you have drawn for me? Or do those alter’d Plays at all take from the Merit of those more successful Pieces, which were entirely my own? Is a Tailor, that can make a new Coat well, the worse Workman, because he can mend an old one? When a Man is abus’d, he has a right to speak even laudable Truths of himself, to confront his Slanderer. Let me therefore add, that my first Comedy of The Fool in Fashion was as much (though not so valuable) an Original, as any one Work Mr. Pope himself has produc’d. It is now forty-seven Years since its first Appearance upon the Stage, where it has kept its Station, to this very Day, without ever lying one Winter dormant. And what Part of this Play, Sir, can you charge with a Theft either from any French Author, from Plautus, Fletcher, Congreve, or Corneille? Nine Years after this I brought on The Careless Husband, with still greater Success; and was that too

A patch’d, vamp’d, future, old, reviv’d, new Piece?

Let the many living Spectators of these Plays then judge between us, whether the above Verses, you have so unmercifully besmear’d me with, were fit to come from the honest Heart of a Satyrist, who would be thought, like you, the upright Censor of Mankind. Indeed, indeed, Sir, this Libel was below you! How could you be so wanting to yourself as not to consider, that Satyr, without Truth, tho’ flowing in the finest Numbers, recoils upon its Author, and must, at other times, render him suspected of Prejudice, even where he may be just; as Frauds, in Religion, make more Atheists than Converts? And the bad Heart, Mr. Pope, that points an Injury with Verse, makes it the more unpardonable, as it is not the Result of sudden Passion, but of an indulg’d and slowly meditating Ill-nature; and I am afraid yours, in this Article, is so palpable, that I am almost asham’d to have made it so serious a Reply.

What a merry mixt Mortal has Nature made you? that can thus debase that Strength and Excellence of Genius she has endow’d you with, to the lowest human Weakness, that of offering unprovok’d Injuries; nay, at the Hazard of your being ridiculous too, as you must be, when the Venom you spit falls short of your Aim! For I shall never believe your Verses have done me the Harm you intended, or lost me one Friend, or added a single Soul to the number of my Enemies, though so many thousands that know me, may have read them. How then could your blind Impatience in your Dunciad thunder out such poetical Anathemas on your own Enemies, for doing you no worse Injuries than what you think it no Crime in yourself to offer to another?

In your Remarks upon the above Verses, your Wit, unwilling to have done with me, throws out an ironical Sneer at my Attempts in Tragedy: Let us see how far it disgraces me.

After your quoting the following Paragraph from Jacob’s Lives of the Dramatick Poets, viz.

“Mr. Colley Cibber, an Author, and an Actor, of a good share of
Wit and uncommon Vivacity, which are much improv’d by the
Conversation he enjoys, which is of the best,” &c.

Then say you,

“Mr. Jacob omitted to remark, that he is particularly admirable
in Tragedy.”

Ay, Sir, and your Remark has omitted too, that (with all his Commendations) I can’t dance upon the Rope, or make a Saddle, nor play upon the Organ. Augh! my dear, dear Mr. Pope! how could a Man of your stinging Capacity let so tame, so low a Reflexion escape him? Why this hardly rises above the pretty Malice of Miss Molly Ay, ay, you may think my Sister as handsome as you please, but if you were to see her Legs I know what I know! And so, with all these Imperfections upon me, the Triumph of your Observation amounts to this: That tho’ you should allow, by what Jacob says of me, that I am good for something, yet you notwithstanding have cunningly discover’d, that I am not good for every thing. Well, Sir, and am not I very well off, if you have nothing worse to say of me? But if I have made so many crowded Theatres laugh, and in the right Place too, for above forty Years together, am I to make up the Number of your Dunces, because I have not the equal Talent of making them cry too? Make it your own Case: Is what you have excell’d in at all the worse, for your having so dismally dabbled (as I before observ’d) in the Farce of Three Hours after Marriage? Non omnia possumus omnes, is an allow’d Excuse for the Insufficiencies of all Mankind; and if, as you see, you too must sometimes be forc’d to take shelter under it, as well as myself, what mighty Reason will the World have to laugh at my Weakness in Tragedy, more than at yours in Comedy? Or, to make us Both still easier in the matter, if you will say, you are not asham’d of your Weakness, I will promise you not to be asham’d of mine. Or if you don’t like this Advice, let me give you some from the wiser Spanish Proverb, which says, That a Man should never throw Stones, that has glass Windows in his Head.

Upon the whole, your languid Ill-will in this Remark, makes so sickly a Figure, that one would think it were quite exhausted; for it must run low indeed, when you are reduc’d to impute the want of an Excellence, as a Shame to me. But in ver. 261, your whole Barrel of Spleen seems not to have a Drop more in it, though you have tilted it to the highest: For there you are forc’d to tell a downright Fib, and hang me up in a Light where no body ever saw me: As for Example, speaking of the Absurdity of Theatrical Pantomimes, you say

When lo! to dark Encounter in mid Air New Wizards rise: Here Booth, and Cibber there: Booth, in his cloudy Tabernacle shrin’d, On grinning Dragons Cibber mounts the Wind.

If you, figuratively, mean by this, that I was an Encourager of those Fooleries, you are mistaken; for it is not true: If you intend it literally, that I was Dunce enough to mount a Machine, there is as little Truth in that too: But if you meant it only as a pleasant Abuse, you have done it with infinite Drollery indeed! Beside, the Name of Cibber, you know, always implies Satyr in the Sound, and never fails to keep the Flatness or Modesty of a Verse in countenance.

Some Pages after, indeed, in pretty near the same Light, you seem to have a little negative Kindness for me, ver. 287, where you make poor Settle, lamenting his own Fate, say,

But lo! in me, what Authors have to brag on, Reduc’d at last to hiss, in my own Dragon, Avert it, Heav’n, that thou, or Cibber e’er Should wag two Serpent-Tails in Smithfield Fair.

If this does not imply, that you think me fit for little else, it is only another barren Verse with my Name in it: If it does mean so; whyI wish you may never be toss’d in a Blanket, and so the Kindness is even on both Sides. But again you are at me, ver. 320, speaking of the King of Dunces Reign, you have these Lines:

Beneath whose Reign, Eusden shall wear the Bays,
Cibber preside Lord-Chancellor of Plays.

This I presume you offer as one of the heavy Enormities of the Stage-Government, when I had a Share in it. But as you have not given an Instance in which this Enormity appeard, how is it possible (unless I had your Talent of Self-Commendation) to bring any Proofs in my Favour? I must therefore submit it to Publick Judgment how full your Reflexion hits, or is wide of me, and can only say to it in the mean time, Valeat quantum valere potest.

In your Remark upon the same Lines you say,

“Eusden no sooner died, but his Place of Laureat was supply’d by
Cibber, in the Year 1730, on which was made the following
Epigram.” (May I not believe by yourself?)

In merry Old England, it once was a Rule, The King had his Poet, and also his Fool. But now we’re so frugal, I’d have you to know it, That Cibber can serve both for Fool and for Poet.

Ay, marry Sir! here you souse me with a Witness! This is a Triumph indeed! I can hardly help laughing at this myself; for, Se non e vero, ben Trovato! A good Jest is a good Thing, let it fall upon who it will: I dare say Cibber would never have complain’d of Mr. Pope,

Si sic
Omnia dixisset Juv.

If he had never said any worse of him. But hold, Master Cibber! why may not you as well turn this pleasant Epigram into an involuntary Compliment? for a King’s Fool was no body’s Fool but his Master’s, and had not his Name for nothing; as for Example,

Those Fools of old, if Fame says true,
Were chiefly chosen for their Wit;
Why then, call’d Fools? because, like you
Dear Pope, too Bold in shewing it.

And so, if I am the King’s Fool; now, Sir, pray whose Fool are you? ’Tis pity, methinks, you should be out of Employment: for, if a satyrical Intrepidity, or, as you somewhere call it, a High Courage of Wit, is the fairest Pretence to be the King’s Fool, I don’t know a Wit in the World so fit to fill up the Post as yourself.

Thus, Sir, I have endeavour’d to shake off all the Dirt in your Dunciad, unless of here and there some little Spots of your Ill-will, that were not worth tiring the Reader’s Patience with my Notice of them. But I have some more foul way to trot through still, in your Epistles and Satyrs, &c. Now whether I shall come home the filthy Fellow, or the clean contrary Man to what you make me, I will venture to leave to your own Conscience, though I dare not make the same Trust to your Wit: For that you have often spoke worse (merely to shew your Wit) than you could possibly think of me, almost all your Readers, that observe your Good-nature will easily believe.

However, to shew I am not blind to your Merit, I own your Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (though I there find myself contemptibly spoken of) gives me more Delight in the whole, than any one Poem of the kind I ever read. The only Prejudice or wrong Bias of Judgment, I am afraid I may be guilty of is, when I cannot help thinking, that your Wit is more remarkably bare and barren, whenever it would fall foul upon Cibber, than upon any other Person or Occasion whatsoever: I therefore could wish the Reader may have sometimes considered those Passages, that if I do you Injustice, he may as justly condemn me for it.

In this Epistle ver. 59. of your Folio Edition, you seem to bless yourself, that you are not my Friend! no wonder then, you rail at me! but let us see upon what Occasion you own this Felicity. Speaking of an impertinent Author, who teized you to recommend his Virgin Tragedy to the Stage, you at last happily got rid of him with this Excuse

There (thank my Stars) my whole Commission ends,
Cibber and I, are luckily no Friends.

If you chose not to be mine, Sir, it does not follow, that it was equally my Choice not to be yours: But perhaps you thought me your Enemy, because you were conscious you had injur’d me, and therefore were resolv’d never to forgive Me, because I had it in my Power to forgive You: For, as Dryden says,

Forgiveness, to the Injur’d does belong;
But they ne’er pardon who have done the Wrong.

This, Sir, is the only natural Excuse, I can form, for your being my Enemy. As to your blunt Assertion of my certain Prejudice to any thing, that had your Recommendation to the Stage, which your above Lines would insinuate; I gave you a late Instance in The Miller of Mansfield, that your manner of treating Me had in no sort any Influence upon my Judgment. For you may remember, sometime before that Piece was acted, I accidentally met you, in a Visit to the late General Dormer, who, though he might be your good Friend, was not for that Reason the less a Friend to Me: There you joind with that Gentleman, in asking my Advice and Assistance in that Authors behalf; which as I had read the Piece, though I had then never seen the Man, I gave, in such manner, as I thought might best serve him: And if I dont over-rate my Recommendation, I believe its way to the Stage was made the more easy by it. This Fact, then, does in no kind make good your Insinuation, that my Enmity to you would not suffer me to like any thing that you liked; which though you call your good Fortune in Verse, yet in Prose, you see, it happens not to be true. But I am glad to find, in your smaller Edition, that your Conscience has since given this Line some Correction; for there you have taken off a little of its Edge; it there runs only thus

The Play’rs and I, are luckily no Friends.

This is so uncommon an Instance, of your checking your Temper and taking a little Shame to yourself, that I could not in Justice omit my Notice of it. I am of opinion too, that the Indecency of the next Verse, you spill upon me, would admit of an equal Correction. In excusing the Freedom of your Satyr, you urge that it galls no body, because nobody minds it enough to be mended by it. This is your Plea

Whom have I hurt! has Poet yet, or Peer,
Lost the arched Eye-brow, or Parnassian Sneer?
And has not Colley too his Lord, and Whore? &c.

If I thought the Christian Name of Colley could belong to any other Man than myself, I would insist upon my Right of not supposing you meant this last Line to Me; because it is equally applicable to five thousand other People: But as your Good-will to me is a little too well known, to pass it as imaginable that you could intend it for any one else, I am afraid I must abide it.

Well then! Colley has his Lord and Whore! Now suppose, Sir, upon the same Occasion, that Colley as happily inspired as Mr. Pope, had turned the same Verse upon Him, and with only the Name changed had made it run thus

And has not Sawney too his Lord and Whore?

Would not the Satyr have been equally just? Or would any sober Reader have seen more in the Line, than a wide mouthful of Ill-Manners? Or would my professing myself a Satyrist give me a Title to wipe my foul Pen upon the Face of every Man I did not like? Or would my Impudence be less Impudence in Verse than in Prose? or in private Company? What ought I to expect less, than that you would knock me down for it? unless the happy Weakness of my Person might be my Protection? Why then may I not insist that Colley or Sawney in the Verse would make no Difference in the Satyr! Now let us examine how far there would be Truth in it on either Side.

As to the first Part of the Charge, the Lord; Why we have both had him, and sometimes the same Lord; but as there is neither Vice nor Folly in keeping our Betters Company; the Wit or Satyr of the Verse! can only point at my Lord for keeping such ordinary Company. Well, but if so! then why so, good Mr. Pope? If either of us could be good Company, our being professed Poets, I hope would be no Objection to my Lord’s sometimes making one with us? and though I don’t pretend to write like you, yet all the Requisites to make a good Companion are not confined to Poetry! No, Sir, even a Man’s inoffensive Follies and Blunders may sometimes have their Merits at the best Table; and in those, I am sure, you won’t pretend to vie with me: Why then may not my Lord be as much in the Right, in his sometimes choosing Colley to laugh at, as at other times in his picking up Sawney, whom he can only admire?

Thus far, then, I hope we are upon a par; for the Lord, you see, will fit either of us.

As to the latter Charge, the Whore, there indeed, I doubt you will have the better of me; for I must own, that I believe I know more of your whoring than you do of mine; because I don’t recollect that ever I made you the least Confidence of my Amours, though I have been very near an Eye-Witness of YoursBy the way, gentle Reader, don’t you think, to say only, a Man has his Whore, without some particular Circumstances to aggravate the Vice, is the flattest Piece of Satyr that ever fell from the formidable Pen of Mr. Pope? because (defendit numerus) take the first ten thousand Men you meet, and I believe, you would be no Loser, if you betted ten to one that every single Sinner of them, one with another, had been guilty of the same Frailty. But as Mr. Pope has so particularly picked me out of the Number to make an Example of: Why may I not take the same Liberty, and even single him out for another to keep me in Countenance? He must excuse me, then, if in what I am going to relate, I am reduced to make bold with a little private Conversation: But as he has shewn no Mercy to Colley, why should so unprovok’d an Aggressor expect any for himself? And if Truth hurts him, I can’t help it. He may remember, then (or if he won’t I will) when Button’s Coffee-house was in vogue, and so long ago, as when he had not translated above two or three Books of Homer; there was a late young Nobleman (as much his Lord as mine) who had a good deal of wicked Humour, and who, though he was fond of having Wits in his Company, was not so restrained by his Conscience, but that he lov’d to laugh at any merry Mischief he could do them: This noble Wag, I say, in his usual Gayete de Coeur, with another Gentleman still in Being, one Evening slily seduced the celebrated Mr. Pope as a Wit, and myself as a Laugher, to a certain House of Carnal Recreation, near the Hay-Market; where his Lordship’s Frolick propos’d was to slip his little Homer, as he call’d him, at a Girl of the Game, that he might see what sort of Figure a Man of his Size, Sobriety, and Vigour (in Verse) would make, when the frail Fit of Love had got into him; in which he so far succeeded, that the smirking Damsel, who serv’d us with Tea, happen’d to have Charms sufficient to tempt the little-tiny Manhood of Mr. Pope into the next Room with her: at which you may imagine, his Lordship was in as much Joy, at what might happen within, as our small Friend could probably be in Possession of it: But I (forgive me all ye mortified Mortals whom his fell Satyr has since fallen upon) observing he had staid as long as without hazard of his Health he might, I,

Prick’d to it by foolish Honesty and Love,

As Shakespear says, without Ceremony, threw open the Door upon him, where I found this little hasty Hero, like a terrible Tom Tit, pertly perching upon the Mount of Love! But such was my Surprize, that I fairly laid hold of his Heels, and actually drew him down safe and sound from his Danger. My Lord, who staid tittering without, in hopes the sweet Mischief he came for would have been compleated, upon my giving an Account of the Action within, began to curse, and call me an hundred silly Puppies, for my impertinently spoiling the Sport; to which with great Gravity I reply’d; pray, my Lord, consider what I have done was, in regard to the Honour of our Nation! For would you have had so glorious a Work as that of making Homer speak elegant English, cut short by laying up our little Gentleman of a Malady, which his thin Body might never have been cured of? No, my Lord! Homer would have been too serious a Sacrifice to our Evening Merriment. Now as his Homer has since been so happily compleated, who can say, that the World may not have been obliged to the kindly Care of Colley that so great a Work ever came to Perfection?

And now again, gentle Reader, let it be judged, whether the Lord and the Whore above-mention’d might not, with equal Justice, have been apply’d to sober Sawney the Satyrist, as to Colley the Criminal?

Though I confess Recrimination to be but a poor Defence for one’s own Faults; yet when the Guilty are Accusers, it seems but just, to make use of any Truth, that may invalidate their Evidence: I therefore hope, whatever the serious Reader may think amiss in this Story, will be excused, by my being so hardly driven to tell it.

I could wish too, it might be observed, that whatever Faults I find with the Morals of Mr. Pope, I charge none to his Poetical Capacity, but chiefly to his Ruling Passion, which is so much his Master, that we must allow, his inimitable Verse is generally warmest, where his too fond Indulgence of that Passion inspires it. How much brighter still might that Genius shine, could it be equally inspired by Good-nature!

Now though I may have less Reason to complain of his Severity, than many others, who may have less deserv’d it: Yet by his crowding me into so many of his Satyrs, it is plain his Ill-will is oftner at Work upon Cibber, than upon any Mortal he has had a mind to make a Dunce, or a Devil of: And as there are about half a Score remaining Verses, where Cibber still fills up the Numbers, and which I have not yet produced, I think it will pretty near make good my Observation: Most of them, ’tis true, are so slight Marks of his Disfavour, that I can charge them with little more, than a mere idle Liberty with my Name; I shall therefore leave the greater part of them without farther Observation to make the most of their Meaning. Some few of them however (perhaps from my want of Judgment) seem so ambiguous, as to want a little Explanation.

In his First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace, ver. 86, speaking of the Uncertainty of the publick Judgment upon Dramatick Authors, after naming the best, he concludes his List of them thus:

But for the Passions, Southern sure, and Rowe.
These, only these support the crouded Stage,
From eldest Heywood down to Cibber’s Age.

Here he positively excludes Cibber from any Share in supporting the Stage as an Author; and yet, in the Lines immediately following, he seems to allow it him, by something so like a Commendation, that if it be one, it is at the same time a Contradiction to Cibber’s being the Dunce, which the Dunciad has made of him. But I appeal to the Verses; here they are ver. 87.

All this may be; the Peoples Voice is odd, It is, and it is not the Voice of God. To Gammer Gurton if it give the Bays, And yet deny The Careless Husband Praise.

Now if The Careless Husband deserv’d Praise, and had it, must it not (without comparing it with the Works of the above-cited Authors) have had its Share in supporting the Stage? which Mr. Pope might as well have allow’d it to have had, as to have given it the Commendation he seems to do: I say (seems) because is saying (if) the People deny’d it Praise, seems to imply they had deny’d it; or if they had not deny’d it, (which is true) then his Censure upon the People is false. Upon the whole, the Meaning of these Verses stands in so confus’d a Light, that I confess I don’t clearly discern it. ’Tis true, the late General Dormer intimated to me, that he believ’d Mr. Pope intended them as a Compliment to The Careless Husband; but if it be a Compliment, I rather believe it was a Compliment to that Gentleman’s Good-nature, who told me a little before this Epistle was publish’d, that he had been making Interest for a little Mercy to his Friend Colley in it. But this, it seems, was all he could get for him: However, had his Wit stopt here, and said no more of me, for that Gentleman’s sake, I might have thank’d him: But whatever Restraint he might be under then, after this Gentleman’s Decease we shall see he had none upon him: For now out comes a new Dunciad, where, in the first twenty Lines he takes a fresh Lick at the Laureat; as Fidlers and Prize-fighters always give us a Flourish before they come to the Tune or the Battle in earnest. Come then, let us see what your mighty Mountain is in Labour of? Oh! here we have it! New Dun. ver. 20. Dulness mounts the Throne, &c. and

Soft in her Lap her Laureat Son reclines.

Hah! fast asleep it seems! No, that’s a little too strong. Pert and Dull at least you might have allow’d me; but as seldom asleep as any Fool.Sure your own Eyes could not be open, when so lame and solemn a Conceit came from you: What, am I only to be Dull, and Dull still, and again, and for ever? But this, I suppose, is one of your Decies repetita placebit’s. For, in other Words, you have really said this of me ten times before No, it must be written in a Dream, and according to Drydens Description of dead Midnight too, where, among other strong Images, he gives us this

Even Lust and Envy sleep.

Now, Sir, had not Your Envy been as fast as a fat Alderman in Sermon-time, you would certainly have thrown out something more spirited than so trite a Repetition could come up to. But it is the Nature of Malevolence, it seems, when it gets a spiteful Saying by the end, not to be tired of it so soon as its Hearers are.Well, and what then? you will say; it lets the World see at least, that you are resolv’d to write About me, and About me, to the last. In fine, Mr. Pope, this yawning Wit would make one think you had got into the Laureat’s Place, and were taking a Nap yourself.

But, perhaps, there may be a concealed Brightness in this Verse, which your Notes may more plainly illustrate: let us see then what your fictitious Friend and Flatterer Scriblerus says to it. Why, first he mangles a Paragraph which he quotes from my Apology for my own Life, Chap. 2. and then makes his particular Use of it. But as I have my Uses to make of it as well as himself, I shall beg leave to give it the Reader without his Castrations. He begins it thus,

“When I find my Name in the Satyrical Works of this Poet,” &c.

But I say,

“When I, therefore, find my Name, at length, in the Satyrical
Works of our most celebrated living Author

Now, Sir, I must beg your Pardon, but I cannot think it was your meer Modesty that left out the Title I have given you, because you have so often suffer’d your Friend Scriblerus (that is yourself) in your Notes to make you Compliments of a much higher Nature. But, perhaps, you were unwilling to let the Reader observe, that though you had so often befoul’d my Name in your Satyrs, I could still give you the Language due to a Gentleman, which, perhaps, at the same time too, might have put him in mind of the poor and pitiful Return you have made to it. But to go on with our ParagraphHe again continues it thus

“I never look upon it as any Malice meant to me, but Profit to
himself

But where is my Parenthesis, Mr. Filch? If you are ashamd of it, I have no reason to be so, and therefore the Reader shall have it: My Sentence then runs thus

“I never look upon those Lines as Malice meant to me (for he knows
I never provok’d it) &c.

These last Words indeed might have star’d you too full in the Face, not to have put your Conscience out of countenance. But a Wit of your Intrepidity, I see, is above that vulgar Weakness.

After this sneaking Omission, you have still the same Scruple against some other Lines in the Text to come: But as you serve your Purposes by leaving them out, you must give me leave to serve mine by supplying them. I shall therefore give the Reader the rest entire, and only mark what you don’t choose should be known in Italicks, viz.

“One of his Points must be to have many Readers: He considers, that my Face and Name are more known than those of many Thousands of more Consequence in the Kingdom, that, therefore, right or wrong, a Lick at the Laureat will always be a sure Bait, ad captandum vulgus, to catch him little Readers: And that to gratify the unlearned, by now and then interspersing those merry Sacrifices of an old Acquaintance to their Taste, in a Piece of quite right Poetical Craft.”

Now, Sir, is there any thing in this Paragraph (which you have so maim’d and sneer’d at) that, taken all together, could merit the injurious Reception you have given it? Ought I, for this, to have had the stale Affront of Dull, and Impudent, repeated upon me? or could it have lessen’d the Honour of your Understanding, to have taken this quiet Resentment of your frequent ill Usage in good part? Or had it not rather been a Mark of your Justice and Generosity, not to have pursued me with fresh Instances of your Ill-will upon it? or, on the contrary, could you be so weak as to Envy me the Patience I was master of, and therefore could not bear to be, in any light, upon amicable Terms with me? I hope your Temper is not so unhappy as to be offended, or in pain, when your Insults are return’d with Civilities? or so vainly uncharitable as to value yourself for laughing at my Folly, in supposing you never had any real malicious Intention against me? No, you could not, sure, believe, the World would take it for granted, that every low, vile Thing you had said of me, was evidently true? How then can you hold me in such Derision, for finding your Freedom with my Name, a better Excuse than you yourself are able to give, or are willing to accept of? or, admitting, that my deceived Opinion of your Goodness was so much real Simplicity and Ignorance, was not even That, at least, pardonable? Might it not have been taken in a more favourable Sense by any Man of the least Candour or Humanity? But I am afraid, Mr. Pope, the severely different Returns you have made to it, are Indications of a Heart I want a Name for.

Upon the whole, while you are capable of giving such a trifling Turn to my Patience, I see but very little Hopes of my ever removing your Prejudice: for in your Notes upon the above Paragraph (to which I refer the Reader) you treat me more like a rejected Flatterer, than a Critick: But, I hope, you now find that I have at least taken off that Imputation, by my using no Reserve in shewing the World from what you have said of Me, what I think of You. Had not therefore this last Usage of me been so particular, I scarce believe the Importunity of my Friends, or the Inclination I have to gratify them, would have prevailed with me to have taken this publick Notice of whatever Names you had formerly call’d me.

I have but one Article more of your high-spirited Wit to examine, and then I shall close our Account. In ver. 524 of the same Poem, you have this Expression, viz.

Cibberian Forehead

By which I find you modestly mean Cibber’s Impudence; And, by the Place it stands in, you offer it as a Sample of the strongest Impudence.Sir, your humble ServantBut pray, Sir, in your Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, (where, by the way, in your ample Description of a Great Poet, you slily hook in a whole Hat-full of Virtues to your own Character) have not you this particular Line among them? viz.

And thought a Lye, in Verse or Prose the same.

Now, Sir, if you can get all your Readers to believe me as Impudent as you make me, your Verse, with the Lye in it, may have a good Chance to be thought true: if not, the Lye in your Verse will never get out of it.

This, I confess, is only arguing with the same Confidence that you sometimes write; that is, we both flatly affirm, and equally expect to be believ’d. But here, indeed, your Talent has something the better of me; for any Accusation, in smooth Verse, will always sound well, though it is not tied down to have a Tittle of Truth in it; when the strongest Defence in poor humble Prose, not having that harmonious Advantage, takes no body by the Ear: And yet every one must allow this may be very hard upon an innocent Man: For suppose, in Prose now, I were as confidently to insist, that you were an Honest, Good-natur’d, Inoffensive Creature, would my barely saying so be any Proof of it? No, sure! Why then might it not be suppos’d an equal Truth, that Both our Assertions were equally false? Yours, when you call me Impudent; Mine, when I call you Modest, &c. If, indeed, you could say, that with a remarkable Shyness, I had avoided any Places of publick Resort, or that I had there met with Coldness, Reproof, Insult, or any of the usual Rebuffs that Impudence is liable to, or had been reduced to retire from that part of the World I had impudently offended, your Cibberian Forehead then might have been as just and as sore a Brand as the Hangman could have apply’d to me. But as I am not yet under that Misfortune, and while the general Benevolence of my Superiors still suffers me to stand my ground, or occasionally to sit down with them, I hope it will be thought that rather the Papal, than the Cibberian Forehead, ought to be out of Countenance. But it is time to have done with you.

In your Advertisement to your first Satyr of your second Book of Horace, you have this just Observation.

To a true Satyrist, nothing is so odious, as a Libeller.

Now, that you are often an admirable Satyrist, no Man of true Taste can deny: But, that you are always a True (that is a just) one, is a Question not yet decided in your Favour. I shall not take upon me to prove the Injuries of your Pen, which many candid Readers, in the behalf of others, complain of: But if the gross things you have said of so inconsiderable a Man as myself, have exceeded the limited Province of a true Satyrist, they are sufficient to have forfeited your Claim to that Title. For if a Man, from his being admitted the best Poet, imagines himself so much lifted above the World, that he has a Right to run a muck, and make sport with the Characters of all Ranks of People, to soil and begrime every Face that is obnoxious to his ungovernable Spleen or Envy: Can so vain, so inconsiderate, so elated an Insolence, amongst all the Follies he has lash’d, and laugh’d at, find a Subject fitter for Satyr than Himself? How many other different good Qualities ought such a Temper to have in Balance of this One bad one, this abuse of his Genius, by so injurious a Pride and Self-sufficiency? And though it must be granted, that a true Genius never grows in a barren Soil, and therefore implies, that great Parts and Knowledge only could have produced it; Yet it must be allow’d too, that the fairest Fruits of the Mind may lose a great deal of their naturally delicious Taste, when blighted by Ill-nature. How strict a Guard then ought the true Satyrist to set upon his private Passions! How clear a Head! a Heart how candid, how impartial, how incapable of Injustice! What Integrity of Life, what general Benevolence, what exemplary Virtues ought that happy Man to be master of, who, from such ample Merit, raises himself to an Office of that Trust and Dignity, as that of our Universal Censor? A Man so qualified, indeed, might be a truly publick Benefit, such a one, and only such a one, might have an uncontested Right

To point the Pen,
Brand the bold Front of shameless, guilty Men;
Dash the proud Gamester, in his gilded Car,
Bare the mean Heart that lurks beneath a Star.

But should another (though of equal Genius) whose Mind were either sourd by Ill-nature, personal Prejudice, or the Lust of Railing, usurp that Province to the Abuse of it. Not all his pompous Power of Verse could shield him from as odious a Censure, as such, his guilty Pen could throw upon the Innocent, or undeserving to be slanderd. What then must be the Consequence? Why naturally this: That such an Indulgence of his Passions, so let loose upon the World, would, at last, reduce him to fly from it! For sure the Avoidance, the Slights, the scouling Eyes of every mixt Company he might fall into, would be a Mortification no vain-glorious Man would stand, that had a Retreat from it. Here then, let us suppose him an involuntary Philosopher, affecting to beNunquam minus solus, quam cum solusnever in better Company than when alone: But as you have well observed in your Essay

Not always Actions shew the Man
Not therefore humble He, who seeks Retreat,
Guilt guides his Steps, and makes him shun the Great.

(I beg your Pardon, I have made a Mistake; Your Verse says Pride guides his Steps, &c. which, indeed, makes the Antithesis to Humble much stronger, and more to your Purpose; but it will serve mine as it is, so the Error is scarce worth a Correction.) But to return to our Satyrical Exile,Whom though we have supposed to be oftner alone, than an inoffensive Man need wish to be; yet we must imagine that the Fame of his Wit would sometimes bring him Company: For Wits, like handsome Women, though they wish one another at the Devil, are my Dear, and my Dear! whenever they meet: Nay some Men are so fond of Wit, that they would mix with the Devil himself if they could laugh with him: If therefore any of this careless Cast came to kill an Hour with him, how would his smiling Verse gloss over the Curse of his Confinement, and with a flowing animated Vanity commemorate the peculiar Honours they had paid him?

But alas! would his high Heart be contented, in his having the Choice of his Acquaintance so limited? How many for their Friends, others for themselves, and some too in the Dread of being the future Objects of his Spleen, would he feel had undesired the Knowledge or the Sight of him! But what’s all this to you, Mr. Pope? For, as Shakespear says, Let the gall’d Horse wince, our Withers are unwrung! But however, if it be not too late, it can do you no harm to look about you: For if this is not as yet your Condition, I remember many Years ago, to have seen you, though in a less Degree, in a Scrape, that then did not look, as if you would be long out of another. When you used to pass your Hours at Button’s, you were even there remarkable for your satyrical Itch of Provocation; scarce was there a Gentleman of any Pretension to Wit, whom your unguarded Temper had not fallen upon, in some biting Epigram; among which you once caught a Pastoral Tartar, whose Resentment, that your Punishment might be proportion’d to the Smart of your Poetry, had stuck up a Birchen Rod in the Room, to be ready, whenever you might come within reach of it; and at this rate you writ and rallied, and writ on, till you rhym’d yourself quite out of the Coffee-house. But if Solitude pleases you, who shall say you are not in the right to enjoy it? Perhaps too, by this time you may be upon a par with Mankind, and care as little for their Company as they do for Yours: Though I rather hope you have chosen to be so shut up, in order to make yourself a better Man. If you succeed in that, you will indeed be, what no body else, in haste will be, A better Poet, than you Are. And so, Sir, I am, just as much as you believe me to be,

Your Humble Servant,

COLLEY CIBBER.

July the 7th 1742.