NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
[1] Not even the winner of the contest has been beyond dispute. 150 years afterward, Robert W. Lowe, “Supplementary Chapter to Colley Cibber’s Apology” in his edition of An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian, and Late Patentee of the Theatre-Royal (London: J. C. Nimmo, 1889), II, 270, remarks on Cibber’s later years: “His [Cibber’s] state of mind was probably the more ‘chearful and contented’ because of his unquestionable success in his tilt with the formidable author of ‘The Dunciad;’ a success none the less certain at the time, that the enduring fame of Pope has caused Cibber’s triumph over him to be lost sight of now.”
[2] Norman Ault, New Light on Pope (London: Methuen, 1949), pp. 298-307.
[3] George Paston [Emily Morse Symmonds], Mr. Pope His Life and Times (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1909), I, 197.
[4] Alexander Pope, Works, ed. William Warburton (London: J. and P. Knapton, 1751), V, 86 (Book I, line 108). Griffith 643. This is a note to the variations on lines 108ff: “But chief in BAYS’S monster-breeding breast” and the wording is slightly altered from the earlier note quoted in the Twickenham edition, V, 75, Dunciad (A), Book I, line 106n.
[5] J. V. Guerinot, Pamphlet Attacks on Alexander Pope 1711-1744 (New York: New York University Press, 1969), lists 15 pamphlets between 1724 and the publication of the first Dunciad, but he does not include the frequent newspaper comments.
[6] Cibber, I, 38-39.
[7] William H. Peterson, “Pope and Cibber’s The Non-Juror” MLN, LXX (May, 1955), 332-335. Three instances are given:
1. Maria, the coquette, quotes The Rape of the Lock with great relish. The praise is in the wrong mouth.
2. Maria speaks slightingly of her English version of Homer. Pope’s last volume had just come out.
3. Dr. Wolf refers to “Eloisa and Abelard” in his second attempt to seduce Lady Woodvil. The argument is twisted out of context.
These elements, combined with the strong anti-Catholic sentiment, would certainly point attention toward Pope, and, in any case, were not calculated to please him.
[8] See R. H. Barker, Mr. Cibber of Drury Lane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), p. 151.
[9] Cibber’s supposition that Pope wrote the Clue to the Non-Juror has subsequently been established as correct. See Ault, pp. 303-313.
[10] Epistle to Arbuthnot, 97. It should be noted here that Cibber misquotes the line, a failing habitual to him. The anonymous pamphlet, A Blast upon Bays; or, a New Lick at the Laureat, which appeared shortly after the Letter, points out rather severely the difference in meaning between Cibber’s “too” and Pope’s “still”, maintaining a mistress twenty years after the events, A Blast is as heated in defense of Pope as it is in attack against Cibber, but it offers no evidence; aside from Pope’s original line, it is the only charge of this kind among contemporary attacks.
[11] Colley Cibber, The Provoked Husband (London, 1728), Preface.
[12] Two examples from the Birth-day Odes will give some idea of the Cibberian quality:
Her Fleets, that now the Seas command,
Were late upon her Forests growing;
Her wholesome Stores, for every Band,
As late within her Fields were sowing. (1741)
Behold! in clouds of fire serene,
The royal hero heads his pow’rs:
Alike to fame, with raptures seen,
His younger hope, the eaglet soars.
Fortune, to grace her fav’rite son,
Stamps on his bleeding form renown. (1743)
[13] James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, rev. L. F. Powell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), I, 402.
[14] Boswell, II, 92-93.
[15] Thomas Davies, Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, Esq. (London, 1780), II, 202.
[16] In the Twickenham Edition of The Dunciad (London: Methuen, 2nd ed. rev., 1953, pp. xxxiii-xxxiv and (B) 341), James Sutherland refers to line 20 (“Soft on her lap her Laureat son reclines”) and holds that Cibber’s answer may have been less a protest than a warning. In The New Dunciad (1742), however, the footnote to this line expands the satire, quotes from the Apology and is a sharper attack than the line itself.
[17] Paston, I, 687.
[18] Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes and Characters of Books and Men, ed. James M. Osborn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), I, 110 (no. 251).
[19] Alexander Pope, Correspondence, ed. George Sherburn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), IV, 415.
[20] Spence, I, 148-149 (no. 331).
[21] Pope, Works, V. 89 (Book I, line 109n). This verse appears in the Twickenham edition, V, 276, as a note to Dunciad (B) Book I, line 104.