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.”
His father, Caius Gabriel Cibber, an artist, sculptured the statues of two lunatics over the gates of Bedlam hospital. Although the artistic work was creditable, Pope made the father’s hand the medium of a savage attack on the son in the first book of the “Dunciad,” which was written for the purpose of making Eusden and Cibber, the laureates of George II., ridiculous. He thus introduces them as dunces:
“Still Dunce the Second reigns like Dunce the First.”
And thus he makes the father’s art serve his wicked purpose:
“Close to those walls where Folly holds her throne,
When o’er the gates, by his famed father’s hand,
Great Cibber’s brazen, brainless brothers stand.”