A Letter from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope

by Colley Cibber

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?