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 join’d with that Gentleman, in asking my Advice and Assistance in that Author’s 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 don’t 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.