His butchers Henley? his freemasons Moore?"
Cibber's anecdote cannot be defended on the ground of decency, but it is extremely ludicrous, and in the state of society then existing it must have been a knock-down blow to the unhappy subject of it. There can be little doubt that it was this pamphlet which Pope received on the occasion when the Richardsons visited him, as related by Johnson in his Life of the poet: "I have heard Mr. Richardson relate that he attended his father the painter on a visit, when one of Cibber's pamphlets came into the hands of Pope, who said, 'These things are my diversion.' They sat by him while he perused it, and saw his features writhing with anguish: and young Richardson said to his father, when they returned, that he hoped to be preserved from such diversion as had been that day the lot of Pope." How deeply Pope was galled by Cibber's ludicrous picture of him is manifested by the extraordinary revenge he took. And even now we can realize the bitterness of the provocation when we read the maliciously comic story of the vivacious Colley:—
"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 Yours——By 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 Gayetè de Cœur, with another Gentleman still in Being,[219] 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-mentioned 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."