Author. Be it so! But still that does not always make it necessary; for though slander, by their not weighing it, may pass upon some few people of sense for truth, and might draw great numbers of the vulgar into its party, the mischief 311 can never be of long duration. A satirical slander, that has no truth to support it, is only a great fish upon dry land: it may flounce and fling, and make a fretful pother, but it wont bite you; you need not knock it on the head; it will soon lie still, and die quietly of itself.
Frankly. The single-sheet critics will find you employment.
Author. Indeed they wont. I’m not so mad as to think myself a match for the invulnerable.
Frankly. Have a care; there’s Foulwit; though he can’t feel, he can bite.
Author. Ay, so will bugs and fleas; but that’s only for sustenance: everything must feed, you know; and your creeping critics are a sort of vermin, that if they could come to a king, would not spare him; yet, whenever they can persuade others to laugh at their jest upon me, I will honestly make one of the number; but I must ask their pardon, if that should be all the reply I can afford them.”
This “boy of seventy odd,” for such he was when he wrote “The Egotist,” unfolds his character by many lively personal touches. He declares he could not have “given the world so finished a coxcomb as Lord Foppington, if he had not found a good deal of the same stuff in himself to make him with.” He addresses “A Postscript, To those few unfortunate Readers and Writers who may not have more sense than the Author:” and he closes, in all the fulness of his spirit, with a piece of consolation for those who are so cruelly attacked by superior genius.
“Let us then, gentlemen, who have the misfortune to lie thus at the mercy of those whose natural parts happen to be stronger than our own—let us, I say, make the most of our sterility! Let us double and treble the ranks of our thickness, that we may form an impregnable phalanx, and stand every way in front to the enemy! or, would you still be liable to less hazard, lay but yourselves down, as I do, flat and quiet upon your faces, when Pride, Malice, Envy, Wit, or Prejudice let fly their formidable shot at you, what odds is it they don’t all whistle over your head? Thus, too, though we may want the artillery of missive wit to make reprisals, we may at least in security bid them kiss the tails we have turned to them. Who knows but, by this our supine, or rather prone serenity, their disappointed valour may become their own vexation? Or let us yet, at worst, but solidly stand our ground, like so many defensive stone-posts, and we may defy the 312 proudest Jehu of them all to drive over us. Thus, gentlemen, you see that Insensibility is not without its comforts; and as I give you no worse advice than I have taken myself, and found my account in, I hope you will have the hardness to follow it, for your own good and the glory of
“Your impenetrable humble servant,
“C. C.”
After all, one may perceive, that though the good-humour of poor Cibber was real, still the immortal satire of Pope had injured his higher feelings. He betrays his secret grief at his close, while he seems to be sporting with his pen; and though he appears to confide in the falsity of the satire as his best chance for saving him from it, still he feels that the caustic ink of such a satirist must blister and spot wherever it falls. The anger of Warburton, and the sternness of Johnson, who seem always to have considered an actor as an inferior being among men of genius, have degraded Cibber. They never suspected that “a blockhead of his size could do what wiser men could not,” and, as a fine comic genius, command a whole province in human nature.