Johnson says, that though “Pope attacked Cibber with acrimony, the provocation is not easily discoverable.” But the statements of Cibber, which have never been contradicted, show sufficient motives to excite the poetic irascibility. It was Cibber’s “fling” at the unowned and condemned comedy of the triumvirate of wits, Pope, Gay, and Arbuthnot, Three Hours after Marriage, when he performed Bayes in the Rehearsal, that incurred the immortal odium. There was no malice on Cibber’s side; for it was then the custom to restore the zest of that obsolete dramatic satire, by introducing allusions to any recent theatrical event. The plot of this ridiculous comedy hinging on the deep contrivance of two lovers getting access to the wife of a virtuoso, “one curiously swathed up like an Egyptian mummy, and the other slily covered in the pasteboard skin of a crocodile,” was an incident so extremely natural, that it seemed congenial with the high imagination and the deep plot of a Bayes! Poor Cibber, in the gaiety of his impromptu, made the “fling;” and, unluckily, it was applauded by the audience! The irascibility of Pope too strongly authenticated one of the three authors. “In the swelling of his heart, after the play was over, he came behind the scenes with his lips pale and his voice trembling, to call me to account for the insult; and accordingly fell upon me with all the foul language that a wit out of his senses would be capable of, choked with the foam of his passion.” Cibber replied with dignity, insisted on the privilege of the character, and that he would repeat the same jest as long as the public approved of it. Pope would have certainly approved of Cibber’s manly conduct, had he not been the author himself. To this circumstance may be added the reception which the town and the court bestowed on Cibber’s “Nonjuror,” a satire on the politics of the jacobite faction; Pope appears, under the assumed name of Barnevelt, to have published “an odd piece of wit, proving that the Nonjuror, in its design, its characters, and almost every scene of it, was a closely-couched jacobite libel against the Government.” Cibber says that “this was so shrewdly maintained, that I almost liked the jest myself.” Pope seems to have been fond of this new species of irony; for, in the Pastorals of Phillips, he showed the same sort of ingenuity, and he repeated the same charge of political mystery against his own finest poem; for he proved by many “merry inuendoes,” that “The Rape of the Lock” was as audacious a libel as the pretended Barnevelt had made out the Nonjuror to be. See note, p. [280].
Cibber did not obtrude himself in this contest. Had he been merely a poor vain creature, he had not preserved so long a silence. His good-temper was without anger, but he remonstrates with no little dignity, when he chooses to be solemn; though to be playful was more natural to him. “If I have lain so long stoically silent, or unmindful of your satirical favours, it was not so much for want of a proper reply, as that I thought there never needed a public one; for all people of sense would know what truth or falsehood there was in what you said of me, without my wisely pointing it out to them. Nor did I choose to follow your example, of being so much a self-tormentor, as to be concerned at whatever opinion of me any published invective might infuse into people unknown to me. Even the malicious, though they may like the libel, don’t always believe it.” His reason for reply is, that his silence should not be farther reproached “as a plain confession of my being a bankrupt in wit, if I don’t immediately answer those bills of discredit you have drawn upon me.” There is no doubt that Cibber perpetually found instigators to encourage these attacks; and one forcible argument he says was, that “a disgrace, from such a pen, would stick upon me to posterity.” He seems to be aware that his acquaintance cheer him to the lists “for their particular amusement.”
“His edition of Shakspeare proved no better than a foil to set off the superiority of Theobald’s; and Cibber bore away the palm from him in the drama. We have an account of two attempts of Pope’s, one in each of the two principal branches of this species of poetry, and both unsuccessful. The fate of the comedy has been already mentioned (in page 300), and the tragedy was saved from the like fate by one not less ignominious, being condemned and burnt by his own hands. It was called Cleone, and formed upon the same story as a late one wrote and published by Mr. Dodsley with the same title in 1759. See Dodsley’s Preface.”—Biographia Britannica, 1760.
Armstrong, who was a keen observer of man, has expressed his uncommon delight in the company of Cibber. “Beside his abilities as a writer (as a writer of comedies, Armstrong means), and the singular variety of his powers as an actor, he was to the last one of the most agreeable, cheerful, and best-humoured men you would ever wish to converse with.”—Warton’s Pope, vol. iv. 160.
Cibber was one of those rare beings whose dispositions Hume describes “as preferable to an inheritance of 10,000l. a year.”
Dr. Aikin, in his Biographical Dictionary, has thus written on Cibber: “It cannot be doubted, that, at the time, the contest was more painful to Pope than to Cibber. But Pope’s satire is immortal, whereas Cibber’s sarcasms are no longer read. Cibber may therefore be represented to future times with less credit for abilities than he really deserves; for he was certainly no dunce, though not, in the higher sense of the word, a man of genius. His effrontery and vanity could not be easily overcharged, even by a foe. Indeed, they are striking features in the portrait drawn by himself.” Dr. Aikin’s political morality often vented its indignation at the successful injustice of great power! Why should not the same spirit conduct him in the Literary Republic? With the just sentiments he has given on Cibber, it was the duty of an intrepid critic to raise a moral feeling against the despotism of genius, and to have protested against the arbitrary power of Pope. It is participating in the injustice to pass it by, without even a regret at its effect.