'Law,' says his biographer,'measured his strength with some of the very ablest men of his day, with men like Hoadly and Warburton, and Tindal and Wesley; and it may safely be said that he never came forth from the contest defeated. But, absurd as it may sound, it is perfectly true that what neither Hoadly nor Warburton, nor Tindal, nor Wesley could do, was done by John Dennis.... "Plays," wrote Law, "are contrary to Scripture as the devil is to God, as the worship of images is to the second commandment." To this Dennis gave the obvious and unanswerable retort that "when St. Paul was at Athens, the very source of dramatic poetry, he said a great deal publicly against the idolatry of the Athenians, but not one word against their stage. At Corinth he said as little against theirs. He quoted on one occasion an Athenian dramatic poet, and on others Aratus and Epimenides. He was educated in all the learning of the Grecians, and could not but have read their dramatic poems; and yet, so far from speaking a word against them, he makes use of them for the instruction and conversion of mankind."'
Dennis's pamphlet, The Stage defended from Scripture, Reason, Experience, and the Common Sense of Mankind for Two Thousand Years, was published in 1726. In his latter days he suffered from two grievous calamities, poverty and blindness. In 1733 Vanbrugh's play, The Provoked Husband, was acted for his benefit, and his old enemy Pope wrote the prologue, of which the sarcasm is more conspicuous than the kindness. There is a story, to which allusion is made in the Dunciad, that Dennis had invented some kind of theatrical thunder, and how, being once present at a tragedy, he fell into a great passion because his art had been appropriated, and cried out ''Sdeath! that is my thunder.' The critic was also known to have an intense hatred of the French and of the Pope, and these peculiarities are not forgotten in the prologue.
After saying that Dennis lay pressed by want and weakness, his doubtful friend adds:
'How changed from him who made the boxes groan,
And shook the stage with thunders all his own!
Stood up to dash each vain Pretender's hope,
Maul the French tyrant, or pull down the Pope!
If there's a Briton then, true bred and born,
Who holds Dragoons and wooden shoes in scorn;
If there's a critic of distinguished rage;
If there's a senior who contemns this age;
Let him to-night his just assistance lend,
And be the Critic's, Briton's, Old Man's friend.'
Dennis got £100 by this benefit, but had little time in which to spend it, for he died about a fortnight afterwards at the age of seventy-seven. Upon his death Aaron Hill wrote some memorial verses, in which he prophesies that, while the critic's frailties will be no longer remembered,
'The rising ages shall redeem his name,
And nations read him into lasting fame.'
It will be seen that the poets did not all treat Dennis unkindly. If praise were substantial food, he would have had enough to sustain him from 'glorious John' alone.
Colley Cibber (1671-1757).
Colley Cibber holds a more prominent place than Dennis in the list of men whom Pope selected for attack. He could not have chosen one more impervious to assault. The poet's anger excited Cibber's mirth, his satire contributed to his content. The comedian's unbounded self-satisfaction and good humour, his vivacity and spirits, were proof against Pope's malice. Graceless he may have been, but a dullard the mercurial 'King Colley' was not.
Born in 1671, he disappointed the hopes of his father, the famous sculptor, and at the age of eighteen made his first appearance on the stage. As actor and as dramatist, the theatre throughout his life was Cibber's all-absorbing interest. His first play, Love's Last Shift (1696), kept possession of the stage for forty years, and his best play, The Careless Husband (1704), received a like welcome. As an actor he was also successful, and played for £50 a night, the highest sum ever given at that time to any English player. His career was as long as it was prosperous. 'Old Cibber plays to-night,' Horace Walpole wrote in 1741, 'and all the world will be there.'