In a footnote it was explained that the Cibberian forehead was to fit her devotees for self-interest and self-conceit, while the Cimmerian gloom qualified them for the pleasures of the opera and the table. Cibber was not thin-skinned, but he was tired of these repeated insults, and, being devoid of all scruple, he retorted after a fashion that must have given his opponent the maximum of annoyance, at the expenditure of a very moderate amount of wit. In July he published a shilling pamphlet entitled, "A Letter from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope, inquiring into the motives that might induce him in his Satyrical Works, to be so frequently fond of Mr. Cibber's Name."

Cibber begins by explaining that he had been stoically silent for a long time under Mr. Pope's satirical favours, but that at last his friends have spirited him up to the contest. As for his work, that must speak for itself.

"I wrote," he says, "more to be fed than to be famous, and since my writings still give me a dinner, do you rhyme me out of my stomach if you can. And I own myself so contented a Dunce, that I would not have even your merited fame in poetry, if it were to be attended with half the fretful solicitude you seem to have lain under to maintain it. . . It is almost amazing that you, who have writ with such masterly spirit upon the ruling passion, should be so blind a slave to your own, as not to have seen how far a low avarice of praise might prejudice or debase that valuable character which your works, without your own commendatory and notes upon them, might have maintained."

In the Preface to "The Dunciad" Pope declared that he had attacked no man living in the Poem who had not before published some scandal against himself. In a note, however, he had excepted two or three persons, whose dulness or scurrility had justly entitled them to a place in "The Dunciad." Cibber observes that there was no reason for the inclusion of himself among the dunces, since he had always been one of the warmest admirers of Pope's works, and he had never uttered an ill word against him. He might indeed be dull-that was a misfortune rather than a crime-but he had never been guilty of scurrility. At the same time, he admits that he had once unintentionally offended the poet by putting a bit of harmless gag about Three Hours after Marriage into the mouth of Bays, the hero of The Rehearsal. He recounts at some length the story of the quarrel that ensued. Having dealt with some of the unflattering allusions to himself scattered throughout Pope's writings, he dwells particularly on the line

And has not Colley too his lord and whore?

As to the charge about the lord, he points out that "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." Turning to the second accusation, he relates a graceless anecdote of an escapade of Pope's youthful days, when he was the boon companion of certain wild young lords. Nothing, probably, would have given more annoyance

to the self-appointed moralist than such a tale, which would delight his enemies and amuse his friends. So intense was Pope's fury that he was willing to sacrifice one of his finest works in order to revenge himself upon the author of this ribald attack.'

At first, however, the poet pretended to be amused at the onslaught of so insignificant an assailant. On July 23 he wrote to a friend :

"Cibber is printing a letter to me of the expostulatory kind in prose. God knows when I shall read it when it is published, and perhaps I may send to ask your account of it. Your opinion whether or not to answer it, I need not ask. He swears he will have the last word with me, upon which I have seen an epigram :

You will have the last word, after all that is past,

And 'tis certain, dear Cibber, that you may speak last; But your reas'ning, God help you, is none of the strongest, For know the last word is the word that lasts longest."

1 "Cibber triumphed over Pope by that singular felicity of character, that inimitable gaieté de cœur, that honest simplicity of truth, from which flowed so warm an admiration of the genius of his adversary; and that exquisite tact in the characters of men, which carried down this child of airy humour to the verge of his ninetieth year, with all the enjoyments of strong animal spirits, and all that innocent egotism which became frequently a source of his own raillery” (Isaac Disraeli).