edit the plays of Shakspeare with
greatly more ability and acuteness than himself had brought to the
task. His dislike had no better foundation. Neither the works, the
character, nor the associations of the man authorized his elevation to
the throne of dulness. The disproportion between the subject and the
satire instantly impresses the reader. After the first explosion of
his malice, it impressed Pope; and anxious to redeem his error, he
sought diligently for some plan of dethroning Tibbald, and raising
another to the vacant seat. Cibber, in the mean time, was elevated to
the laurel, and that by statesmen whom it was the fate of Pope to
detest in secret, and yet not dare to attack in print. The Fourth Book
of the "Dunciad" appeared in 1742, and its attacks were mainly
levelled at the Laureate. The Laureate replied in a pamphlet,
deprecating the poet's injustice, and declaring his unconsciousness of
any provocation for these reiterated assaults. At the same time he
announced his determination to carry on the war in prose as long as
the satirist should wage it in verse,--pamphlet for poem, world
without end. Hostilities were now fairly established. Pope issued a
fresh edition of his satire complete. The change he had long coveted
he now made. The name of Cibber was substituted throughout for that of
Theobald, the portraiture remaining the same. Johnson properly
ridicules the absurdity of leaving the heavy traits of Theobald on the
canvas, and simply affixing the name of his mercurial contemporary
beneath; and, indeed, there is much reason to doubt whether the mean
jealousy which inspired the first "Dunciad," or the blundering rage
which disfigured the second, is in the worse taste. Cibber kept his
engagement, replying in pamphlet. The immediate victory was
unquestionably his. Morbidly sensitive to ridicule, Pope suffered
acutely. Richardson, who found him once with the Cibberine leaves in
his hand, declared his persuasion, from the spectacle of rage,
vexation, and mortification he witnessed, that the poet's death
resulted from the strokes of the Laureate. If so, we must concede him
to have been the victor who laid his adversary at his feet on the
field. Posterity, however, which listens only to the satirist, has
judged differently and unjustly.[13] Theobald, though of no original
talent, was certainly, in his generation, the most successful
illustrator of Shakspeare, and the first, though Rowe and Pope had
preceded him i