or published some Scandal against you."

How comes it, I say, that you have so often fallen foul upon _Cibber_
then, against whom you have no Complaint, nor whose Name is so much as
mentioned in the printed List you have given us of all those high
Offenders, you so imperiously have proscribed and punish'd. Under this
Class at least, you acquit him of having ever provoked you?

But in your Notes, to this Preface (that is, in your Notes upon Notes)
from this general Declaration, you make an Exception,--"Of two, or three
Persons only, whose Dulness or Scurrility all Mankind agreed, to have
justly intitled them to a Place in the _Dunciad_." Here then, or no
where, you ground your Pretence of taking Me into it! Now let us enquire
into the Justness of this Pretence, and whether Dulness in one Author
gives another any right to abuse him for it? No sure! Dulness can be no
Vice or Crime, or is at worst but a Misfortune, and you ought no more
to censure or revile him for it, than for his being blind or lame; the
Cruelty or Injustice will be evidently equal either way. But if you
please I will wave this part of my Argument, and for once take no
advantage of it; but will suppose Dulness to be actually Criminal, and
then will leave it to your own Conscience, to declare, whether you
really think I am generally so guilty of it, as to deserve the Name of
the Dull Fellow you make of me. Now if the Reader will call upon My
Conscience to speak to the Question, I do from my Heart solemnly
declare, that I don't believe you _do_ think so of me. This I grant may
be Vanity in me to say: But if what I believe is true, what a slovenly
Conscience do you shew your Face with?

Now, Sir, as for my Scurrility, when ever a Proof can be produced, that
I have been guilty of it to you, or any one Man living, I will
shamefully unsay all I have said, and confess I have deserv'd the
various Names you have call'd me.

Having therefore said enough to clear my self of any Ill-will or Enmity
to Mr. _Pope_, I should be glad he were able equally to acquit himself
to Me, that I might not suppose the satyrical Arrows he has shot at me,
to have flown from that Malignity of Mind, which the talking World is so
apt to accuse him of. In the mean while, it may be worth the trouble to
weigh the Truth, or Validity of the Wit he has bestow'd upon me, that it
may appear, which of us is the worse Man for it; He, for his unprovoked
Endeavour to vilify and expose me, or-