Pope claimed he attacked only those who had attacked him. It seems
strange that, among the inimical host who had indulged in verbal
violence, he should have revised his satire against the one man who had
not contributed to the paper war, and who had, in his _Apology_, made
humble acknowledgment of Pope's gifts: "How terrible a Weapon is Satyr
in the hands of a great Genius?" Cibber asks, remarking on Pope's acid
portrait of Addison, and adds:

But the Pain which the Acrimony of those Verses gave me is, in some
measure, allay'd in finding that this inimitable Writer, as he
advances in Years, has since had Candour enough to celebrate the
same Person for his visible Merit. Happy Genius! whose Verse, like
the Eye of Beauty, can heal the deepest Wounds with the least
Glance of Favour.[6]

Even stranger is that with such eminent and vocal enemies as Lord Hervey
and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, he should have been concerned with a
seventy-year-old semi-retired player who was too ineffectual, it would
appear, to be a proper target for his great satire, and whose words in
print could never have been a real threat.

The words "in print" are important, especially with reference to Cibber.
As far as direct attack in the form of broadsides, pamphlets and the
like, Cibber is clearly innocent; however, like many actors, he was an
expert improvisator of stage dialogue, and this in itself is a reason to
believe that his side of the feud was kept up from the theater platform.
A more potent and public method of ridicule would be difficult to
devise.

Stage warfare was as prevalent as paper warfare, as Cibber's mockery of
_Three Hours after Marriage_ suggests, and as the prologues and
epilogues amply demonstrate. _The Non-Juror_ (1719) with its
anti-Catholic remarks and its Jesuit villain played by Cibber himself,
has several barbs directed at Pope.[7]

If Pope's wounds had been festering since 1715, he had a perfect
opportunity to avenge them in the _Dunciad Variorum_ of 1729. When Gay's
_Polly_ was suppressed that year, Cibber was accused of being
responsible (though it was never proved),[8] since he had first refused
_The Beggar's Opera_, and then failed miserably to imitate its success
with his own _Love in a Riddle_. He was at this time more widely known
than Theobald, and had been a favorite target for anti-Hanoverians since
_The Non-Juror_.[9] It is very odd that Pope should have ignored this
chan