logy for what has been called his
"effrontery"--perhaps a modest man, and undoubtedly a man of
genius--his humorous defence of his deficiency in Tragedy, both
in acting and writing--Pope more hurt at being exposed as a
ridiculous lover than as a bad man--an account of "The Egotist, or
Colley upon Cibber," a kind of supplement to the "Apology for his
life," in which he has drawn his own character with great freedom
and spirit.

Pope's quarrel with Cibber may serve to check the haughtiness of
genius; it is a remarkable instance how good-humour can gently draw a
boundary round the arbitrary power, whenever the wantonness of satire
would conceal calumny. But this quarrel will become even more
interesting, should it throw a new light on the character of one whose
originality of genius seems little suspected. Cibber showed a happy
address in a very critical situation, and obtained an honourable
triumph over the malice of a great genius, whom, while he complained
of he admired, and almost loved the cynic.

Pope, after several "flirts," as Cibber calls them, from slight
personal motives, which Cibber has fully opened,[212] at length from
"peevish weakness," as Lord Orford has happily expressed it, closed
his insults by dethroning Theobald, and substituting Cibber; but as he
would not lose what he had already written, this change disturbed the
whole decorum of the satiric fiction. Things of opposite natures,
joined into one, became the poetical chimera of Horace. The hero of
the _Dunciad_ is neither Theobald nor Cibber; Pope forced a dunce to
appear as Cibber; but this was not making Cibber a dunce. This error
in Pope emboldened Cibber in the contest, for he still insisted that
the satire did not apply to him;[213] and humorously compared the
libel "to a purge with a wrong label," and Pope "to an apothecary who
did not mind his business."[214]

Cibber triumphed in the arduous conflict--though sometimes he felt
that, like the Patriarch of old, he was wrestling, not with an
equal, but one of celestial race, "and the hollow of his thigh was
out of joint." Still, however, he triumphed, by that singular
felicity of character, that inimitable _gaiete de coeur_, 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 enjoyme