y natural_, that it seemed congenial
with the high imagination and the deep plot of a Bayes!
Poor Cibber, in the gaiety of his _impromptu_, made the
"fling;" and, unluckily, it was applauded by the audience!
The irascibility of Pope too strongly authenticated one of
the three authors. "In the swelling of his heart, after the
play was over, he came behind the scenes with his lips pale
and his voice trembling, to call me to account for the insult;
and accordingly fell upon me with all the foul language that
a wit out of his senses would be capable of, choked with the
foam of his passion." Cibber replied with dignity, insisted
on the privilege of the character, and that he would repeat
the same jest as long as the public approved of it. Pope
would have certainly approved of Cibber's manly conduct,
had he not been the author himself. To this circumstance may
be added the reception which the town and the court bestowed
on Cibber's "Nonjuror," a satire on the politics of the
jacobite faction; Pope appears, under the assumed name of
_Barnevelt_, to have published "an odd piece of wit,
proving that the Nonjuror, in its design, its characters, and
almost every scene of it, was a closely-couched jacobite
libel against the Government." Cibber says that "this was so
shrewdly maintained, that I almost liked the jest myself."
Pope seems to have been fond of this new species of irony;
for, in the Pastorals of Phillips, he showed the same sort of
ingenuity, and he repeated the same charge of political
mystery against his own finest poem; for he proved by many
"merry inuendoes," that "The Rape of the Lock" was as
audacious a libel as the pretended Barnevelt had made out the
Nonjuror to be. See note, p. 280.

[213] Cibber did not obtrude himself in this contest. Had he been
merely a poor vain creature, he had not preserved so long
a silence. His good-temper was without anger, but he
remonstrates with no little dignity, when he chooses to be
solemn; though to be playful was more natural to him. "If I
have lain so long stoically silent, or unmindful of your
satirical favours, it was not so much for want of a proper
reply, as that I thought there never ne