Cibber's equanimity was disturbed, and he published the letter from which we have made the above extract, entitled, "A Letter from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope, inquiring into the motives that might induce him, in his satirical works, to be so frequently fond of Mr. Cibber's name." This was replied to in an anonymous pamphlet, with the remarkable title of "A Blast upon Bays, or a New Lick at the Laureate; containing remarks upon a late tattling performance;" but Cibber was not entirely without champions, as one man warmly took up his cause in a letter with the motto:
"Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito."
Throughout the whole quarrel, Cibber had by far the best of it, both in temper, discretion, and the justice of his cause. His warm recognition of his antagonist's great abilities, contrasts with the asperity and the want of candour in Pope, in refusing to recognize any talent in one of the most successful dramatists of the day.
"That Cibber," says the former, "ever murmured at your fame, or that he was not always, to the best of his judgment, as warm an admirer of your writing as any of your nearest friends could be, is what you cannot by any one fact or instance disprove. How comes it then, that in your works you have so often treated him as a dunce or an enemy? Did he at all intrench on your sovereignty in verse, because he had now and then written a comedy that succeeded?"
The blows that the combatants dealt upon each other, fell with more telling effect on Pope's sensitive organization than on the thicker self-sufficiency of his antagonist. Pope, though he attempted to disguise his agony, was tortured by the wanton levity and shamelessness of his opponent. Dr. Johnson says: "I have heard Mr. Richardson relate that he attended his father on a visit,
