Bolingbroke, it may be added, was equally
contemptuous in his language about men of learning, and for much the
same reason. He depreciated what he could not rival. Pope, always under
the influence of some stronger companions, naturally adopted their
shallow prejudices, and recklessly abused a writer who should have been
recognized as amongst the most effective combatants against dulness.
Bentley died a few months after the publication of the Dunciad. But Pope
found a living antagonist, who succeeded in giving him pain enough to
gratify the vilified dunces. This was Colley Cibber--most lively and
mercurial of actors--author of some successful plays, with too little
stuff in them for permanence, and of an Apology for his own Life, which
is still exceedingly amusing as well as useful for the history of the
stage. He was now approaching seventy, though he was to survive Pope for
thirteen years, and as good-tempered a specimen of the lively, if not
too particular, old man of the world as could well have been found. Pope
owed him a grudge. Cibber, in playing the _Rehearsal_, had introduced
some ridicule of the unlucky _Three Hours after Marriage_. Pope, he
says, came behind the scenes foaming and choking with fury, and
forbidding Cibber ever to repeat the insult. Cibber laughed at him, said
that he would repeat it as long as the _Rehearsal_ was performed, and
kept his word. Pope took his revenge by many incidental hits at Cibber,
and Cibber made a good-humoured reference to this abuse in the Apology.
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