Hereupon Pope, in the new Dunciad, described him as reclining on the lap
of the goddess, and added various personalities in the notes. Cibber
straightway published a letter to Pope, the more cutting because still
in perfect good-humour, and told the story about the original quarrel.
He added an irritating anecdote in order to provoke the poet still
further. It described Pope as introduced by Cibber and Lord Warwick to
very bad company. The story was one which could only be told by a
graceless old representative of the old school of comedy, but it hit its
mark. The two Richardsons once found Pope reading one of Cibber's
pamphlets. He said, "These things are my diversion;" but they saw his
features writhing with anguish, and young Richardson, as they went home,
observed to his father that he hoped to be preserved from such
diversions as Pope had enjoyed. The poet resolved to avenge himself, and
he did it to the lasting injury of his poem. He dethroned Theobald, who,
as a plodding antiquarian, was an excellent exponent of dulness, and
installed Cibber in his place, who might be a representative of folly,
but was as little of a dullard as Pope himself. The consequent
alterations make the hero of the poem a thoroughly incongruous figure,
and greatly injure the general design. The poem appeared in this form in
1743, with a ponderous prefatory discourse by Ricardus Aristarchus,
contributed by the faithful Warburton, and illustrating his ponderous
vein of elephantine pleasantry.
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