Note 221 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 2)

With what good-humour he retorts a piece of sly malice of Pope’s; who, in the notes to the Dunciad, after quoting Jacob’s account of Cibber’s talents, adds—“Mr. Jacob omitted to remark that he is particularly admirable in tragedy.” To which Cibber rejoins—“Ay, sir, and your remark has omitted, too, that (with all his commendations) I can’t dance upon the rope, or make a saddle, nor play upon the organ. My dear, dear Mr. Pope, how could a man of your stinging capacity let so tame, so low a reflection escape him? Why, this hardly rises above the petty malice of Miss Molly. ‘Ay, ay, you may think my sister as handsome as you please, but if you were to see her legs!’ If I have made so many crowded theatres laugh, and in the right place, too, for above forty years together, am I to make up the number of your dunces, because I have not the equal talent of making them cry too? Make it your own case. Is what you have excelled in at all the worse for your having so dismally dabbled in the farce of Three Hours after Marriage? What mighty reason will the world have to laugh at my weakness in tragedy, more than at yours in comedy?”

I will preserve one anecdote of that felicity of temper—that undisturbed good-humour which never abandoned Cibber in his most distressful moments. When he brought out, in 1724, his Cæsar in Egypt, at a great expense, and “a beggarly account of empty boxes” was the result, it raised some altercations between the poet and his brother managers, the bard still struggling for another and another night. At length he closed the quarrel with a pun, which confessed the misfortune, with his own good-humour. In a periodical publication of the times I find the circumstance recorded in this neat epigram:—

On the Sixth Night of Cibber’s “Cæsar in Egypt.” When the pack’d audience from their posts retired, And Julius in a general hiss expired; Sage Booth to Cibber cried, “Compute our gains! These dogs of Egypt, and their dowdy queans, But ill requite these habits and these scenes, To rob Corneille for such a motley piece: His geese were swans; but zounds! thy swans are geese!” Rubbing his firm invulnerable brow, The bard replied—“The critics must allow ’Twas ne’er in Cæsar’s destiny TO RUN!” Wilks bow’d, and bless’d the gay pacific pun.