Note 213 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS;

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 needed a public one; for all people of sense would know what truth or falsehood there was in what you said of me, without my wisely pointing it out to them. Nor did I choose to follow your example, of being so much a self-tormentor, as to be concerned at whatever opinion of me any published invective might infuse into people unknown to me. Even the malicious, though they may like the libel, don’t always believe it.” His reason for reply is, that his silence should not be farther reproached “as a plain confession of my being a bankrupt in wit, if I don’t immediately answer those bills of discredit you have drawn upon me.” There is no doubt that Cibber perpetually found instigators to encourage these attacks; and one forcible argument he says was, that “a disgrace, from such a pen, would stick upon me to posterity.” He seems to be aware that his acquaintance cheer him to the lists “for their particular amusement.”