doubted whether the satire of Pope has not, in the estimation of posterity, injured his own character and reputation more than Cibber's. Still, with all his levity and vivacity, our hero could not be quite obtuse to the keen point of such a missile. "After all," says Mr. Disraeli, "one may perceive that, though the good-humour of Cibber was real, still the immortal satire of Pope had injured his higher feelings. He betrays his secret grief at its close, while he seems to be sporting with his pen; and though he appears to confide in the falsity of the satire, as his best chance for saving him from it, still he feels that the caustic ink of such a satirist must blister and spot wherever it falls."
He quitted the stage the same year in which he was appointed Poet-Laureate. The following ten years he employed in drawing up his memoirs, which he published under the title of "An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber," a life which Fielding said he lived only to apologize for. This work has been the most popular of all his productions, and has obtained the praise of men of such diverse tempers as Horace Walpole and Dr. Johnson; the former terming it "Cibber's inimitable treatise on the stage," while Johnson pronounces it to be "very entertaining."
It is a rambling book of gossip, written in a slovenly style, but filled with interesting notices of the most eminent actors and actresses of his time. They, too, were performers of no ordinary merit; and such a work, on its first appearance, must have exceeded in interest any novel or romance. His character, as there unconsciously depicted by himself, presents little to excite our sympathy, still less our esteem. His inordinate vanity represses any impulse of admiration his talents might excite; and that utter abnegation of all self-respect,
