my Conscience. To me the Fatigue of being upon a continual Guard to hide them is more than the Reputation of being without them can repay. If this be Weakness, defendit numerus, I have such comfortable Numbers on my side, that were all Men to blush that are not Wise, I am afraid, in Ten, Nine Parts of the World ought to be out of Countenance:[1] But since that sort of Modesty is what they don't care to come into, why should I be afraid of being star'd at for not being particular? Or if the Particularity lies in owning my Weakness, will my wisest Reader be so inhuman as not to pardon it? But if there should be such a one, let me at least beg him to shew me that strange Man who is perfect! Is any one more unhappy, more ridiculous, than he who is always labouring to be thought so, or that is impatient when he is not thought so? Having brought myself to be easy under whatever the World may say of my Undertaking, you may still ask me why I give myself all this trouble? Is it for Fame, or Profit to myself,[2] or Use or Delight to others? For all these
- ↑ This seems to be a favourite argument of Cibber. In his "Letter" to Pope, 1742, he answers Pope's line, "And has not Colley still his Lord and Whore?" at great length, one of his arguments being that the latter accusation, "without some particular Circumstances to aggravate the Vice, is the flattest Piece of Satyr that ever fell from the formidable Pen of Mr. Pope: because (defendit numerus) take the first ten thousand Men you meet, and I believe, you would be no Loser, if you betted ten to one that every single Sinner of them, one with another, had been guilty of the same Frailty."—p. 46.
- ↑ Cibber's "Apology" must have been a very profitable book.
