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Colley Cibber's account here inserted, who was well qualified to judge, and who, in his History of the Stage, has drawn the most striking pictures that ever were exhibited; even the famous lord Clarendon, whose great excellence is characterising, is not more happy in that particular, than the Laureat; no one can read his portraits of the players, without imagining he sees the very actors before his eyes, their air, their attitudes, their gesticulations.
The only positive evidence of any connection between Henry Fielding and the Smithfield carnival is, that Theophilus Cibber's company played the Miser at their booth in August 1733.
Better still, because more comic, is the blunder of a Frenchman, who, puzzled by the title of one of Cibber's plays, "Love's Last Shift," translates it "La Derniere Chemise de l'Amour." We laugh at these mistakes, and forget them; but who can forget the blunder of the Cork almanack-maker, who informs the world that the principal republics in Europe, are Venice, Holland, and America?
The piece indicated by Marplay Junior was probably Theophilus Cibber's Lover, which had been produced in January 1731 with very moderate success. After the Intriguing Chambermaid and the revived Author's Farce, Fielding seems to have made farther exertions for "the distressed Actors in Drury Lane."
Yet Cibber's enemies never failed to make things unpleasant for him if they could do so without running too great a risk. There was Nathaniel Mist, for instance, who published a Jacobite paper called Mist's Weekly Journal.
Yet at this very time the scanty leisure of the illustrious warrior was employed in producing odes and epistles, a little better than Cibber's, and a little worse than Hayley's.
This appeared to me very satisfactory. Johnson did not answer it; but talking for victory, and determined to be master of the field, he had recourse to the device which Goldsmith imputed to him in the witty words of one of Cibber's comedies: 'There is no arguing with Johnson; for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it. He turned to the gentleman, 'well, Sir, go to Dominicetti, and get thyself fumigated; but be sure that the steam be directed to thy HEAD, for THAT is the PECCANT PART. This produced a triumphant roar of laughter from the motley assembly of philosophers, printers, and dependents, male and female.
It is, nevertheless, curious that, at this very time, an attempt appears to have been made to connect the novelist with the controversy which presently arose out of Cibber's well-known letter to Pope. In August 1742, the month following its publication, among the pamphlets to which it gave rise, was announced The Cudgel; or, a Crab-tree Lecture, To the Author of the Dunciad.
What Pope would say of Cibber nobody inquired, but in hope that Pope's asperity might betray his pain and lessen his dignity. He should therefore have suffered the pamphlet to flutter and die, without confessing that it stung him. The dishonour of being shown as Cibber's antagonist could never be compensated by the victory. Cibber had nothing to lose.
Dancing, therefore, was now the only weight, in the opposite scale, and as the new theatre sometimes found their account in it, it could not be safe for us wholly to neglect it. Cibber's antagonistical views towards Pantomime were shared, as we shall see, by a good many others.
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