when under arrest for debt; Johnson repaid him by the phrase,
which long passed for the orthodox decision, that Richardson taught the
passions to move at the command of virtue. But the most delightful of
Richardson's friends was the irrepressible Colley Cibber. Mrs.
Pilkington, a disreputable adventuress, faintly remembered by her
relations to Swift, describes Cibber's reception of the unpublished
'Clarissa.' 'The dear gentleman did almost rave. When I told him that
she (Clarissa) must die, he said G---- d---- him if she should, and that
he should no longer believe Providence or eternal wisdom or goodness
governed the world if merit and innocence and beauty were to be so
destroyed. "Nay," added he, "my mind is so hurt with the thought of her
being violated, that were I to see her in heaven, sitting on the knees
of the blessed Virgin and crowned with glory, her sufferings would still
make me feel horror, horror distilled." These were his strongly
emphatical impressions.' Cibber's own letters are as lively as Mrs.
Pilkington's report of his talk. 'The delicious meal I made off Miss
Byron on Sunday last,' he says, 'has given me an appetite for another
slice of her, off from the spit, before she is served up to the public
table; if about five o'clock to-morrow afternoon be not inconvenient,
Mrs. Brown and I will come and nibble upon a bit more of her! And we
have grace after meat as well as before.' 'The devil take the insolent
goodness of your imagination!' exclaims the lively old buck, now past
eighty, and as well preserved as if he had never encountered Pope's
'scathing satire' (does satire ever 'scathe'?) or Fielding's rough
horseplay. One of Richardson's lady admirers saw Cibber flirting with
fine ladies at Tunbridge Wells in 1754 (he was born in 1671), and
miserable when he was neglected for a moment by the greatest _belle_ in
the society. He professed to be only seventy-seven!

Perhaps even Cibber was beaten in flattery by the 'minister of the
gospel' who thought that if some of Clarissa's letters had been found in
the Bible they would have been regarded as manifest proofs of divine
inspiration. But the more delightful incense came from the circle of
admiring young ladies who called him their dear papa; who passed long
days at his feet at Parson's Green; allowed him to escape to his
summer-house to add a letter to the growing volumes, and after an early
dinner persuaded him to read it aloud. Their eager discussions a