common vengeance; he
published a new edition of the Dunciad[140], in which he degraded
Theobald from his painful preeminence, and enthroned Cibber in his
stead. Unhappily the two heroes were of opposite characters, and Pope
was unwilling to lose what he had already written; he has, therefore,
depraved his poem by giving to Cibber the old books, the cold pedantry,
and the sluggish pertinacity of Theobald.

Pope was ignorant enough of his own interest, to make another change,
and introduced Osborne contending for the prize among the booksellers.
Osborne was a man entirely destitute of shame, without sense of any
disgrace but that of poverty. He told me, when he was doing that which
raised Pope's resentment, that he should be put into the Dunciad; but he
had the fate of Cassandra. I gave no credit to his prediction, till, in
time, I saw it accomplished. The shafts of satire were directed equally
in vain against Cibber and Osborne; being repelled by the impenetrable
impudence of one, and deadened by the impassive dulness of the other.
Pope confessed his own pain by his anger; but he gave no pain to those
who had provoked him. He was able to hurt none but himself; by
transferring the same ridicule from one to another, he destroyed its
efficacy; for by showing that what he had said of one he was ready to
say of another, he reduced himself to the insignificance of his own
magpie, who, from his cage, calls cuckold at a venture.

Cibber, according to his engagement, repaid the Dunciad with another
pamphlet[141], which, Pope said, "would be as good as a dose of
hartshorn to him;" but his tongue and his heart were at variance. I have
heard Mr. Richardson relate, that he attended his father, the painter,
on a visit, when one of Cibber's pamphlets came into the hands of Pope,
who said, "these things are my diversion." They sat by him while he
perused it, and saw his features writhing with anguish; and young
Richardson said to his father, when they returned, that he hoped to be
preserved from such diversion as had been that day the lot of Pope.

From this time, finding his diseases more oppressive, and his vital
powers gradually declining, he no longer strained his faculties with any
original composition, nor proposed any other employment for his
remaining life than the revisal and correction of his former works; in
which he received advice and assistance from Warburton, whom he appears
to have trusted and honoured in the highest