h Jekyll, master of the rolls, and
won his case. In 1730 Mrs Oldfield died, and her loss was followed in
1732 by that of Wilks; Cibber now sold his share in the theatre,
appearing rarely on the stage thereafter. In 1740 he published _An
Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian ... with an Historical
View of the Stage during his Own Time_. "There are few," wrote
Goldsmith, "who do not prefer a page of Montaigne or Colley Cibber, who
candidly tell us what they thought of the world, and the world thought
of them, to the more stately memoirs and transactions of Europe." But
beside the personal interest, this book contains criticisms on acting of
enduring value, and gives the best account there is of Cibber's
contemporaries on the London stage. Samuel Johnson, who was no friend of
Cibber, gave it grudging praise (see Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, ed.
Birkbeck Hill, vol. iii. p. 72).

In 1742 Cibber was substituted for Theobald as the hero of Pope's
_Dunciad_. Cibber had introduced some gag into the _Rehearsal_, in which
he played the part of Bayes, referring to the ill-starred farce of
_Three Hours after Marriage_ (1717). This play was nominally by Gay, but
Pope and Arbuthnot were known to have had a hand in it. Cibber refused
to discontinue the offensive passage, and Pope revenged himself in
sarcastic allusions in his printed correspondence, in the _Epistle to Dr
Arbuthnot_ and in the _Dunciad_. To these, Cibber replied with _A Letter
from Mr Cibber to Mr Pope, inquiring into the motives that might induce
him in his satirical works to be so frequently fond of Mr Cibber's name_
(1742). Cibber scored with an "idle story of Pope's behaviour in a
tavern" inserted in this letter, and gives an account of the original
dispute over the _Rehearsal_. By the substitution of Cibber for Theobald
as hero of the _Dunciad_, much of the satire lost its point. Cibber's
faults certainly did not include dullness. A new edition contained a
prefatory discourse, probably the work of Warburton, entitled "Ricardus
Aristarchus, or the Hero of the Poem," in which Cibber is made to look
ridiculous from his own _Apology_. Cibber replied in 1744 with _Another
Occasional Letter ..._, and altogether he had the best of the argument.
When he was seventy-four years old he made his last appearance on the
stage as Pandulph in his own _Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John_
(Covent Garden, 15th of February 1745), a miserable paraphrase of
Shakespeare's