A Letter from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope

If so, the other attacks must have been shattering, since they lacked even the surface good humor of Cibber's Letter. Pope, at any rate, was concerned enough to tell Spence:

The story published by Cibber, as to the main point, is an absolute lie. I do remember that I was invited by Lord Warwick to pass an evening with him. He carried me and Cibber in his coach to a bawdy-house. There was a woman there, but I had nothing to do with her of the kind that Cibber mentions, to the best of my memory--and I had so few things of that kind ever on my hands that I could scarce have forgot it, especially so circumstanced as he pretends.[18]

An answer to the Letter was demanded, and it was not long in coming. In August/September, Pope wrote his friend Hugh Bethel concerning a copy of the New Dunciad he had sent him:

That poem has not done me, or my Quiet, the least harm; only it provokd Cibber to write a