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274 In 1730, he was dignified by the laurel. The appointment was owing, not to any poetical merit he may have manifested, but to the fact of his having proved himself a sound Whig, by writing "The Non-Juror." The ridicule poured upon him on this occasion was unsparing, and it was not diminished by the publication of his successive Birth-day Odes.

His enemies had been on the increase for some years past, and persecuted him with a pertinacity and bitterness of which we fortunately have no instance in the present day. Periodical publications attacked him with unremitting industry. Attempts were made at the outset to stifle plays which eventually, by their continued popularity, proved their adaptation to the public taste, and the merciless satire of Pope selected him as its choicest victim. It is difficult now to detect the causes of such rancorous hostility, as there appears little in his genius or character to warrant it. In a letter to Pope, he gives the following account of the origin of that poet's ill-feeling towards him, and, as the assertion was suffered to go forth without contradiction, we may assume that from so contemptible a cause arose that long enduring contention.

"The play of 'The Rehearsal, says Cibber, "which had lain some few years dormant, being by his present Majesty (then Prince of Wales) commanded to be revived, the part of Bays fell to my share. To this character there had always been allowed such ludicrous liberties of observation upon anything new or remarkable in the state