from one to 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, 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 degree. He laid aside his Epic
Poem, perhaps without much loss to mankind; for his hero was Brutus
the Trojan, who, according to a ridiculous fiction, established a
colony in Britain. The subject, therefore, was of the fabulous age;
the actors were a race upon whom imagination has been exhausted, and
attention wearied, and to whom the mind will not easily be recalled,
when it is invited in blank verse, which Pope had adopted with great
imprudence, and, I think, without due consideration of the nature of
our language. The sketch is, at least in part, preserved by
Ruffhead, by which it appears that Pope was thoughtless enough to
model the names of his heroes with terminations not consistent with
the time or country in which he places them. He lingered through