_Mar. jun._ Sir, you are a Man of Sense; and express yourself well. I
did, as you say, once make a small Sally into _Parnassus_, took a sort
of flying Leap over _Helicon_: But if ever they catch me there again--
Sir, the Town have a Prejudice to my Family; for if any Play you'd have
made them ashamed to damn it, mine must. It was all over Plot. It wou'd
have made half a dozen Novels: Nor was it cram'd with a pack of Wit-
traps, like _Congreve_ and _Wycherly_, where every one knows when the
Joke was coming. I defy the sharpest Critick of 'em all to know when any
Jokes of mine were coming. The Dialogue was plain, easy, and natural,
and not one single Joke in it from the Beginning to the End: Besides,
Sir, there was one Scene of tender melancholy Conversation, enough to
have melted a Heart of Stone; and yet they damn'd it: And they damn'd
themselves; for they shall have no more of mine.

_Wit._ Take pity on the Town, Sir.

_Mar. jun._ I! No, Sir, no. I'll write no more. No more; unless I am
forc'd to it.

_Luckless._ That's no easy thing, _Marplay_.

_Mar. jun._ Yes, Sir. Odes, Odes, a Man may be oblig'd to write those
you know." These concluding lines plainly refer to the elder Cibber's
appointment as Laureate in 1730, and to those "annual Birth-day
Strains," with which he so long delighted the irreverent; while the
alteration of Shakespeare and the cobbling of plays generally, satirised
again in a later scene, are strictly in accordance with contemporary
accounts of the manners and customs of the two dictators of Drury Lane.
The piece indicated by Marplay Junior was probably Theophilus Cibber's
_Lover_, which had been produced in January 1731 with very moderate