very relevant attack upon the "pretty, dapper, brisk, smart, pert
Dialogue" of Modern Comedy into which the "infinite Wit" of Wycherley
had degenerated under Cibber. It also contains a compliment to the
numbers of the "inimitable Author" of the _Essay on Man_.

This is the second compliment which Fielding had paid to Pope within a
brief period, the first having been that in the _Champion_ respecting
the translation of the _Iliad_. What his exact relations with the author
of the _Dunciad_ were, has never been divulged. At first they seem to
have been rather hostile than friendly. Fielding had ridiculed the
Romish Church in the _Old Debauchees_, a course which Pope could
scarcely have approved; and he was, moreover, the cousin of Lady Mary,
now no longer throned in the Twickenham Temple. Pope had commented upon
a passage in _Tom Thumb_, and Fielding had indirectly referred to Pope
in the _Covent Garden Tragedy_. When it had been reported that Pope had
gone to see _Pasquin_, the statement had been at once contradicted. But
Fielding was now, like Pope, against Walpole; and _Joseph Andrews_ had
been published. It may therefore be that the compliments in _Plutus_ and
the _Champion_ were the result of some _rapprochement_ between the two.
It is, nevertheless, curious that, at this very time, an attempt appears
to have been made to connect the novelist with the controversy which
presently arose out of Cibber's well-known letter to Pope. In August
1742, the month following its publication, among the pamphlets to which
it gave rise, was announced _The Cudgel; or, a Crab-tree Lecture, To the
Author of the Dunciad_. "By Hercules Vinegar, Esq." This very mediocre
satire in verse is still to be found at the British Museum; but even if
it were not included in Fielding's general disclaimer as to unsigned
work, it would be difficult to connect it with him. To give but one
reason, it would make him the ally and adherent of Cibber,--which is
absurd. In all probability, like another Grub Street squib under the