When the _Champion_ was rather more than a year old, Colley Cibber published his famous _Apology_. To the attacks made upon him by Fielding at different times he had hitherto printed no reply--perhaps he had no opportunity of doing so. But in his eighth chapter, when speaking of the causes which led to the Licensing Act, he takes occasion to refer to his assailant in terms which Fielding must have found exceedingly galling. He carefully abstained from mentioning his name, on the ground that it could do him no good, and was of no importance; but he described him as "a broken Wit," who had sought notoriety "by raking the Channel" (i.e. Kennel), and "pelting his Superiors." He accused him, with a scandalised gravity that is as edifying as Chesterfield's irony, of attacking "Religion, Laws, Government, Priests, Judges, and Ministers." He called him, either in allusion to his stature, or his pseudonym in the _Champion_, a "_Herculean_ Satyrist," a "_Drawcansir_ in Wit"--"who, to make his Poetical Fame immortal, like another _Erostratus_, set Fire to his Stage, by writing up to an Act of Parliament to demolish it. I shall not," he continues, "give the particular Strokes of his Ingenuity a Chance to be remembered, by reciting them; it may be enough to say, in general Terms, they were so openly flagrant, that the Wisdom of the Legislature thought it high time, to take a proper Notice of them." Fielding was not the man to leave such a challenge unanswered. In the _Champion_ for April 22, 1740, and two subsequent papers, he replied with a slashing criticism of the _Apology_, in which, after demonstrating that it must be written in English because it was written in no other language, he gravely proceeds to point out examples of the author's superiority to grammar and learning--and in general, subjects its pretentious and slip-shod style to a minute and highly detrimental examination. In a further paper he returns to the charge by a mock trial of one "Col. _Apol._" (i.e. Colley-_Apology_), arraigning him for that, "not having the Fear of Grammar before his Eyes," he had committed an unpardonable assault upon his mother-tongue. Fielding's knowledge of legal forms and phraseology enabled him to make a happy parody of court procedure, and Mr. Lawrence says that this particular "_jeu d'esprit_ obtained great celebrity." But the happiest stroke in the controversy-- as it seems to us--is one which escaped Mr. Lawrence, and occurs in the paper already referred to, where Charon and Mercury are shown denuding the luckless passengers by the Styx of their surplus _impedimenta_. Among the rest, approaches "an elderly Gentleman with a Piece of wither'd Laurel on his head." From a little book, which he is discovered (when stripped) to have bound close to his heart, and which bears the title of _Love in a Riddle_--an unsuccessful pastoral produced by Cibber at Drury Lane in 1729--it is clear that this personage is intended for