'How changed from him who made the boxes groan, And shook the stage with thunders all his own! Stood up to dash each vain Pretender's hope, Maul the French tyrant, or pull down the Pope! If there's a Briton then, true bred and born, Who holds Dragoons and wooden shoes in scorn; If there's a critic of distinguished rage; If there's a senior who contemns this age; Let him to-night his just assistance lend, And be the Critic's, Briton's, Old Man's friend.' Dennis got £100 by this benefit, but had little time in which to spend it, for he died about a fortnight afterwards at the age of seventy-seven. Upon his death Aaron Hill wrote some memorial verses, in which he prophesies that, while the critic's frailties will be no longer remembered, 'The rising ages shall redeem his name, And nations read him into lasting fame.' It will be seen that the poets did not all treat Dennis unkindly. If praise were substantial food, he would have had enough to sustain him from 'glorious John' alone. [Sidenote: Colley Cibber (1671-1757).] Colley Cibber holds a more prominent place than Dennis in the list of men whom Pope selected for attack. He could not have chosen one more impervious to assault. The poet's anger excited Cibber's mirth, his satire contributed to his content. The comedian's unbounded self-satisfaction and good humour, his vivacity and spirits, were proof against Pope's malice. Graceless he may have been, but a dullard the mercurial 'King Colley' was not. Born in 1671, he disappointed the hopes of his father, the famous sculptor, and at the age of eighteen made his first appearance on the stage. As actor and as dramatist, the theatre throughout his life was Cibber's all-absorbing interest. His first play, _Love's Last Shift_ (1696), kept possession of the stage for forty years, and his best play, _The Careless Husband_ (1704), received a like welcome. As an actor he was also successful, and played for £50 a night, the highest sum ever given at that time to any English player. His career was as long as it was prosperous. 'Old Cibber plays to-night,' Horace Walpole wrote in 1741, 'and all the world will be there.'