It was only as Poet Laureate, for he could not write poetry, that Cibber displayed his inferiority. The honour was conferred in 1730, two years after Gay had produced the _Beggar's Opera_, when Pope was in the height of his fame, when Thomson had published his _Seasons_ and Young _The Universal Passion_. Pope, as a Roman Catholic, was out of the running, but there were poets living who would have saved the office from the disgrace brought upon it by Cibber. 'As to Cibber,' Swift wrote to Pope, 'if I had any inclination to excuse the Court, I would allege that the Laureate's place is entirely in the Lord Chamberlain's gift; but who makes Lord Chamberlains is another question.' The sole result of the appointment that deserves to be recorded is an epigram by Johnson, as just as it is severe: 'Augustus still survives in Maro's strain, And Spenser's verse prolongs Eliza's reign; Great George's acts let tuneful Cibber sing, For Nature formed the Poet for the King!' Of poetry there is no trace in the five volumes of his dramatic works; there are few touches of nature, and little genuine wit, but these defects are to some extent supplied by sparkling dialogue and lively badinage. Cibber is often sentimental, and when he is sentimental he is odious. His attempts to express strong emotion and honourable feeling excite laughter instead of sympathy, and on this account it is difficult to accept without some deduction Mr. Ward's favourable judgment of _The Careless Husband_,[54] which, if it be one of the cleverest of Cibber's dramas, is also one of the most conspicuous for this defect. Here, as elsewhere, Cibber should have left sentiment alone. Imagine a lover exclaiming to a relenting mistress, 'Oh, let my soul thus bending to your power, adore this soft descending goodness!' or a man conversing in the following strain with a wife who has discovered and forgiven his infidelities: '_Sir Charles._ Come, I will not shock your softness by any untimely blush for what is past, but rather soothe you to a pleasure at my sense of joy for my recovered happiness to come. Give then to my new-born love what name you please, it cannot, shall not be too kind. Oh! it cannot be too soft for what my soul swells up with emulation to deserve. Receive me then entire at last, and take what yet no woman ever truly had, my conquered heart. '_Lady Easy._ Oh, the soft treasure! Oh, the dear reward of long-desiring love--thus, thus to have you mine is something more than happiness, 'tis double life and madness of abounding joy.... '_Sir Charles._ Oh, thou engaging virtue! But I'm too slow in doing justice to thy love. I know thy softness will refuse me; but remember, I insist upon it--let thy woman be discharged this minute.'