An Essay on Woman by the Author of the Essay on Man: Being Homer Preserv'd, or, The Twickenham Squire Caught by the Heels

by an unknown artist
1742

Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University (Image ID lwlpr01051)

This satirical engraving depicts an incident at a brothel near Haymarket, which probably occured in 1715 (Rogers, The Alexander Pope Encyclopedia 322), and involved Edward Rich, seventh Earl of Warwick, Colley Cibber, and Pope.

See also "The Poetical Tom-Titt perch'd upon the Mount of Love," the anonymous "And has not Sawney too his Lord and Whore?" and "And has not Sawney too his Lord and Whore?" by Gravelot.

The engraving appeared following a public feud between Pope and Cibber, playwright, actor and (much to Pope's chagrin) Poet Laureate. The two had been exchanging insults for years when Pope insulted Cibber in "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" (1735):

Whom have I hurt? has Poet yet, or Peer,
Lost the arch'd Eye-brow, or Parnassian sneer?
And has not C—lly still his Lord, and Whore?

Cibber retaliated in the pamphlet A Letter from Mr. Cibber, to Mr. Pope (1742), in which he recounted—with a self-serving obliviousness to what might have provoked Pope's attacks on him—the incident portrayed in the engraving:

As to the latter Charge, the Whore, there indeed, I doubt you will have the better of me; for I believe I know more of your whoring than you do of mine; because I don't recollect that I ever made you the least Confidence of my Amours, though I have been very near an Eye-Witness of Yours—... He must excuse me, then, if in what I am going to relate, I am reduced to make bold with a little private Conversation: But as he has shewn no mercy to Colley, why should so unprovok'd an Aggressor expect any for himself? And if truth hurts him, I can't help it. He may remember, then (or if he won't I will) when Button's Coffee-house was in vogue, and so long ago, as when he had not translated above two or three books of Homer; there was a late young Nobleman (as much his Lord as mine) who had a good deal of wicked Humour, and who, though he was fond of having Wits in his Company, was not so restrained by his Conscience, but that he lov'd to laugh at any merry Mischief he could do them: This noble Wag, I say, in his usual Gayetè de Cœur, with another Gentleman still in Being, one Evening slily seduced the celebrated Mr. Pope as a Wit, and myself as a Laugher, to a certain House of Carnal Recreation, near the Hay-Market; where his Lordship's Frolick propos'd was to slip his little Homer, as he called him, at a Girl of the Game, that he might see what sort of Figure a Man of his Size, Sobriety, and Vigour (in Verse) would make, when the frail fit of Love had got into him; in which he so far succeeded, that the smirking Damsel, who serv'd us with Tea, happen'd to have Charms sufficient to tempt the little-tiny Manhood of Mr. Pope into the next Room with her: at which you may imagine, his Lordship was in as much Joy, at what might happen within, as our small Friend could probably be in possession of it: But I, (forgive me all ye mortified Mortals whom his fell Satyr has since fallen upon) observing he had staid as long as without hazard of his Health he might, I

Prick'd to it by foolish Honesty and Love,

As Shakespear says, without Ceremony, threw open the Door upon him, where I found this hasty little Hero, like a terrible Tom Tit, pertly perching upon the Mount of Love! But such was my Surprize, that I fairly laid hold of his Heels, and actually drew him down safe and sound from his Danger. My Lord, who stood tittering without, in hopes the sweet Mischief he came for would have been compleated, upon my giving an Account of the Action within, began to curse, and call me a hundred silly Puppies, for my impertinently spoiling the Sport; to which with great Gravity I reply'd; pray, my Lord, consider what I have done was, in regard to the Honour of our Nation! For would you have had so glorious a Work as that of making Homer speak elegant English, cut short by laying up our little Gentleman of a Malady, which his thin Body might never have been cured of? No, my Lord! Homer would have been too serious a Sacrifice to our Evening Merriment. Now as his Homer has since been so happily compleated, who can say, that the World may not have been obliged to the kindly Care of Colley that so great a Work ever came to Perfection ?

And now again, gentle Reader, let it be judged, whether the Lord and the Whore above-mention'd might not, with equal Justice, have been applied to the sober Sawney the Satyrist, as to Colley the Criminal? (44-49)

The engraving shows Cibber grasping little Pope by the legs and pulling him off the prostitute sprawled on a sofa. Warwick cries, "Zounds Colley you have Spoild Sport" to which Cibber replies "My Lord, I have Sav'd Homer," the implication being that he has prevented Pope from contracting a venereal disease and so being unable to devote himself to his translations of Homer. Hanging on the wall above are three framed paintings:

• on the left, a short officer beating a much larger and taller grenadier; the caption on the frame, "Captain don't hurt yourself";
• in the center, a woman, crocodile and mummy; the caption on the frame, "Three Hours After Marriage," a reference to a play by Gay, Pope and Arbuthnot that had been, according to Cibber in his Letter, "acted without Success";
• on the right, a small tom tit perched on the back of a resigned-looking hen; the caption on the frame, "The Terrible Tom Tit."

On the floor lies Cibber's anti-Jacobite play The Nonjurer. Cibber had noted in his Letter that "upon the great Success of this enormous Play, The Non-Juror, poor Mr. Pope laments the Decay of Poetry... if the Play had not so impudently fallen upon the poor Enemies of the Government, Mr. Pope, possibly, might have been less an enemy to the Play." Also lying on the floor is Pope's wig fallen in a lewd parody, perhaps, of his exposed backside.

The two epigrams beneath the image quote Cibber's Letter, wherein he accuses Pope (Sawney) of writing the first epigram:

In merry old England it was a Rule,
The King had his Poet, and also his Fool,
But now we're so frugal, I'd have you know it,
That Cibber can serve both for Fool and for Poet.

Introducing the second epigram, Cibber writes "But hold, Master Cibber! why may not you as well turn this pleasant Epigram into an involuntary Compliment? for a King's Fool was no body's Fool but his Master's, and had not his Name for nothing; as for Example,"

Those Fools of Old, if Fame says true,
Were Chiefly Chosen for their Wit,
When call'd Fools? because, like You
Dear Pope, too Bold in shewing it.

"And so, if I am the King's Fool;" he concludes, "now, Sir, pray whose Fool are you? 'Tis pity, methinks, you should be out of Employment; for, if a satirical Intrepidity, or, as you somewhere call it, a High Courage of Wit, is the fairest Pretence to be the King's Fool, I don't know a Wit in the World so fit to fill up the Post as yourself."

In the new Dunciad in four books of 1743, Pope replaced the first King of the Dunces, Lewis Theobald from the 1728 Dunciad and 1729 Dunciad Variorum, with his longtime enemy Cibber.

—Allison Muri, March 2014