The Poetical Tom-Titt perch'd upon the Mount of Love, Being the Representation of a Merry Description in Mr Cibber's Letter to Mr Pope

by an unknown artist
1742

British Museum AN357021001

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. The image shows Cibber seizing tiny Pope's leg and pulling him off a naked woman sprawled upon a sofa, while Warwick looks on. With his other hand Cibber gestures to indicate the diminutive proportions of Pope's manhood; the gesture also mimics his pose in the painting by Giuseppe Grisoni. Inscribed below the title at the bottom is a poem celebrating Cibber's supposed kindness in preventing Pope from contracting a venereal disease and so being unable to devote himself to his translations of Homer:

Does not Satiric Pope your Laughter move
Thus perching pertly on the Mount of Love?
How much had British poetry to fear
Till 'twas retriev'd by Colley's kindly Care?
What greater good from Cibber cou'd we hope
Who gave us Homer by his saving Pope?

The engraving appeared following a public feud between Pope and Colley Cibber, playwright and Poet Laureate. For a fuller description of these events, see the description for the print titled "An Essay on Woman by the Author of the Essay on Man."

—Allison Muri, March 2014