"Bethlemii ad portas se tollit dupla columna; #Heikona tôn entos chô lithos ektos echei.# Hic calvum ad dextram tristi caput ore reclinat, Vix illum ad lævam ferrea vinc'la tenent. Dissimilis furor est Statuis; sed utrumque laborem Et genium artificis laudat uterque furor."
Pope, in the "Dunciad," thus spitefully refers to them in connection with the sculptor's son, Colley Cibber, the comedian:--
"Close to those walls where Folly holds her throne, And laughs to think Monro would take her down, Where o'er the gates by his famed father's hand Great Cibber's brazen,[80] brainless brothers stand."
Nettled at being made the brother of two madmen, Cibber retaliated in a philippic upon Pope, which it is said (with what truth I know not) hastened his death.[81] It was entitled "A letter from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope, wherein the New Hero's Preferment to his Throne in the 'Dunciad' seems not to be accepted, and the Author of that Poem His more rightful claim to it is asserted.
----'Remember Sauney's Fate, Bang'd by the Blockhead whom he strove to beat.'
London, MDCCXLIV." And certainly Pope died a few months after, May, 1744. It is, however, highly improbable that he would in the slightest degree care for this letter, though he might suffer some remorse for his spiteful attack on so good-natured a fellow. Cibber says in this letter that people "allow that by this last stale and slow endeavour to maul me, you have fairly wrote yourself up to the Throne you have raised, for the _immortal Dulness_ of your humble servant to nod in. I am therefore now convinced that it would be ill-breeding in _Me_ to take _your_ seat, Mr. Pope. Nay, pray, Sir, don't press me!... I am utterly conscious that no Man has so good a Right to repose in it, as yourself. Therefore, dear, good good Mr. Pope, be seated!... Whether you call me Dunce or Doctor, whether you like me, or lick me, contemn, jerk, or praise me, you will still find me the same merry Monarch I was before you did me the Honour to put yourself out of Humour about me," etc.
These figures, now banished to South Kensington Museum, and there incarcerated at the top of the building, and only seen by special permission, are, of course, quite unsuitable for the entrance of the hospital, but I would plead for their being placed somewhere in Bethlem, their natural _habitat_. As works of art, the governors and officers cannot but be proud of them. I suppose, however, their banishment is intended as a public protest against the old system of treatment which one of them exhibits, and from this point of view is no doubt creditable. I would here observe that the figure of the maniac is superior to that of the melancholiac, whose expression is rather that of dementia than melancholia. I think that when Bacon, in 1820, repaired this statue, he must have altered the mouth, because, in the engraving by Stothard, this feature, and perhaps others, are more expressive.