And this very morning, when I am now writing at the Bath, November 11, 1738, the same words were said of her by a lady of condition, whose better judgment of her personal merit in that light has embolden'd me to repeat them." The best of us have a wee bit of snobbishness buried deep in the inmost recesses of our souls, and Colley, who was neither the best nor the worst of humanity, had this quality well developed.

To see that one has but to read the above quotation between the lines.

He loved a lord as ardently as did the next man, and he attached to rank the same exaggerated importance which pervades, with all the unwelcome odour of sickening incense, the literature of his age.

As Macklin so well said of him, Nature formed Cibber for a coxcomb, and it is quite probable that he took greater delight in being thought a leader of fashion than a writer of charming plays.

Indeed, he was careful to cultivate the society of young noblemen, and this he was able to do by virtue of his theatrical successes, and, more helpful still, by a levity of character which stuck to him despite his great earnestness in many directions.