Pope, always under the influence of some stronger companions, naturally adopted their shallow prejudices, and recklessly abused a writer who should have been recognized as amongst the most effective combatants against dulness.
Bentley died a few months after the publication of the Dunciad.

But Pope found a living antagonist, who succeeded in giving him pain enough to gratify the vilified dunces.

This was Colley Cibber--most lively and mercurial of actors--author of some successful plays, with too little stuff in them for permanence, and of an Apology for his own Life, which is still exceedingly amusing as well as useful for the history of the stage.

He was now approaching seventy, though he was to survive Pope for thirteen years, and as good-tempered a specimen of the lively, if not too particular, old man of the world as could well have been found.

Pope owed him a grudge.