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moral air, which saves it from the reproach of triviality, without making it obtrusively didactic. Pope has succeeded in embalming a fleeting episode of fashionable manners in a form which can perish only with the English language.-COURTHOPE, WILLIAM JOHN, 1889, The Life of Alexander Pope, Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, vol. V, pp. 107, 110, 114.

"The Rape of the Lock" is very witty, but through it all don't you mark the sneer of the contemptuous, unmanly little wit, the crooked dandy? He jibes among his compliments; and I do not wonder that Mistress Arabella Fermor was not conciliated by his long-drawn cleverness and polished lines.-LANG, ANDREW, 1889, Letters on Literature, p. 152.

"The celebrated lady herself," the poet wrote, "is offended, and which is stranger, not at herself but me. Is not this enough to make a writer never be tender of another's character or fame?" But Pope, whose praise of women is too often a libel ⚫ upon them, was not as tender as he ought to have been of the lady's reputation. The offence felt by the heroine of the poem is now unheeded; the dainty art exhibited is a permanent delight, and our language can boast no more perfect specimen of the poetical burlesque than the "Rape of the Lock." The machinery of the sylphs is managed with perfect skill, and nothing can be more admirable than the charge delivered by Ariel to the sylphs to guard Belinda from an apprehended but unknown danger. DENNIS, JOHN, 1894, The Age of Pope, p. 31.

It does not seem to me to furnish very inspiring reading.-MITCHELL, DONALD G., 1895, English Lands Letters and Kings, Queen Anne and the Georges, p. 39.

The most brilliant occasional poem in our language.-BROOKE, STOPFORD A., 1896, English Literature, p. 184.

We may draw attention to the fact, already averted to, that, poetic excellence and merit altogether apart, "The Rape of the Lock" presents us with the most perfect picture in miniature possible of life at Hampton Court during the reign of Queen Anne. We have already cited at the beginning of this chapter the opening lines of the third canto, beginning with the words, "Close by those meads, the verses that follow them, with their

etc.:

delicate irony on the fashionable frivolities of the inhabitants of Hampton Court at that time, give us a peep into the interior social life of the palace, than which nothing could be more vivid. . . . Thus it comes about the subject-matter of these pages is associated with the most brilliant and exquisite mock-heroic poem in the English, or perhaps any, language, replete with all the subtlest delicacies of humour, satire, language, and invention, and redolent of the refined and airy graces of the artificial world which it so intimately describes.-LAW, ERNEST, 1897, Hampton Court, pp. 358, 359.

Is Pope's masterpiece.-HALLECK, REUBEN POST, 1900, History of English Literature, p. 255.

WINDSOR FOREST

1713

By Mr.

WINDSOR FOREST. To the Right Honorable George, Lord Landsdown. Pope.

Non injussa cano: te nostræ, Vare, myricæ,
Te nemus omne canet; nec Phoebo gratior ulla est,
Quam sibi quæ Vari præscripsit pagina nomen --Virg.
London: Printed for Bernard Lintott, at
the Cross-keys, in Fleet Street. I
-TITLE PAGE OF FIRST EDITION, 1713.

Mr. Pope has published a fine poem called "Windsor Forest." Read it.SWIFT, JONATHAN, 1713, Journal to Stella, March 9.

I should have commended his poem on "Windsor Forest" much more, if he had not served me a slippery trick; for you must know I had long since put him upon this subject, gave several hints, and at last, when he brought it, and read it, and made some little alterations, &c., not one word of putting in my name till I found it in print.-TRUMBULL, SIR WILLIAM, 1713, Letter to Mr. Bridges, May 12.

ODE ON ST. CELIA'S DAY

1713

Many people would like my Ode on Music better, if Dryden had not written on that subject. It was at the request of Mr. Steele that I wrote mine; and not with any thought of rivalling that great man, whose memory I do and always have reverenced.-POPE, ALEXANDER, 173436, Spence's Anecdotes, ed. Singer, p. 119.

Must be reckoned amongst his utter failures.-STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1880, Alexander Pope (English Men of Letters), p. 196.

THE TEMPLE OF FAME

1714

The hint of the following piece was taken from Chaucer's "House of Fame." The design is in a manner entirely altered, the descriptions and most of the particular thoughts my own: yet I could not suffer it to be printed without this acknowledgment, or think of a concealment of this nature the less unfair for being common. The reader who would compare this with Chaucer, may begin with his third Book of Fame, there being nothing in the two first books that answers to their title. Whenever any hint is taken from him, the passage itself is set down in the marginal notes.-POPE, ALEXANDER, 1715, The Temple of Fame, Advertisement.

It was probably the similarity of taste that induced Pope when young to imitate several of the pieces of Chaucer, and in particular to write his "Temple of Fame,' one of the noblest, although one of the earliest of his productions. That the hint of the piece is taken from Chaucer's "House of Fame," is sufficiently obvious, yet the design is greatly altered, and the descriptions, and many of the particular thoughts, are his own; notwithstanding which, such is the coincidence and happy union of the work with its prototype, that it is almost impossible to distinguish those portions which are originally Pope's, from those for which he has been indebted to Chaucer. ROSCOE, WILLIAM, 1824-47, ed., The Works of Alexander Pope, vol. II, p. xiv.

Pope, who reproduced parts of the "House of Fame," in a loose paraphrase, in attempting to improve the construction of Chaucer's work, only mutilated it.— WARD, ADOLPHUS WILLIAM, 1880, Chaucer (English Men of Letters), p. 96.

One of Pope's least attractive pieces. -DENNIS, JOHN, 1894, The Age of Pope, p. 33.

HOMER'S ILIAD

1715-20

I am pleased beyond measure with your design of translating Homer. The trials you have already made and published on some parts of that author have shown that you are equal to so great a task; and you may therefore depend upon the utmost services I can do in promoting this work,

or anything that may be for your service. -GRANVILLE, GEORGE (LORD LANSDOWN), 1713, Letter to Alexander Pope, Oct. 21.

Then he [Swift] instructed a young nobleman that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who had begun a translation of Homer into English verse, "for which he must have them all subscribe; for," says he, "the author shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for him."-KENNET, BISHOP, 1713. Diary, Nov.

I borrowed your Homer from the bishop, (mine is not yet landed), and read it out in two evenings. If it pleases others as well as me, you have got your end in profit and reputation: yet I am angry at some bad rhymes and triplets; and pray in your next do not let me have so many unjustifiable rhymes to war, and gods. I tell you all the faults I know, only in one or two places you are a little too obscure, but I expected you to be so in one or twoand-twenty. Your notes are per

fectly good, and so are your preface and essay. SWIFT, JONATHAN, 1715, Letter to Pope, June 28.

Did I not see when thou first sett'st sail

To seek adventures fair in Homer's land?
Did I not see thy sinking spirits fail,
And wish thy bark had never left the strand?
Even in mid ocean often didst thou quail,
And oft lift up thy holy eye and hand,
Praying the Virgin dear and saintly choir,
Back to the port to bring thy bark entire.
Cheer up, my friend! thy dangers now are
o'er;

Methinks,-nay, sure the rising coasts appear;
Hark! how the guns salute from either shore,
As thy trim vessel cuts the Thames so fair:
Shouts answering shouts from Kent and Essex

roar,

And bells break loud through every gust of air:

Bonfires do blaze, and bones and cleavers ring,

As at the coming of some mighty king. GAY, JOHN, 1720, To Mr. Pope, Welcome from Greece.

I have as yet read only to the end of the eighth Iliad; but, as far as I can judge, this is one of the finest translations in the English language; and, what is very extraordinary, it appears to the best advantage when compared with the original. I have read both carefully so far, and written remarks as I went along; and I think I can prove that where Pope

has omitted one beauty he has added or improved four. -DODDRIDGE, PHILIP, 1725, Letter to Rev. Nettleton, Aug. 5.

All the crime that I have committed is saying that he is no master of Greek; and I am so confident of this, that if he can translate ten lines of Eustathius I'll own myself unjust and unworthy.--BROOME, WILLIAM, 1727, Letter to Fenton, June 5.

In order to sink in reputation, let him take it into his head to descend into Homer (let the world wonder, as it will, how the devil he got there), and pretend to do him into English, so his version denote his neglect of the manner how.— THEOBALD, LEWIS, 1728, Mist's Journal, March 30.

Three times I've read your Iliad o'er;
The first time pleas'd me well;
New beauties unobserv'd before,
Next pleas'd me better still,
Again I tri'd to find a flaw,
Examin'd ilka line;

The third time pleas'd me best of a',
The labour seem'd divine.
Henceforward I'll not tempt my fate,
On dazzling rays to stare,

Lest I should tine dear self-conceit,
And read and write nae mair.

-RAMSAY, ALLAN, 1728, To Mr. Pope,
Poems, Paisley ed., vol. 1, p. 270.

The "Iliad" took me up six years; and during that time, and particularly the first part of it, I was often under great pain and apprehension. Though I conquered the thoughts of it in the day, they would frighten me in the night. I sometimes, still, even dream of being engaged in that translation; and got about half way through it and being embarrassed and under dread of never completing it.POPE, ALEXANDER, 1742-43, Spence's Anecdotes, ed. Singer, p. 214.

They can have no conception of his [Homer's] manner, who are acquainted with him in Mr. Pope's translation only. An excellent poetical performance that translation is, and faithful in the main to the original. In some places, it may be thought to have even improved Homer. It has certainly softened some of his rudenesses, and added delicacy and grace to some of his sentiments. But withal, it is no other than Homer modernized. In the midst of the elegance and luxuriancy of Mr. Pope's language, we lose sight of the

old bard's simplicity.-BLAIR, HUGH, 1783, Lectures on Rhetoric and BellesLettres, ed. Mills, Lecture xliii.

Pope's translation is a portrait endowed with every merit, excepting that of likeness to the original. The verses of Pope accustomed my ear to the sound of poetic harmony.-GIBBON, EDWARD, 1794, Memoirs of My Life and Writings.

Dry

To what a low state knowledge of the most obvious and important phenomena had sunk, is evident from the style in which Dryden has executed a description of Night in one of his Tragedies, and Pope his translation of the celebrated moonlight scene in the "Iliad." A blind man, in the habit of attending accurately to descriptions casually dropped from the lips of those around him, might easily depict these appearances with more truth. den's lines are vague, bombastic, and senseless; those of Pope, though he had Homer to guide him, are throughout false and contradictory. The verses of Dryden, once highly celebrated, are forgotten; those of Pope still retain their hold upon public estimation,-nay, there is not a passage of descriptive poetry, which at this day finds so many and such ardent admirers. Strange to think of an enthusiast, as may have been the case with thousands, reciting those verses under the cope of a moonlight sky, without having his raptures in the least disturbed by a suspicion of their absurdity!-WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM, 1815, Poetry as a Study.

In the course of one of my lectures, I had occasion to point out the almost faultless position and choice of words in Pope's original compositions, particularly in his Satires, and Moral Essays, for the purpose of comparing them with his translation of Homer, which I do not stand alone in regarding as the main source of our pseudo-poetic diction.-COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1817, Biographia Literaria.

The age of Pope was the golden age of poets, but it was the pinchbeck age of poetry. They flourished in the sunshine. of public and private patronage; the art meantime was debased, and it continued to be so as long as Pope continued lord of the ascendant. More injury was not done to the taste of his countrymen by Marino in Italy, nor by Gongora in Spain, than by Pope in England. The mischief was affected not by his satrical and moral

pieces, for these entitled him to the highest place among poets of his class; it was by his Homer. There have been other versions as unfaithful; but none were ever so well executed in as bad a style; and no other work in the language so greatly vitiated the diction of English poetry. Common readers (and the majority must always be such) will always be taken by glittering faults, as larks are caught by bits of looking-glass; and in this meretricious translation, the passages that were most unlike the original, which were most untrue to nature, and therefore most false in taste, were precisely those which were most applauded, and on which critic after critic dwelt with one cuckoo note of admiration.-SOUTHEY, ROBERT, 1835, Life of Cowper, vol. 1, p. 313.

Chapman's translation, with all its defects, is often exceedingly Homeric; a praise which Pope himself seldom attained. -HALLAM, HENRY, 1837-39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. ii, ch. v, par. 73.

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Between Pope and Homer there is interposed the mist of Pope's literary artificial manner, entirely alien to the plain naturalness of Homer's manner. . In elevated passages he is powerful, as Homer is powerful, though not in the same way; but in plain narrative, where Homer is still powerful and delightful, Pope, by the inherent fault of his style, is ineffective and out of taste.-ARNOLD, MATTHEW, 1861, On Translating Homer, pp, 11, 21.

Pope's translations of the Homeric poems are achievements not only unmatched but unapproached. His thorough command over his native tongue gave him an active sense of its capacities and its deficiencies, and therefore he took the two narratives, each with all its parts and their sequence, but he told the two stories in his own way. Passing his early youth in a heroic period, when the bells pealed at short intervals for victory after victory, he had the best of all possible opportunities for drinking in heroic sensations; and with thorough power and efficiency "he sang of battles and the breath of stormy war and violent death." His successors, professing to perform the same work, and to do it more accurately, have in that vain effort made repeated failures. -BURTON, JOHN HILL, 1880, A History of the Reign of Queen Anne, vol. III, p. 245.

The Pity of it! And the changing Taste
Of changing Time leaves half your Work a
Waste!

My Childhood fled your couplet's clarion tone,
And sought for Homer in the Prose of Bohn.
Still through the Dust of that dim Prose
Appears

The Flight of Arrows and the Sheen of Spears ; Still we may trace what Hearts heroic feel, And hear the Bronze that hurtels on the Steel!

But, ah, your Iliad seems a half-pretence,
Where Wits, not Heroes, prove their Skill in
Fence,

And great Achilles' Eloquence doth show
As if no Centaur trained him, but Boileau!
-LANG, ANDREW, 1886, Letters to Dead
Authors.

One hundred and seventy years have since gone by, and many attempts have been made by writers of distinction to supply the admitted deficiencies in Pope's work. Yet his translation of the "Iliad" occupies a position in literature which no other has ever approached. It is the one poem of the kind that has obtained a reputation beyond the limits of the country in the language of which it is written, and the only one that has fascinated the imagination of the unlearned. Many an English reader, to whom the Greek was literally a dead language, has followed through it the action of the Iliad with a livelier interest than that of the "Faery Queen" or of "Paradise Lost." The descriptions of the single combats and the funeral games have delighted many a schoolboy, who has perhaps revolted with an equally intense abhorrence from the syntax syntax of the original.-COURTHOPE, WILLIAM JOHN, 1889, The Life of Alexander Pope, Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, vol. V, p. 162.

Many scholars and many poets have scoffed at his translations of Homer, but generations of English schoolboys have learned to love the "Iliad" because of the way in which Pope has told them the story, and as to the telling of a story the judgment of a schoolboy sometimes counts for more than the judgment of a sage. Pope's "Iliad" and "Odyssey" are certainly not for those who can read the great originals in their own tongue, or even for those who have a taste strong and refined enough to enjoy the severe fidelity of a prose translation. But Pope has brought the story of Achilles' wrath, and Helen's pathetic beauty, and Hector's

fall, and Priam's agony home to the hearts of millions for whom they would otherwise have no life. MCCARTHY, JUSTIN, 1890, A History of the Four Georges, vol. II, p. 262. We may add that neither its false glitter nor Pope's inability-shared in great measure with every translator-to catch the spirit of the original, can conceal the sustained power of this brilliant work. Its merit is the more wonderful since the poet's knowledge of Greek was extremely meagre, and he is said to have been constantly indebted to earlier translations. Gibbon said that his "Homer" had every merit except that of faithfulness to the original; and Pope, could he have heard it, might well have been satisfied with the verdict of Gray, a great scholar as well as a great poet, that no other version would ever equal his. All that has been hitherto said with regard to Pope and Homer relates to his version of the "Iliad." On that he expended his best powers, and on that it is evident he bestowed infinite pains.-DENNIS, JOHN, 1894, The Age of Pope, p. 37.

His translation of Homer resembles Homer as much as London resembles Troy, or Marlborough Achilles, or Queen Anne Hecuba. It is done with great literary art, but for that very reason it does not make us feel the simplicity and directness of his original. It has neither the manner nor the spirit of the Greek, just as Pope's descriptions of nature have neither the manner nor the spirit of nature.—BROOKE, STOPFORD A., 1896, English Literature, p. 186,

He could not have turned out a true translation, indeed, when his lack of Greek learning threw him back upon French and Latin versions, upon earlier English translations, or upon assistance of more scholarly but less poetic friends. He worked from a Homer minus Homer's force and freedom, a Homer ornamented with epigrams to suit the taste of the age. His tools were a settled diction and ready-made style, regular, neat, and terse. The result could never have been Homer, but it is an English poem of sustained vivacity and emphasis, a fine epic as epics went in the days of Anne-"A very pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but not Homer."-PRICE, WARWICK JAMES, 1896, ed., The Iliad of Homer, Books i, vi, xxii and xxiv, Introduction, p. 11.

Although Pope has also a certain rapidity of movement, it is not the smooth, subtly-varied swiftness of Homer, but a jogging and rather monotonous briskness. He impedes the progress of the action, even in his translation, by introducing reflective phrases, fanciful asides, and lingering appreciation of passages elaborated for their own sakes, to their detriment as humble parts of a swift narrative. His eye is not fixed clearly on the moving objects, but on the thoughts and feelings. he lets them suggest.-GENTNER, PHILIP, 1899, Introduction to Pope's Iliad, p. xi.

ODYSSEY

1725

I think I need not recommend to you further the necessity of keeping this whole matter to yourself, as I am very sure Fenton has done, lest the least air of it prejudice with the town. But if you judge otherwise, I do not prohibit you taking to yourself your due share of fame. Take your choice also in that. .. The public is both an unfair and a silly judge unless it be trepanned into justice.POPE, ALEXANDER, 1724, Letter to Broome, Nov.

Pope's "Homer's Odyssey," surely a very false, and though ingenious and talented, yet bad translation.-CARLYLE, THOMAS, 1831, Note Book, Life by Froude, vol. II, p. 78.

He made over 3500£. after paying Broome 500£. (including 100£. for notes) and Fenton 200£.—that is, 50£. a book. The rate of pay was as high as the work. was worth, and as much as it would fetch in the open market. The large sum was entirely due to Pope's reputation, though obtained, so far as the true authorship was concealed upon something like falsepretences. Still, we could have wished that he had been a little more liberal with his share of the plunder.

The

shares of the three colleagues in the Odyssey are not to be easily distinguished by internal evidence. On trying the experiment by a cursory reading, I confess (though a critic does not willingly admit his fallibility) that I took some of Broome's work for Pope's, and, though closer study or an acuter perception might discriminate more accurately, I do not think that the distinction would be easy. This may be taken to confirm the common theory that Pope's versification was a mere

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