True wit is nature to advantage dressed....
Windsor Forest (1713) is another pastoral in the familiar meter. Artificial still, it nevertheless shows a broader treatment, and a still stronger grip of the stopped couplet.
By this time Pope was well known, and he set about his ambitious scheme of translating the Iliad, which was eventually issued in 1720. For the book, as he was zealously assisted by his literary friends, he was successful in compiling a phenomenal subscription list, which (with the additional translation of the Odyssey) brought him more than ten thousand pounds. Such a triumph produced the inevitable reaction on the part of his critics, who maintained that Pope knew little Latin and less Greek, and that the translation was no translation at all. It certainly bears no close resemblance to the original Greek. Bentley, the famous classical scholar, remarked to the chagrined author, “A pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer.” The line of Pope has none of the great lift of the Homeric line, but it is often vigorous and picturesque, and answers with fair facility to the demands he makes upon it.
The troops exulting sat in order round,
And beaming fires illumined all the ground.
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O’er heaven’s pure azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o’ercasts the solemn scene,
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,