The remarkable success of these works is strange when we remember that Pope's knowledge of Greek was very imperfect, and that he was obliged to consult translations before attempting any passage. The Greek scholar Bentley, a contemporary of Pope, delivered a just verdict on the translation: "A pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer." The historian Gibbon said that the poem had every merit except faithfulness to the original.
Homer is simple and direct. He abounds in concrete terms. Pope dislikes a simple term and loves a circumlocution and an abstraction. We have the concrete "herd of swine" translated into "a bristly care," "skins," into "furry spoils." The concrete was considered common and undignified. Homer says in simple language: "His father wept with him," but Pope translates this: "The father poured a social flood."
Pope used to translate thirty or forty verses of the Iliad before rising, and then to spend a considerable time in polishing them. But half of the translation of the Odyssey is his own work. He employed assistants to finish the other half; but it is by no means easy to distinguish his work from theirs.
[Illustration: ALEXANDER POPE. From contemporary portrait.]
Some Poems of his Third Period: "Essay on Man," and "Satires."—The Essay on Man is a philosophical poem with the avowed object of vindicating the ways of God to man. The entire poem is an amplification of the idea contained in these lines:—
"All nature is but art unknown to thee;
All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good.
And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right."
The chief merit of the poem consists in throwing into polished form many of the views current at the time, so that they may be easily understood. Before we read very far we come across such old acquaintances as—
"The proper study of mankind is man."
"An honest man's the noblest work of God."
"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet, seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace."