The encouragement given to this translation, though report seems to have overrated it, was such as the world has not often seen. The subscribers were five hundred and seventy-five. The copies, for which subscriptions were given, were six hundred and fifty-four; and only six hundred and sixty were printed. For these copies Pope had nothing to pay; he, therefore, received, including the two hundred pounds a volume, five thousand three hundred and twenty pounds four shillings without deduction, as the books were supplied by Lintot.
By the success of his subscription Pope was relieved from those pecuniary distresses with which, notwithstanding his popularity, he had hitherto struggled. Lord Oxford had often lamented his disqualification for publick employment, but never proposed a pension. While the translation of Homer was in its progress, Mr. Craggs, then secretary of state, offered to procure him a pension, which, at least during his ministry, might be enjoyed with secrecy. This was not accepted by Pope, who told him, however, that, if he should be pressed with want of money, he would send to him for occasional supplies. Craggs was not long in power, and was never solicited for money by Pope, who disdained to beg what he did not want.
With the product of this subscription, which he had too much discretion to squander, he secured his future life from want, by considerable annuities. The estate of the duke of Buckingham was found to have been charged with five hundred pounds a year, payable to Pope, which, doubtless, his translation enabled him to purchase.
It cannot be unwelcome to literary curiosity, that I deduce thus minutely the history of the English Iliad. It is, certainly, the noblest version of poetry which the world has ever seen; and its publication must, therefore, be considered as one of the great events in the annals of learning.
To those who have skill to estimate the excellence and difficulty of this great work, it must be very desirable to know how it was performed, and by what gradations it advanced to correctness. Of such an intellectual process the knowledge has very rarely been attainable; but, happily, there remains the original copy of the Iliad, which, being obtained by Bolingbroke, as a curiosity, descended, from him, to Mallet, and is now, by the solicitation of the late Dr. Maty, reposited in the Museum.
Between this manuscript, which is written upon accidental fragments of paper, and the printed edition, there must have been an intermediate copy, that was, perhaps, destroyed as it returned from the press.
From the first copy I have procured a few transcripts, and shall exhibit, first, the printed lines: then, in a smaller print, those of the manuscripts, with all their variations. Those words in the small print, which are given in italicks, are cancelled in the copy, and the words placed under them adopted in their stead.
The beginning of the first book stands thus:
The wrath of Peleus’ son, the direful spring
Of all the Grecian woes, O goddess, sing;
That wrath which hurl’d to Pluto’s gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain.
The stern Pelides’ rage, O goddess, sing,
wrath
Of all the woes of Greece the fatal spring.
Grecian
That strew’d with warriors dead the Phrygian plain,
heroes
And peopled the dark hell with heroes slain;
fill’d the shady hell with chiefs untimely.