author. He reviews his characteristic excellences, his originality, his delineation of characters, so various and dissimilar, yet so life-like, his power over the passions, his sentiments, language, and dramatic art. Much of what he advanced has been superseded by juster and higher criticism, founded on truer principles and more devoted study; but it must be recollected that Pope was a pioneer in the service, and was not cheered in his labours by contemporary help or enthusiasm. His scale of remuneration, compared

BROOME.

with that for Homer, shows how limited were the ideas entertained on the subject. He

agreed with Tonson to edit the work for

£217 12s. Ton

son charged a
guinea a VO-
lume, but his
subscription
did not fill well,
and he is said
to have lost by
the undertak-
ing. Pope was
mortified at the

result; and to add to his chagrin, the small critics and word-catchers rose in full cry against him, and Louis Theobald, one of the dullest of versifiers, translators, and dramatists, published, in 1726, a tract entitled "Shakspeare Restored, or a specimen of the many errors, as well committed as unamended, by Mr. Pope, in his late edition." Theobald was well read in black-letter and dramatic literature, and he afterwards ventured on an entire edition of

TRANSLATION OF THE ODYSSEY.

171

the poet, which evinced greater care and knowledge than that of his illustrious predecessor, and soon eclipsed it in popular estimation. Pope took his revenge in a manner in which he had no rivals.

Dunciad.

He made Theobald the hero of the

The translation of the Odyssey also involved him in trouble and altercation. He resolved to make the labour as light as possible, and he called in literary assistants. Twelve books were translated by himself, and the remaining twelve by Fenton and Broome, both competent scholars, and Fenton at least a more than mediocre poet. Fenton took the 1st, 4th, 19th and 20th books of the poem. To Broome were assigned the 2nd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 12th, 16th, 18th and 23rd, besides the compilation of the notes. So well was the Pope measure-the mechanic echo" of his verse -now understood and practised, that Fenton and Broome show no in

ELIJAH FENTON.

feriority in style to their master. The latter, however, threw in some of his occasional happy touches. The first couplet of the poem was thus written by Fenton :

The man for wisdom fam'd, O muse relate,

Through woes and wanderings long pursued by Fate.

Pope erased these, and substituted-

The man for wisdom's various arts renown'd,

Long exercised in woes, O muse resound.

The Battle of the Frogs and Mice, appended to the last volume, was translated by Parnell. According to Ruffhead, or rather Warburton, Fenton received £600, and Broome £300; but Warton states, that Fenton received only £300, and Broome £500, and this is confirmed by Pope's letter to Lord Hervey. It is certain that Broome was dissatisfied with Pope-perhaps as to the remuneration for the notes-and an angry correspondence followed.1 A charge was brought against the poet, that he had solicited an expensive subscription, and employed underlings to perform what should have come from his own hands; but the accusation is unfounded. In his proposals he had expressly stated that the subscription was not wholly for his own use, but for that of two of his friends who had assisted him in the work. He said he had undertaken the translation of the Odyssey, but did not claim to be sole translator. "Mr. Pope the undertaker" was a fertile topic of ridicule and abuse; and an epigram on the translation, by some one of his nameless assailants, rises above the mark of Dennis, Gildon, or Theobald:

If Homer's never-dying song begun

To celebrate the wrath of Peleus' son;
Or if his opening Odyssey disclose
A patient hero exercised in woes:

Let undertaking Pope demand our praise,
Who so could copy the famed Grecian lays,
That still Achilles' wrath may justly rise,
And still Ulysses suffer in disguise.

1 Broome preserved all the letters of Pope, and copies of his own, and they were lately purchased by Mr. Croker. "All that was remembered of Broome twenty years since, in the parish in Norfolk where he lived, was that he was a fine man, and kept an eagle."-Gent. Mag. 1836. Broome had previously translated part of the Odyssey, as appears from the following:—

66 ADVERTISEMENT.r.—This Day is published, the Second Volume of the Iliad of Homer, with large Notes by Madame Dacier, the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Books translated by Mr. Ozell, the 7th by Mr. Timothy, and the 9th by Mr. Broome, of St. John's Coll., Cambridge. Printed for B. Lintot, at the Cross Keys, between the Two Temple Gates, Fleet Street." -The Medley, April 14 to 18, 1712.

SWIFT'S MISANTHROPY.

173

Two years had been employed on the Odyssey-from 1723 to 1725; it extended to five volumes; and, deducting the sum of £800 paid to his coadjutors (but without allowing for the unknown sum given for the notes), the Odyssey realised for Pope £2885 5s. For the copyright Lintot had given £100 per volume, and all the subscribers' copies, amounting to 574. The Iliad and Odyssey had thus brought to the English poet from eight to nine thousand pounds. By making the ancient Grecian pass through his poetical crucible into an English form, he had, as Lady Mary remarked, "drawn the golden current of Pactolus to Twickenham." The Anne and Georgian period, up to this date, was indeed princely in its patronage of literature. Worse days for authors came with an abler Administration. Walpole, in ten years-from 1731 to 1741-spent above fifty thousand pounds on writers; but it was on newspaper hirelings and virulent pamphleteers.

Swift wrote to his friend, congratulating him on his emancipation from the drudgery of translation, and at the same time exhibiting that vein of misanthropy which, as Warton said, dishonoured him as a man, a Christian, and a philosopher :

:

I am exceedingly pleased that you have done with translations; Lord Treasurer Oxford often lamented that a rascally world should lay you under the necessity of misemploying your genius for so long a time. But since you will now be so much better employed, when you think of the world, give it one lash the more at my request. I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities; and all my love is towards individuals: for instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love Counsellor such a one, and Judge such a one. 'Tis so with physicians, (I will not speak of my own trade,) soldiers, English, Scotch, French, and the rest. But principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. This is the system upon which I have governed myself many years (but do not tell), and so I shall go on till I have done with them. I have got materials towards a treatise, proving the falsity of that definition animal rationale, and to show it should be only rationis capax. Upon this great foundation of misanthropy (though not in Timon's manner) the whole building of my travels is erected; and I never will have peace of mind till all honest men are of my opinion: by onsequence you are to embrace it immediately, and procure that all who

deserve my esteem may do so too. The matter is so clear, that it will admit of no dispute; nay, I will hold a hundred pounds that you and I agree in the point.

Pope, without formally stating his dissent from his friend, contrived to show him that he disapproved of his view of human nature:

I have often imagined to myself, that if ever all of us meet again, after so many varieties and changes, after so much of the old world and of the old man in each of us has been altered, that scarce a single thought of the one, any more than a single atom of the other, remains just the same; I've fancied, I say, that we should meet like the righteous in the Millennium, quite in peace, divested of all our former passions, smiling at our past follies, and content to enjoy the kingdom of the just in tranquillity. But I find you would rather be employed as an avenging angel of wrath, to break your vial of indignation over the heads of the wretched creatures of this world; nay, would make them eat your book, which you have made (I doubt not) as bitter a pill for them as possible.

I won't tell you what designs I have in my head (besides writing a set of maxims in opposition to all Rochefoucault's principles) till I see you here, face to face. Then you shall have no reason to complain of me, for want of a generous disdain of this world, though I have not lost my ears in yours and their service. Lord Oxford, too (whom I have now the third time mentioned in this letter, and he deserves to be always mentioned in everything that is addressed to you, or comes from you), expects you: that ought to be enough to bring you hither; 'tis a better reason than if the nation expected you. For I really enter as fully as you can desire, into your principle of love of individuals: and I think the way to have a public spirit is first to have a private one; for who can believe (said a friend of mine) that any man can care for a hundred thousand people, who never cared for one? No ill-humoured man can ever be a patriot, any more than a friend.

The poet was now to lose his friend Atterbury. On the 24th of August, 1722, as the bishop was residing at his deanery, he was arrested on a charge of treasonable correspondence with the Pretender, and was taken, with all his papers, before the Privy Council. Letters of a treasonable nature, written under feigned names, were produced, the object of which was to obtain a foreign force of 5000 troops, to land under the Duke of Ormond. The publication of Atterbury's correspondence has since fully established his