And yet my numbers please the rural throng, Rough satyrs dance, and Pan applauds the song: The nymphs, forsaking ev’ry cave and spring, Their early fruit, and milk-white turtles bring; Each am’rous nymph prefers her gifts in vain, On you their gifts are all bestowed again. For you the swains the fairest flow’rs design, And in one garland all their beauties join; Accept the wreath which you deserve alone, In whom all beauties are compris’d in one. In 1711 appeared the _Essay on Criticism_, also written in heroic couplets. The poem professes to set forth the gospel of “wit” and “nature” as it applies to the literature of the period. The work is clearly immature. There is nothing novel in its theories, which are conventionality itself; but it dresses the aged theories so neatly and freshly that the poem is a lasting monument to the genius of the writer. It is full of apt, quotable lines that have become imbedded in the language: A little learning is a dangerous thing!... And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art.... To err is human: to forgive, divine.... 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, And stars unnumber’d gild the glowing pole, O’er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, And tip with silver every mountain’s head: Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise, A flood of glory bursts from all the skies; The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light.