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." The _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_ and _The Dunciad_ are Pope's greatest satires. In _The Dunciad_, an epic of the dunces, he holds up to ridicule every person and writer who had offended him. These were in many cases scribblers who had no business with a pen; but in a few instances they were the best scholars of that day. A great deal of the poem is now very tiresome reading. Much of it is brutal. Pope was a powerful agent, as Thackeray says, in rousing that obloquy which has ever since pursued a struggling author. _The Dunciad_ could be more confidently consulted about contemporary literary history, if Pope had avoided such unnecessary misstatements as:-- "Earless on high, stood unabash'd De Foe." This line is responsible for the current unwarranted belief that the author of _Robinson Crusoe_ lost his ears in the pillory.