English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism; Pope, Alexander, 1688-1744
Pope's editor could not perhaps have selected a better illustration of
his best manner than this speech of Sarpedon to Glaucus, which is
parodied in the _Rape of the Lock_. The concluding lines shall be
quoted.
'Could all our care elude the gloomy grave,
Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,
For lust of fame I should not vainly dare
In fighting fields, nor urge the soul to war,
But since, alas! ignoble age must come,
Disease, and death's inexorable doom;
The life which others pay let us bestow,
And give to fame what we to nature owe;
Brave though we fall, and honoured if we live,
Or let us glory gain, or glory give.'
We may add that neither its false glitter nor Pope's inability--shared
in great measure with every translator--to catch the spirit of the
original, can conceal the sustained power of this brilliant work. Its
merit is the more wonderful since the poet's knowledge of Greek was
extremely meagre, and he is said to have been constantly indebted to
earlier translations. Gibbon said that his _Homer_ had every merit
except that of faithfulness to the original; and Pope, could he have
heard it, might well have been satisfied with the verdict of Gray, a
great scholar as well as a great poet, that no other version would ever
equal his.
All that has been hitherto said with regard to Pope and Homer relates to
his version of the _Iliad_. On that he expended his best powers, and on
that it is evident he bestowed infinite pains. The _Odyssey_, one of the
most beautiful stories in the world, appears to have been taken up with
a weary pen, and in putting it into English he sought the assistance of
Broome and Fenton, two minor poets and Cambridge scholars. They
translated twelve books out of the twenty-four, and so skilfully did
they catch Pope's style that it is almost impossible to discern any
difference between his work and theirs. The literary partnership led to
one of Pope's discreditable manoeuvres, in which, strange to say, he
was assisted by Broome, whom he induced to set his name to a falsehood.
Pope as we have said, translated twelve books, while eight were allotted
to Broome and four to Fenton. Yet he led Broome, unknown to his
colleague, to ascribe only three books to himself and two to Fenton, and
at the same time the poet, who confessed that he could 'equivocate
pretty genteely,' stated the amount he had paid for Broome's eight books
as if it had been paid for three. The story is disgraceful both to Pope
and Broome, and why the latter should have practised such a deception is
unaccountable. He was a beneficed clergyman and a man of wealth, so that
he could not have lied for money even if Pope had been willing to bribe
him. Fenton was indignant, as he well might be, but he was too lazy or
too good-natured to expose the fraud. Broome had his deserts later on,
but Pope, who ridiculed him in the _Dunciad_, and in his _Treatise on
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