Johnson calls the Homer "the noblest version of
poetry the world has ever seen." Gray declared that no other translation
would ever equal it, and Gibbon that it had every merit except that of
faithfulness to the original. This merit of fidelity, indeed, was
scarcely claimed by any one. Bentley's phrase--"a pretty poem, Mr. Pope,
but you must not call it Homer"--expresses the uniform view taken from
the first by all who could read both. Its fame, however, survived into
the present century. Byron speaks--and speaks, I think, with genuine
feeling--of the rapture with which he first read Pope as a boy, and says
that no one will ever lay him down except for the original. Indeed, the
testimonies of opponents are as significant as those of admirers.
Johnson remarks that the Homer "may be said to have tuned the English
tongue," and that no writer since its appearance has wanted melody.
Coleridge virtually admits the fact, though drawing a different
conclusion, when he says that the translation of Homer has been one of
the main sources of that "pseudo-poetic diction" which he and Wordsworth
were struggling to put out of credit. Cowper, the earliest
representative of the same movement, tried to supplant Pope's Homer by
his own, and his attempt proved at least the position held in general
estimation by his rival. If, in fact, Pope's Homer was a recognized
model for near a century, we may dislike the style, but we must admit
the power implied in a performance which thus became the accepted
standard of style for the best part of a century.
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