y of
polish, by a reasonableness of understanding, by his perception of
manners, even by the delicacy of his habits--he, ALEXANDER POPE,
nevertheless, desired the greatnesses of poetry. At fourteen, he tries his
hand in practice on the lofty Statius--at five-and-twenty, upon the
sublime Homer. Judge of his poetical heart by his Preface to Shakspeare,
by his translation of Homer, preface and all. What was the translation of
Homer? Of all works, not creative, the one of most aspiring ambition, even
more than that of Pindar or AEschylus. The young poet who has launched on
the air the light self-buoyed, gracefully-floating Rape of the Lock, who
has dipped his pen in the pathos of love and religion for Eloisa, longs to
put in use the powers that kindle and struggle within him. He will do
something of greater design in weightier literature; he will, so as a poet
may, stir, melt, strengthen, instruct, exalt, and amplify the mind of his
country; and he makes the greatest of poets, the father of all
poetry--ENGLISH. He pledges himself, before his country, to the task, and
then trembles at the difficulties and magnitude of his undertaking, and
then sits down to it, and then delivers it accomplished.

Did Homer already speak English, through the organ of Chapman? If he did,
it was not English for England; least of all, for the England of Pope's
day. Fiery and eloquent, and creative as it is, Chapman's _Homer_ is hard
reading now, and somewhat rare. _Then_, the book was, for the general
capacity, precisely the same thing as if it were not. And Pope, no
grudging bestower of merited honours, awards generous praise to his
irregularly-great predecessor, amply acknowledging, with one word, in him
both native power and effectual sympathy with their unparagoned original.

Let us reflect, also, that after all a true translation of Homer into
English is, in all probability, a thing impossible. Why did not Milton
leave us half a book, or some fifty verses, that we might know what the
utmost poetical power, and the utmost mastery of our speech, and the
utmost resources of our verse, could effect? The inspiring expressive
music of the original tongue clothes the simplest and most unadorned word
and phrase in wealth, splendour, gorgeous majesty, prodigal magnificence;
and this, not with any incongruence or disharmony, any more than Eve's
GOLDEN tresses were excessive ornament, unmeet for the primitive
simplicity of Eden. The same exhilaration a