on of Pope's method is, however, very different from
that offered by Pope himself. "Mr. Pope," he says, "seems, in most
places, to have been inspired with the same sublime spirit that animates
his original; as he often takes fire from a single hint in his author,
and blazes out even with a stronger and brighter flame of poetry. Thus
the character of Thersites, as it stands in the English _Iliad_, is
heightened, I think, with more masterly strokes of satire than appear in
the Greek; as many of those similes in Homer, which would appear,
perhaps, to a modern eye too naked and unornamented, are painted by Pope
in all the beautiful drapery of the most graceful metaphor"--a statement
backed by citation of the famous moonlight passage, which Melmoth finds
finer than the corresponding passage in the original. There is no doubt
in the critic's mind as to the desirability of improving upon Homer.
"There is no ancient author," he declares, "more likely to betray an
injudicious interpreter into meannesses than Homer.... But a skilful
artist knows how to embellish the most ordinary subject; and what would
be low and spiritless from a less masterly pencil, becomes pleasing and
graceful when worked up by Mr. Pope."[449]

Melmoth's last comment suggests Matthew Arnold's remark, "Pope composes
with his eye on his style, into which he translates his object, whatever
it may be,"[450] but in intention the two criticisms are very different.
To the average eighteenth-century reader Homer was entirely acceptable
"when worked up by Mr. Pope." Slashing Bentley might declare that it
"must not be called Homer," but he admitted that "it was a pretty poem."
Less competent critics, unhampered by Bentley's scholarly doubts,
thought the work adequate both as a poem and as a translated poem.
Dennis, in his _Remarks upon Pope's Homer_, quotes from a recent review
some characteristic phrases. "I know not which I should most admire,"
says the reviewer, "the justness of the original, or the force and
beauty of the language, or the sounding variety of the numbers."[451]
Prior, with more honesty, refuses to bother his head over "the justness
of the original," and gratefully welcomes the English version.

Hang Homer and Virgil; their meaning to seek,
A man must have pok'd into Latin and Greek;
Those who love their own tongue, we have reason to hope,
Have read them translated by Dryden and Pope.[452]

In general, critics, whether men of lett