dmit that the "dignity"
is often false; it rests upon mere mouthing instead of simplicity and
directness, and suggests that Pope might have approved the famous
emendation "he died in indigent circumstances," for "he died poor." The
same weakness is perhaps more annoying when it leads to sins of
commission. Pope never scruples to amend Homer by little epigrammatic
amplifications, which are characteristic of the contemporary rhetoric. A
single illustration of a fault sufficiently notorious will be
sufficient. When Nestor, in the eleventh book, rouses Diomed at night,
Pope naturally smoothes down the testy remark of the sleepy warrior;
but he tries to improve Nestor's directions. Nestor tells Diomed, in
most direct terms, that the need is great, and that he must go at once
and rouse Ajax. In Pope's translation we have--

Each single Greek in this conclusive strife
Stands on the sharpest edge of death or life;
Yet if my years thy kind regard engage,
Employ thy youth as I employ my age;
Succeed to these my cares, and rouse the rest;
He serves me most, who serves his country best.

The false air of epigram which Pope gives to the fourth line is
characteristic; and the concluding tag, which is quite unauthorized,
reminds us irresistibly of one of the rhymes which an actor always
spouted to the audience by way of winding up an act in the contemporary
drama. Such embroidery is profusely applied by Pope wherever he thinks
that Homer, like Diomed, is slumbering too deeply. And, of course, that
is not the way in which Nestor roused Diomed or Homer keeps his readers
awake.

Such faults have been so fully exposed that we need not dwell upon them
further. They come to this, that Pope was really a wit of the days of
Queen Anne, and saw only that aspect of Homer which was visible to his
kind. The poetic mood was not for him a fine frenzy--for good sense must
condemn all frenzy--but a deliberate elevation of the bard by
high-heeled shoes and a full-bottomed wig. Seas and mountains, being
invisible from Button's, could only be described by worn phrases from
the Latin grammar. Even his narrative must be full of epigrams to avoid
the one deadly sin of dulness, and his language must be decorous even at
the price of being sometimes emasculated. But accept these conditions,
and much still remains. After all, a wit was still a human being, and
much more nearly related to us than an ancient Greek. Pope's style,