No More Learning

In the year 1713 he gradually drew away from them and
came under the influence of Swift, then at the height of his power in
political and social life. Swift introduced him to the brilliant Tories,
politicians and lovers of letters, Harley, Bolingbroke, and Atterbury,
who were then at the head of affairs. Pope's new friends seem to have
treated him with a deference which he had never experienced before, and
which bound him to them in unbroken affection. Harley used to regret
that Pope's religion rendered him legally incapable of holding a
sinecure office in the government, such as was frequently bestowed in
those days upon men of letters, and Swift jestingly offered the young
poet twenty guineas to become a Protestant. But now, as later, Pope was
firmly resolved not to abandon the faith of his parents for the sake of
worldly advantage. And in order to secure the independence he valued so
highly he resolved to embark upon the great work of his life, the
translation of Homer.

"What led me into that," he told a friend long after, "was purely the
want of money. I had then none; not even to buy books. " It seems that
about this time, 1713, Pope's father had experienced some heavy
financial losses, and the poet, whose receipts in money had so far been
by no means in proportion to the reputation his works had brought him,
now resolved to use that reputation as a means of securing from the
public a sum which would at least keep him for life from poverty or the
necessity of begging for patronage. It is worth noting that Pope was the
first Englishman of letters who threw himself thus boldly upon the
public and earned his living by his pen.

The arrangements for the publication and sale of Pope's translation of
Homer were made with care and pushed on with enthusiasm. He issued in
1713 his proposals for an edition to be published by subscription, and
his friends at once became enthusiastic canvassers. We have a
characteristic picture of Swift at this time, bustling about a crowded
ante-chamber, and informing the company that the best poet in England
was Mr. Pope (a Papist) who had begun a translation of Homer for which
they must all subscribe, "for," says he, "the author shall not begin to
print till I have a thousand guineas for him. " The work was to be in six
volumes, each costing a guinea.
Pope obtained 575 subscribers, many of
whom took more than one set. Lintot, the publisher, gave Pope ? 1200 for
the work and agreed to supply the subscription copies free of charge. As
a result Pope made something between ? 5000 and ? 6000, a sum absolutely
unprecedented in the history of English literature, and amply sufficient
to make him independent for life.

But the sum was honestly earned by hard and wearisome work. Pope was no
Greek scholar; it is said, indeed, that he was just able to make out the
sense of the original with a translation. And in addition to the fifteen
thousand lines of the 'Iliad', he had engaged to furnish an introduction
and notes. At first the magnitude of the undertaking frightened him.
"What terrible moments," he said to Spence, "does one feel after one has
engaged for a large work. In the beginning of my translating the
'Iliad', I wished anybody would hang me a hundred times. It sat so
heavily on my mind at first that I often used to dream of it and do
sometimes still. " In spite of his discouragement, however, and of the
ill health which so constantly beset him, Pope fell gallantly upon his
task, and as time went on came almost to enjoy it. He used to translate
thirty or forty verses in the morning before rising and, in his own
characteristic phrase, "piddled over them for the rest of the day. " He
used every assistance possible, drew freely upon the scholarship of
friends, corrected and recorrected with a view to obtaining clearness
and point, and finally succeeded in producing a version which not only
satisfied his own critical judgment, but was at once accepted by the
English-speaking world as the standard translation of Homer.