No More Learning

"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.

The first volume came out in June, 1715, and to Pope's dismay and wrath
a rival translation appeared almost simultaneously. Tickell, one of
Addison's "little senate," had also begun a translation of the 'Iliad',
and although he announced in the preface that he intended to withdraw in
favor of Pope and take up a translation of the 'Odyssey', the poet's
suspicions were at once aroused. And they were quickly fanned into a
flame by the gossip of the town which reported that Addison, the
recognized authority in literary criticism, pronounced Tickell's version
"the best that ever was in any language. " Rumor went so far, in fact, as
to hint pretty broadly that Addison himself was the author, in part, at
least, of Tickell's book; and Pope, who had been encouraged by Addison
to begin his long task, felt at once that he had been betrayed. His
resentment was all the more bitter since he fancied that Addison, now at
the height of his power and prosperity in the world of letters and of
politics, had attempted to ruin an enterprise on which the younger man
had set all his hopes of success and independence, for no better reason
than literary jealousy and political estrangement. We know now that Pope
was mistaken, but there was beyond question some reason at the time for
his thinking as he did, and it is to the bitterness which this incident
caused in his mind that we owe the famous satiric portrait of Addison as
Atticus.