In issuing his proposals he spoke in ambiguous terms of two friends who were to render him some undefined assistance, and did not claim to be the translator, but to have undertaken the translation.

The assistants, in fact, did half the work, Broome translating eight, and Fenton four, out of the twenty-four books.

Pope was unwilling to acknowledge the full amount of their contributions; he persuaded Broome--a weak, good-natured man--to set his hand to a postscript to the Odyssey, in which only three books are given to Broome himself, and only two to Fenton.

When Pope was attacked for passing off other people's verses as his own, he boldly appealed to this statement to prove that he had only received Broome's help in three books, and at the same time stated the whole amount which he had paid for the eight, as though it had been paid for the three.
When Broome, in spite of his subservience, became a little restive under this treatment, Pope indirectly admitted the truth by claiming only twelve books in an advertisement to his works, and in a note to the _Dunciad_, but did not explicitly retract the other statement.

Broome could not effectively rebuke his fellow-sinner.