Gradually he fell into the habit of translating thirty or forty verses before getting up, and then "piddling with it" for the rest of the morning; and the regular performance of his task made it tolerable.

He used, he said at another time, to take advantage of the "first heat," then correct by the original and other translations; and finally to "give it a reading for the versification only." The statement must be partly modified by the suggestion that the translations were probably consulted before the original.

Pope's ignorance of Greek--an awkward qualification for a translator of Homer--is undeniable.

Gilbert Wakefield, who was, I believe, a fair scholar and certainly a great admirer of Pope, declares his conviction to be, after a more careful examination of the Homer than any one is now likely to give, that Pope "collected the general purport of every passage from some of his predecessors--Dryden" (who only translated the first Iliad), "Dacier, Chapman, or Ogilby." He thinks that Pope would have been puzzled to catch at once the meaning even of the Latin translation, and points out proofs of his ignorance of both languages and of "ignominious and puerile mistakes." It is hard to understand at the present day the audacity which could lead a man so ill qualified in point of classical acquirements to undertake such a task.

And yet Pope undoubtedly achieved, in some true sense, an astonishing success.