He succeeded commercially; for Lintot, after supplying the subscription copies gratuitously, and so losing the cream of the probable purchasers, made a fortune by the remaining sale.
He succeeded in the judgment both of the critics and of the public of the next generation.

Johnson calls the Homer "the noblest version of poetry the world has ever seen." Gray declared that no other translation would ever equal it, and Gibbon that it had every merit except that of faithfulness to the original.

This merit of fidelity, indeed, was scarcely claimed by any one.

Bentley's phrase--"a pretty poem, Mr.Pope, but you must not call it Homer"-- expresses the uniform view taken from the first by all who could read both.

Its fame, however, survived into the present century.