Byron speaks--and speaks, I think, with genuine feeling--of the rapture with which he first read Pope as a boy, and says that no one will ever lay him down except for the original.

Indeed, the testimonies of opponents are as significant as those of admirers.
Johnson remarks that the Homer "may be said to have tuned the English tongue," and that no writer since its appearance has wanted melody.
Coleridge virtually admits the fact, though drawing a different conclusion, when he says that the translation of Homer has been one of the main sources of that "pseudo-poetic diction" which he and Wordsworth were struggling to put out of credit.

Cowper, the earliest representative of the same movement, tried to supplant Pope's Homer by his own, and his attempt proved at least the position held in general estimation by his rival.

If, in fact, Pope's Homer was a recognized model for near a century, we may dislike the style, but we must admit the power implied in a performance which thus became the accepted standard of style for the best part of a century.

How, then, should we estimate the merits of this remarkable work?
I give my own opinion upon the subject with diffidence, for it has been discussed by eminently qualified critics.