Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

often illustrate, indirectly, that imagination has as much play
in these works as in ‘Eloisa’ and ‘Windsor Forest’. Judgement
in Johnson’s account acts upon the imagination and no easy
distinction is allowed between them. Johnson’s greater
discrimination in the use of terms makes his analysis much
more convincing than Warton’s. Given his comprehensive
statement, it is not surprising that he will not countenance
any narrow definition of poetry to exclude Pope:

After all this, it is surely superfluous to answer the question

that has once been asked, Whether Pope was a poet?

otherwise than by asking in return, If Pope be not a poet,

where is poetry to be found? To circumscribe poetry by a

definition will only show the narrowness of the definer,

though a definition which shall exclude Pope will not easily

be made. Let us look around upon the present time, and

back upon the past; let us inquire to whom the voice of

mankind has decreed the wreath of poetry; let their

productions be examined, and their claim stated, and the

pretensions of Pope will be no more disputed. Had he given

the world only his version, the name of poet must have

been allowed him: if the writer of the Iliad were to class his

successors, he would assign a very high place to his

translator, without requiring any other evidence of his

Genius.^10

This assertion of Pope’s claim to poetical genius, made at the
conclusion of his account of the poetry, specifically draws
attention to the Homer translation. Indeed he devoted more
pages to what he calls ‘that poetical wonder, the translation
of the Iliad, a performance which no age or nation can
pretend to equal’^11 than to any other single work. Ignored by
Warton, ‘the noblest version of poetry that the world has ever
seen’ was for Johnson at the centre of Pope’s achievement.

THE CHARACTER OF POPE’S POETRY ILLUSTRATED

IN THE TRANSLATION OF HOMER

Warton’s Horatian test may be countered by a Homeric test
of a slightly different kind. In his long account of the growth
of the Homer translation, Johnson gives extracts from a