Virgilian Latinate elegance was closer to the aspirations of his
age than the simpler style of the original Greek.
Pope was steeped in Dryden and it was not only his Virgil
that entered his imagination as he translated Homer. To give
added point to Achilles’ rejection of Lycaon’s plea for mercy,
he incorporates a whole line (acknowledged in quotation
marks) from Dryden’s Lucretius:
‘And thou, dost thou bewail mortality?’
(XXI, 118)evoking by this allusion the philosopher’s arguments against
the fear of death in an emotional context and at a point in the
action where, since Achilles is beyond reason and Lycaon
desperately wants to live, the words acquire a remarkable
new resonance.
In translating, therefore, Pope did not imagine that he was
reproducing Homer; he sought rather to create in English a
poem that might be worthy of his original, and to this end, he
did not scruple to use every means at his disposal to enrich his
language, so that Johnson can conclude ‘he cultivated our
language with such diligence and art that he left in his Homer
a treasure of poetical elegances to posterity’. To adopt
Johnsonian phrases, in the nightpiece he colours Homer’s
images and in Achilles’ speech to Lycaon he points Homer’s
sentiments.
A final example from the Iliad may serve to suggest why
Pope felt this colouring and pointing to be necessary. It is a
moment when Apollo thinks better of coming into conflict
with his fellow gods to support a mortal cause. What Pope
saw in the moment which may not be so apparent in the
literal version is again evident in the note that follows his
translation:
Shaker of the earth, you would have me be as one with
out prudence
if I am to fight even you for the sake of insignificant
mortals, who are as leaves are, and now flourish and grow
warm
with life, and feed on what the ground gives, but then
again