translator some difficulty so that signs of strain are evident.
Yet in the fabulous world of Ulysses’ adventures, Pope is
thoroughly at ease; in the episodes involving the Cyclops and
Circe the narrative moves with lucid ease in a style that
rightly does not aspire to the elevated pitch of the Iliad, but is
suitably graceful and varied. In An Essay on Pope’s Odyssey
of 1726 Joseph Spence offers a fine appreciation of the
moment when Circe is surprised and discovered (X, 380–95):
What starts, what terror and amazement? What passionate
breaks are there in these lines? How solemn is the
beginning? How emphatical the account of the action, and
how lively the surprise and confusion of the enchantress,
upon finding the inefficacy of her charms? Nature here
appears in every word that she says.... The extraordinary
beauty I mean, is that insight which the poet gives his
readers into Circe’s mind .... Everyone may perceive the
tumult, and the successive enlightenings of her mind. We
are led into a full view of the shifting of her thoughts; and
behold the various openings of them in her soul.^22The Homer translation is a major poetic achievement,
unjustly neglected on the grounds that it is not ‘original’, and
any assessment of Pope’s output and career that ignores it will
be deficient. For most readers in the eighteenth century the
answer to Warton’s question ‘What is there very sublime or
very pathetic in Pope?’ was the translation of Homer. Here in
the melody of its verse and the brilliant variety of its colourful
language we can enjoy the fruits of a creative and glowing
imagination happily engaged in the heroic task of making in
English a poem worthy of its noble original.
INDIVIDUAL POEMSPope had published extracts from Homer including the
Sarpedon episode among his first pieces in 1709. He was
therefore well exercised in the heroic before the occasion that
prompted what is universally acknowledged to have been a
triumph, The Rape of the Lock, much admired in all periods
as the perfection of the mock-heroic in English. His poetic
talent is shown to its best advantage in the imaginative