Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

heroes in the highest point of light. There is hardly
any in the whole Iliad more proper to move pity
than this circumstance of Lycaon; or to raise terror,
than this view of Achilles. It is also the finest picture
of them both imaginable.... I believe everyone
perceives the beauty of this passage and allows that
poetry (at least in Homer) is truly a speaking
picture’ (line 56).
78 Thy well-known captive Pope comments: ‘It is
impossible for anything to be better imagined than
these two speeches; that of Lycaon is moving and
compassionate, that of Achilles haughty and dreadful’
(line 84).
81 gifts of Ceres bread. Ceres is the goddess of
agriculture.
102 what boots it what use is it?
105 ‘And thou, dost thou bewail mortality?’ See Critical
commentary, p. 226.
108 The day shall come Pope comments: ‘There is an air
of greatness in the conclusion of the speech that
strikes me very much: he speaks very unconcernedly
of his own death, and upbraids his enemy for asking
life so earnestly, a life that was of so much less
importance than his own’ (line 121).
157 godhead of the silver bow Apollo, the archer god.
162 Hyperion’s fall the sun god. Jove had promised the
Trojans success until sunset on the previous day when
Hector had killed Patroclus.
172 Now bursting on his head Pope comments: ‘There is a
great beauty in the versification of this whole passage
in Homer: some of the verses run hoarse, full and
sonorous, like the torrent they describe; others by
their broken cadences, and sudden stops, image the
difficulty, labour and interruption of the hero’s march
against it. The fall of the elm, the tearing up of the
bank, the rushing of the branches in the water, are all
put into such words, that almost every letter
corresponds in its sound, and echoes to the sense, of
each particular’ (line 263). The lines in Pope that