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The Iliad was commenced about October, 1713. In the summer of the following year he was so far advanced as to begin making arrangements with Lintot for the printing; and the first two books, in manuscript, were put into the hands of Lord Halifax. In June, 1715, between the 10th and 28th, the subscribers received their copies of the first volume; and in July Lintot began to publish that volume generally. Some readers will inquire, who paid for the printing and paper, etc.? All this expense fell upon Lintot, for whom Pope was superfluously anxious. The sagacious bookseller understood what he was about; and, when a pirated edition was published in Holland, he counteracted the injury by printing a cheap edition, of which 7500 copies were sold in a few weeks; an extraordinary proof of the extended interest in literature. The second, third, and fourth volumes of the Iliad, each containing, like the first, four books, were published successively in 1716, 1717, 1718; and in 1720, Pope completed the work by publishing the fifth volume, containing five books, and the sixth, containing the last three, with the requisite supplementary apparatus.

The Odyssey was commenced in 1723, (not 1722, as Mr. Roscoe virtually asserts at p. 259,) and the publication of it was finished in 1725. The sale, however, was much inferior to that of the Iliad; for which more reasons than one might be assigned. But there can be no doubt that Pope himself depreciated the work, by his undignified arrangements for working by subordinate hands. Such a process may answer in sculpture, because there a quantity of rough-hewing occurs, which can no more be improved by committing it to a Phidias, than a common shop-bill could be improved in its arithmetic by Sir Isaac Newton. But in literature such arrangements are degrading; and, above all, in a work which was but too much exposed already to the presumption of being a mere effort of mechanic skill, or (as Curll said to the House of Lords)” a knack; “it was deliberately helping forward that idea to let off parts of the labor. Only think of Milton letting off by contract to the lowest offer, and to be delivered by such a day, (for which good security to be found,) six books of Paradise Lost. It is true, the great dramatic authors were often collaborateurs, but their case was essentially different. The loss, however, fell not upon Pope, but upon Lintot, who, on this occasion, was out of temper, and talked rather broadly of prosecution. But that was out of the question. Pope had acted indiscreetly, but nothing could be alleged against his honor; for he had expressly warned the public, that he did not, as in the other case, profess to translate, but to undertake [Endnote: 10] a translation of the Odyssey. Lintot, however, was no loser absolutely, though he might be so in relation to his expectations; on the contrary, he grew rich, bought land, and became sheriff of the county in which his estates lay.

We have pursued the Homeric labors uninterruptedly from their commencement in 1713, till their final termination in 1725, a period of twelve years or nearly; because this was the task to which Pope owed the dignity, if not the comforts, of his life, since it was this which enabled him to decline a pension from all administrations, and even from his friend Craggs, the secretary, to decline the express offer of 300L per annum. Indeed Pope is always proud to own his obligations to Homer. In the interval, however, between the Iliad and the Odyssey, Pope listened to proposals made by Jacob Tonson, that he should revise an edition of Shakspeare. For this, which was in fact the first attempt at establishing the text of the mighty poet, Pope obtained but little money, and still less reputation. He received, according to tradition, only 217L. 12s. for his trouble of collation, which must have been considerable, and some other trifling editorial labor. And the opinion of all judges, from the first so unfavorable as to have depreciated the money-value of the book enormously, perhaps from a prepossession of the public mind against the fitness of Pope for executing the dull labors of revision, has ever since pronounced this work the very worst edition in existence. For the edition we have little to plead; but for the editor it is but just to make three apologies. In the first place, he wrote a brilliant preface, which, although (like other works of the same class) too much occupied in displaying his own ability, and too often, for the sake of an effective antithesis, doing deep injustice to Shakspeare, yet undoubtedly, as a whole, extended his fame, by giving the sanction and countersign of a great wit to the national admiration. Secondly, as Dr. Johnson admits, Pope’s failure pointed out the right road to his successors. Thirdly, even in this failure it is but fair to say, that in a graduated scale of merit, as distributed amongst the long succession of editors through that century, Pope holds a rank proportionable to his age. For the year 1720, he is no otherwise below Theobald, Hanmer, Capell, Warburton, or even Johnson, than as they are successively below each other, and all of them as to accuracy below Steevens, as he again was below Malone and Read.