SOURCE: A postscript to The "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" of Homer, edited by W. C. Armstrong, translated by Alexander Pope, Leavitt and Allen, 1848, pp. 401-19.

Pope has been called the greatest English poet of his time and one of the most important in the history of world literature. As a critic and satirical commentator on eighteenth-century England, he was the author of work that represents the epitome of Neoclassicist thought. His greatness lies in his cultivation of style and wit, rather than sublimity and pathos, and this inclination shaped his criticism of other writers. In the following excerpt from the postscript to his 1725 translation of the Odyssey, Pope argues that the Odyssey should be analyzed separately from the Iliad, contending that "the Odyssey is the reverse of the Iliad, in moral, subject, manner and style. "

I cannot dismiss [the Odyssey] without a few observations on the character and...