From this point of view, the poem is remarkable.  No other writer, except Shakespeare, has in an equal number of lines said so many things which have passed into current quotation.  Rare perfection in the form of statement accounts for this.  The poem abounds in such lines as these:—­

  “For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

  “To err is human, to forgive divine.”

  “All seems infected that th’ infected spy,
  As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.”

  “In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold,
  Alike fantastic if too new or old: 
  Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
  Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.”

The Rape of the Lock, which is Pope’s masterpiece, is almost a romantic poem, even though it is written in classical couplets.  It was a favorite with Oliver Goldsmith, and James Russell Lowell rightly say says:  “The whole poem more truly deserves the name of a creation than anything Pope ever wrote.”  The poem is a mock epic, and it has the supernatural machinery which was supposed to be absolutely necessary for an epic.  In place of the gods and goddesses of the great epics, however, the fairy-like sylphs help to guide the action of this poem.

The poem, which is founded on an actual incident, describes a young lord’s theft of a lock of hair from the head of a court beauty.  Pope composed The Rape of the Lock to soothe her indignation and to effect a reconciliation.  The whole of this poem should be read by the student, as it is a vivid satiric picture of fashionable life in Queen Anne’s reign.

[Illustration:  RAPE OF THE LOCK. From a drawing by B. Westmacott.]

Translation of Homer.—­Pope’s chief work during the middle period of his life was his translation of the Iliad and of the Odyssey of Homer.  From a financial point of view, these translations were the most successful of his labors.  They brought him in nearly L9000, and made him independent of bookseller or of nobleman.

The remarkable success of these works is strange when we remember that Pope’s knowledge of Greek was very imperfect, and that he was obliged to consult translations before attempting any passage.  The Greek scholar Bentley, a contemporary of Pope, delivered a just verdict on the translation:  “A pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer.”  The historian Gibbon said that the poem had every merit except faithfulness to the original.

Homer is simple and direct.  He abounds in concrete terms.  Pope dislikes a simple term and loves a circumlocution and an abstraction.  We have the concrete “herd of swine” translated into “a bristly care,” “skins,” into “furry spoils.”  The concrete was considered common and undignified.  Homer says in simple language:  “His father wept with him,” but Pope translates this:  “The father poured a social flood.”

Pope used to translate thirty or forty verses of the Iliad before rising, and then to spend a considerable time in polishing them.  But half of the translation of the Odyssey is his own work.  He employed assistants to finish the other half; but it is by no means easy to distinguish his work from theirs.