Editing Alexander Pope (section)

===The ''Iliad''===
Pope had been fascinated by Homer since childhood. In 1713, he announced plans to publish a translation of the ''[[Iliad]]''. The work would be [[Publication by subscription|available by subscription]], with one volume appearing every year over six years. Pope secured a revolutionary deal with the publisher Bernard Lintot, which earned him 200 [[Guinea (British coin)|guineas]] (£210) a volume, a vast sum at the time.

His ''Iliad'' translation appeared between 1715 and 1720. It was acclaimed by [[Samuel Johnson]] as "a performance which no age or nation could hope to equal".  Conversely, the classical scholar [[Richard Bentley]] wrote: "It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Johnson |first=Samuel |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xWDDZ4QaA8gC |title=The Lives of the Most Eminent Poets with Critical Observations on their Works |publisher=Printed for J. Rivington & Sons, and 39 others |year=1791 |volume=IV |location=London |pages=193 |access-date=20 March 2023 |archive-date=7 April 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230407054850/https://books.google.com/books?id=xWDDZ4QaA8gC |url-status=live }}</ref>