Lintot printed two hundred and fifty on royal paper in folio for two
guineas a volume; of the small folio, having printed seventeen
hundred and fifty copies of the first volume, he reduced the number
in the other volumes to a thousand. It is unpleasant to relate that
the bookseller, after all his hopes and all his liberality, was, by
a very unjust and illegal action, defrauded of his profit. An
edition of the English "Iliad" was printed in Holland in duodecimo,
and imported clandestinely for the gratification of those who were
impatient to read what they could not yet afford to buy. This fraud
could only be counteracted by an edition equally cheap and more
commodious; and Lintot was compelled to contract his folio at once
into a duodecimo, and lose the advantage of an intermediate
gradation. The notes which in the Dutch copies were placed at the
end of each book as they had been in the large volumes, were now
subjoined to the text in the same page, and are therefore more
easily consulted. Of this edition two thousand five hundred were
first printed, and five thousand a few weeks afterwards; but indeed
great numbers were necessary to produce considerable profit.

Pope, having now emitted his proposals, and engaged not only his own
reputation but in some degree that of his friends who patronised his
subscription, began to be frightened at his own undertaking, and
finding himself at first embarrassed with difficulties which
retarded and oppressed him, he was for a time timorous and uneasy,
had his nights disturbed by dreams of long journeys through unknown
ways, and wished, as he said, "that somebody would hang him." This
misery, however, was not of long continuance; he grew by degrees
more acquainted with Homer's images and expressions, and practice
increased his facility of versification. In a short time he
represents himself as despatching regularly fifty verses a day,