reversionary cudgelling which it might entail upon the Quixote undertaker,
he left--meekly but also slyly, humbly but cunningly--to those whom he
professed to regard as greater philosophers than himself. All parties
found their account in the affair. Pope slept in peace; several pugnacious
gentlemen up and down Europe expectorated much fiery wrath in dusting each
other's jackets; and Warburton, the attorney, finally earned his
bishoprick in the service of whitewashing a writer, who was aghast at
finding himself first trampled on as a deist, and then exalted as a
defender of the faith. Meantime, Mr. Schlosser mistakes Pope's courtesy,
when he supposes his acknowledgments to Lord Bolingbroke sincere in their
whole extent.

Of Pope's 'Homer' Schlosser think fit to say, amongst other evil things,
which it really _does_ deserve (though hardly in comparison with the
German 'Homer' of the ear-splitting Voss), 'that Pope pocketed the
subscription of the "Odyssey," and left the work to be done by his
understrappers.' Don't tell fibs, Schlosser. Never do _that_ any more.
True it is, and disgraceful enough, that Pope (like modern contractors for
a railway or a loan) let off to sub-contractors several portions of the
undertaking. He was perhaps not illiberal in the terms of his contracts.
At least I know of people now-a-days (much better artists) that would
execute such contracts, and enter into any penalties for keeping time at
thirty per cent. less. But _navies_ and billbrokers, that are in excess
now, then were scarce. Still the affair, though not mercenary, was
illiberal in a higher sense of art; and no anecdote shows more pointedly
Pope's sense of the mechanic fashion, in which his own previous share of
the Homeric labor had been executed. It was disgraceful enough, and needs
no exaggeration. Let it, therefore, be reported truly: Pope personally
translated one-half of the 'Odyssey'--a dozen books he turned out of his
own oven: and, if you add the _Batrachomyomachia_, his dozen was a baker's