Pope need not have been jealous of Addison's friend, for his own
translation of Homer was a great success, and people soon forgot
the other. He translated not only the Iliad, but with the help
of two lesser poets the Odyssey also. Both poems were done in
the fashionable heroic couplet, and Pope made so much money by
them that he was able to live in comfort ever after. And it is
interesting to remember that Pope was the first poet who was able
to live in comfort entirely on what he made by his writing.
Pope now took a house at Twickenham, and there he spent many
happy hours planning and laying out his garden, and building a
grotto with shells and stones and bits of looking-glass. The
house has long ago been pulled down and the garden altered, but
the grotto still remains, a sight for the curious.
It has been said that to write in the heroic couplet "is an art
as mechanical as that of mending a kettle or shoeing a horse, and
may be learned by any human being who has sense enough to learn
anything.
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