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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
A study of Pope's treatment of the passage in the Iliad known as the Shield of Achilles provides insights into his working methods, his place in the quarrel between Ancients and Moderns, and his attitude toward and appreciation of Homer. Our understanding of the published text can be enhanced by some knowledge of the manuscript revisions of the passage, including Pope's own sketch of the Shield, by an examination of Vleughels Shield of Achilles which Pope ultimately chose to illustrate his text, by a consideration of his notes with their extensive debt to, as well as departures from, the notes of Madame Dacier, and finally by a study of Pope's essay, “Observations on the Shield of Achilles.” This essay is shown to be only partially the work of Pope, the first two parts having been lifted, with inadequate acknowledgment, from two French defenders of Homer, André Dacier and Jean Boivin. The third and original part of Pope's essay points directly to the critical principles, with their emphasis on pictorial presentation, which guided him throughout his translation of Homer. Pope's view of the Shield passage, when contrasted with ancient allegorical interpretations or modern mythopoeic ones, reveals both his limitations and his success as a leader of his age in a critical and philosophical reaffirmation of the epic tradition.
1 The most recent account of the composition and publication of Pope's translations of Homer is to be found in the Twickenham Edition of the translations, which appeared too late for me to make use of it. See The Poems oj Alexander Pope, Vol. vii, ed. Maynard Mack et al. (New Haven, Conn. 1967), pp. xxxv-xlii. To the list of earlier authorities which is given on p. xxxv, n. 1, I would add Austin Warren, Alexander Pope as Critic and Humanist (Gloucester, Mass., 1963), Ch. iii. See pp. 79–82 for a discussion of Pope's notes to the Iliad and an account of his five projected essays, three of which, including the “Shield of Achilles,” were completed.
2 A. Tilley, The Decline of the Age of Louis XIV (Cambridge, Eng., 1929), pp. 344–348. For La Motte's tasteless reconstruction of the Shield see his L'Iliade Poème avec un discours sur Homère (Paris, 1714), p. clxv (erroneously paged as cxlv).
3 Boivin, Apologie d'Homère et Bouclier d'Achille (Paris, 1715).
4 The Iliad of Homer, tr. Alexander Pope, Esq., 6 vols. (London, 1750), v, 104–125, hereafter cited as Iliad. As this edition does not follow the first edition in giving the notes by Roman numerals, I shall cite all notes, as well as the essay, by volume and page and all quotations from the text by book and line numbers.
5 Iliad, v, 105.
6 E. Audra, L'Influence française dans l'œuvre de Pope (Paris, 1931), has carefully studied Pope's debts to the French critics, and especially to Madame Dacier. He seems not to have noticed that Part i of Pope's essay is from André Dacier. He attributes it instead to Boivin. See Audra, p. 297. Pope does in fact translate Boivin in Part ii of his essay and draws on him for the last two paragraphs of Part i.
7 Aristotle, La Poétique, traduite en François avec des Remarques Critiques par M. Dacier (Paris, 1692).
8 Desmarests' attacks on Homer are discussed by Tilley, pp. 324–325.
9 E.g., Iliad, v, 94; cf. L'Iliade d'Homère traduite en François avec des Remarques par Madame Dacier, 3 vols. (Paris, 1711), iii, 480–481, to which Pope clearly refers.
10 See Iliad, i, 4, where Pope claims that whatever in his notes “is extracted from others is constantly own'd.”
11 Ibid., p. 3.
12 J. G. Robertson, Studies in the Genesis of Romantic Theory in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1962), pp. 207–208. See also Congreve, The Double Dealer, ii, ii.
13 Douglas Knight, “The Development of Pope's Iliad Preface: A Study of the Manuscript,” Essential Articles for the Study of Alexander Pope, ed. Maynard Mack (Hamden, Conn., 1964), pp. 611–625, shows the way in which Pope eliminated from the published Preface many details of traditional and contemporary scholarship.
14 For the Iliad Preface and Odyssey Postscript I have used The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., 9 vols. (London, 1797), hereafter cited as Works. See rv, 416. For emphasis on Homer the poet, see Poetical Index, Iliad, vi.
15 See Jean H. Hagstrum, The Sisler Arts (Chicago, 1958), pp. 229–233; D. R. Clark, “Landscape Painting Effects in Pope's Homer,” J A AC, xxii (1963), 25–28.
16 Works, iv, 376, 442. 17 Warren, p. 85.
18 Perrault's denunciation of the Shield as wanting in such elegance as the French were cultivating under Louis XIV is to be found inhispoem, “Le Siècle de Louis le Grand,” published in Paralelle des Anciens el des Modernes (Paris, 1692). See i, 7. For an account of the effect of the poem on the French Academy, see Hippolyte Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des anciens el des modernes (Paris, 1856), pp. 141–152.
19 See Hagstrum, pp. 210–242; on pp. 19–22 Hagstrum discusses the Shield as our earliest example of iconic poetry.
20 Pope's blunder called forth the scorn of Lessing, who also ridiculed Pope for assuming that Homer knew the rules of modern painting. See Laocoon, tr. R. Phillimore (London, 1874), pp. 186–192.
21 On the neoclassical pantheon see Hagstrum, pp. 162–170.
22 British Museum, Add. MSS. 4807–4808.
23 Norman Callan, “Pope's Iliad: A New Document,” Essential Articles, pp.593–610.
24 Homer, The Iliad, tr. A. T. Murray, Loeb Classical Library (New York, 1924), ii, 325.
25 George Sherburn, The Early Career of Alexander Pope (New York, 1934), p. 216.
26 See Murray, tr. Iliad, ii, 324, n. 1.
27 Nicolas Vleughels, 1668–1737, of Flemish extraction, passed most of his life in Paris. He was known for his paintings and engravings, especially of Biblical and classical subjects, and was on good terms with the greater painters of his time, particularly VVatteau. His last years were spent in Rome, where, as director of the French Academy, he helped to restore its declining prestige. The original plate of the Shield of Achilles has been lost. See Pierre Clamorgan, “Un Directeur de I Académie de France à Rome,” Gazelle des Beaux Arts (1917), pp. 327–343; Louis Dimier, Les Peintres français du X Ville siècle (Paris, 1928), i, 245–253.
28 New Light on Pope (London, 1949), p. 81.
29 Iliad, v, 105; cf. VIliade, tr. Dacier, iii, 476.
30 Félix Buffiere, Les Mythes d'Homère et la pensée grecque (Paris, 1956), discusses early allegorical interpretations of Homer. He shows that the Shield was sometimes seen as “la grandiose allégorie de la création” (p. 157). Clement of Alexandria claimed that Homer was actually indebted to the Biblical account of creation (Genesis i) for his lines describing the Shield (p. 165).
31 See Rosemary Freeman, English Emblem Books (London, 1948), pp. 1–18.
32 Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods (New York, 1961), pp. 95–99.
33 “Preface to the Translation of Rapin's Reflections on Aristotle's Treatise of Poésie,” Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. Spingarn (Oxford, 1908), ii, 168.
34 “Fable” in Poetical Index, Iliad, vi. See also Monsieur Bossu's Treatise on the Epick Poem (London, 1695), p. 19.
35 See Jane Harrison, Introductory Studies in Greek Art (London, 1885), p. 143. J. L. Myres, Who Were the Greeks? (Berkeley, Calif., 1930), studies the pattern of the Shield in great detail, connecting it with the geometric art of the early Greek vase painters (pp. 517–525).
36 P. 143. For Harrison's early views of symbol, see pp. 52–54.
37 J. R. R. Tolkien, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism, ed. L. E. Nicholson (Notre Dame, Ind., 1963), p. 63.
38 Samuel Bassett, The Poetry of Homer (Berkeley, Calif., 1938), pp. 94–99.
39 “An Essay on Homer's Battels,” Iliad, ii, 10, 11.
40 J. T. Sheppard, The Pattern of the Iliad (London, 1922); Richmond Lattimore, tr. Iliad (Chicago, 1951), introd., pp. 30–33; Cedric Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), Ch. xi.
41 Sheppard, pp. 1–10.
42 See Reuben Brower, Alexander Pope: The Poetry of Allusion (Oxford, 1959), pp. 92–95. Homer's repetitions are discussed by M. Bowra, Tradition and Design in the Iliad (Oxford, 1930), pp. 87–96. The effect of Pope's neglect of formulaic phrasing in his translation of Iliad viii. 553–565 is commented on briefly by Adam Parry, “The Language of Achilles,” The Language and Background of Homer, ed. G. S. Kirk (Cambridge, Eng., 1964), pp. 48–50.
43 A. T. Murrav translates the four passages (iii.330–332; XI.17–19; xvi.131–133; xix.369–371), as follows: “The greaves first he set about his legs: beautiful they were, and fitted with silver ankle-pieces, and next he did on the corselet about his chest.”
44 See Douglas Knight, Pope and the Heroic Tradition (New Haven, 1951), p. 82.
45 Sir John Davies, Orchestra, ed. E. M. Tillyard (London, 1948), p. 19.
46 Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, 2nd ed. (New York, 1945), i, 50, writes, “That deep sense of the harmony between man and nature, which inspires the description of Achilles' Shield, is dominant in Homer's conception of the world.” See also i, 49, for an account of the Shield as “the finest expression of the epic view of human life.”
47 W. H. Auden, Shield of Achilles (New York, 1951), p. 37.
48 See Pope and the Heroic Tradition, especially Ch. ii, for a study of Pope's mastery of the epic tradition and of the means he uses to establish contact with that tradition for his English readers.
49 Iliad, iv, 58.