ation in general, he said,
that he was not to be blamed for endeavouring to get so large a sum of
money, but that it was an ill-executed thing, and not equal to Tickell,
which had all the spirit of Homer. Mr. Addison concluded, in a low
hollow voice of feigned temper, that he was not sollicitous about his
own fame as a poet; that he had quitted the muses to enter into the
business of the public, and that all he spoke was through friendship to
Mr. Pope, whom he advised to have a less exalted sense of his own merit.

Mr. Pope could not well bear such repeated reproaches, but boldly told
Mr. Addison, that he appealed from his judgment to the public, and that
he had long known him too well to expect any friendship from him;
upbraided him with being a pensioner from his youth, sacrificing the
very learning purchased by the public money, to a mean thirst of power;
that he was sent abroad to encourage literature, in place of which he
had always endeavoured to suppress merit. At last, the contest grew so
warm, that they parted without any ceremony, and Mr. Pope upon this
wrote the foregoing verses, which are esteemed too true a picture of Mr.
Addison.

In this account, and, indeed, in all other accounts, which have been
given concerning this quarrel, it does not appear that Mr. Pope was the
aggressor. If Mr. Addison entertained suspicions of Mr. Pope's being
carried too far among the enemy, the danger was certainly Mr. Pope's,
and not Mr. Addison's. It was his misfortune, and not his crime. If Mr.
Addison should think himself capable of becoming a rival to Mr. Pope,
and, in consequence of this opinion, publish a translation of part of
Homer; at the same time with Mr. Pope's, and if the public should decide
in favour of the latter by reading his translation, and neglecting the
other, can any fault be imputed to Mr. Pope? could he be blamed for
exerting all his abilities in so arduous a province? and was it his
fault that Mr. Addison (for the first book of Homer was undoubtedly his)
could not translate to please the public? Besides, was it not somewhat
presumptuous to insinuate to Mr. Pope, that his verses bore another face
when he corrected them, while, at the same time, the translation of
Homer, which he had never seen in manuscript, bore away the palm from
that very translation, he himself asserted was done in the true spirit
of Homer? In matters of genius the public judgment seldom errs, and in
this case posterity has confir