was, I believe, stipulated that none should be printed
but for the author, that the subscription might not be depreciated; but
Lintot impressed the same pages upon a small folio, and paper, perhaps,
a little thinner; and sold exactly at half the price, for half-a-guinea
each volume, books so little inferiour to the quartos, that by a fraud
of trade, those folios, being afterwards shortened by cutting away the
top and bottom, were sold as copies printed for the subscribers.

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[120]. 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 frighted 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[121]."

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, which would show
him, by an easy computation, the terminat