In Evening the Fourth, Spence had written:--"It may be inquired, too, how far this translation may make a wrong use of terms borrowed from the arts and sciences, &c. [The instances are thus pointed out.] As where we read of a ship's crew, Od. 3. 548. The longitude, Od. 19. 350. Doubling the Cape, Od. 9. 90. Of Architraves, Colonnades, and the like, Od. 3. 516." Pope has erased this and the references, and says:--"_These are great faults; pray don't point 'em out, but spare your servant_."
At p. 16. Spence had written:--"Yellow is a proper epithet of fruit; but not of fruit that we say at the same time is ripening into gold." Upon which Pope observes:--"I think yellow may be s'd to ripen into gold, as gold is a deeper, fuller colour than yellow." Again: "What is proper in one language, may not be so in another. Were Homer to call the sea a thousand times by the title of [Greek: porphureos], 'purple deeps' would not sound well in English. The reason's evident: the word 'purple' among us is confined to one colour, and that not very applicable to the deep. Was any one to translate the _purpureis oloribus_ of Horace, 'purple swans' would not be so literal as to miss the sense of the author entirely." Upon which Pope has remarked:--"The sea is actually of a deep purple in many places, and in many views."
Upon a passage in Spence's _Criticism_, at p. 45., Pope says:--"I think this too nice." And the couplet objected to by Spence--
"Deep in my soul the trust shall lodge secur'd, With ribs of steel, and marble heart immur'd,"
he pronounced "very bad." And of some tumid metaphors he says, "All too forced and over-charged."
At p. 51. Spence says:--"Does it not sound mean to talk of lopping a man? of lopping away all his posterity? or of trimming him with brazen sheers? Is there not something mean, where a goddess is represented as beck'ning and waving her deathless hands; or, when the gods are dragging those that have provok'd them to destruction by the Links of fate?" Of the two first instances, Pope says:--"Intended to be comic in a sarcastic speech." And of the last:--"I think not at all mean, see the Greek." The remarks are, however, expunged.
The longest remonstrance occurs at p. 6. of the Fifth Dialogue. Spence had written:--"The _Odyssey_, as a moral poem, exceeds all the writings of the ancients: it is perpetual in forming the manners, and in instructing the mind; it sets off the duties of life more fully as well as more agreeably than the Academy or Lyceum. _Horace ventured to say thus much of the Iliad, and certainly it may be more justly said of this later production by the same hand_." For the words in Italics Pope has substituted:--"Horace, who was so well acquainted with the tenets of both, has given Homer's poems the preference to either:" and says in a note:--"I think you are mistaken in limiting this commendation and judgment of Horace to the _Iliad_. He says it, at the beginning of his Epistle, of Homer in general, and afterwards proposes both poems equally as examples of morality; though the _Iliad_ be mentioned first: but then follows--'_Rursus quid virtus et quid sapientia possit, Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssem_,' &c. of the Odyssey."