The next year (1713) produced a bolder attempt, by which profit was fought as well as praife. The poems which he had hitherto written, however they might have diffused his name, had made very little addition to his fortune. The allowance which his father made him, though, proportioned to what he had, it might be liberal, could not be large; his religion hindered him from the occupation of any civil employment, and he complained that he wanted even money to buy books *.

He therefore refolved to try how far the favour of the publick extended, by foliciting a fubfcription to a verfion of the Iliad, with large notes.

* Spence.

To

To print by fubfcription was, for fome time, a practice peculiar to the English.

The firft confiderable work for which this expedient was employed is faid to have been Dryden's Virgil; and it had been tried again with great fuccefs when the Tatlers were collected into volumes.

There was reafon to believe that Pope's attempt would be fuccessful. He was in the full bloom of reputation, and was perfonally known to almost all whom dignity of employment or fplendour of reputation had made eminent; he converfed indifferently with both parties, and never difturbed the publick with his political opinions; and it might be naturally expected, as each faction then boafted its literary zeal, that the great

D 2

great men, who on other occafions practifed all the violence of oppofition, would emulate each other in their encouragement of a poet who had delighted all, and by whom none had been offended.

With thofe hopes, he offered an Englifh Iliad to fubfcribers, in fix volumes in quarto, for fix guineas; a fum, ac cording to the value of money at tha time, by no means inconfiderable, and greater than I believe to have been eve afked before. His propofal, however was very favourably received, and the patrons of literature were busy to re commend his undertaking, and promot his intereft. Lord Oxford, indeed, la mented that fuch a genius fhould b

wafte.

wafted upon a work not original; but proposed no means by which he might live without it: Addifon recommended caution and moderation, and advifed him not to be content with the praise of half the nation, when he might be univerfally favoured.

The greatnefs of the defign, the popularity of the author, and the attention of the literary world, naturally raised such expectations of the future fale, that the bookfellers made their offers with great eagerness; but the highest bidder was Bernard Lintot, who became proprietor on. condition of fupplying, at his own expence, all the copies which were to be delivered to: fubfcribers, or prefented to friends, and.

paying two hundred pounds for every

volume.

Of the Quartos it was, I believe, ftipulated that none fhould be printed but for the author, that the fubfcription might not be depreciated; but Lintot impreffed the fame pages upon a small Folio, and paper perhaps a little thinner; and fold exactly at half the price, for half a guinea each volume, books fo little inferior to the Quartos, that, by a fraud of trade, thofe Folios, being afterwards fhortened by cutting away the top and bottom, were fold as copies printed for the fubfcribers.

Lintot printed fome on royal paper in Folio for two guineas a volume; but of this experiment he repented, and his