Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/55

Rh pudding is on the table, if you please to go in.' My critic complies, he comes to a taste of your poetry, and tells me in the same breath that the book is commendable and the pudding excellent. These, my lord, are a few traits by which you may discern the genius of Mr. Lintot, which I have chosen for the subject of a letter. I dropt him as soon as I got to Oxford."

Pope's Iliad took longer in coming out than was expected. Gay writes facetiously, "Mr. Pope's Homer is retarded by the great rains that have fallen of late, which causes the sheets to be long a-drying." However, in 1718, the six volumes had been completely delivered to the subscribers, and three days afterwards Tonson announced, as a rival, the first book of Homer's Iliad, translated by Mr. Tickell. "I send the book," writes Lintot to Pope, "to divert an hour, it is already condemned here; and the malice and juggle at Button's (for Addison had assisted Tickell in the attempted rivalry) is the conversation of those who have spare moments from politics."

Lintot intended to reimburse his expenses by a cheap edition, but here he was anticipated by the piratical dealers, who caused a cheap edition to be published in Holland; a nefarious proceeding that Lintot met by bringing out a duodecimo edition at half-a-crown a volume, "finely printed from an Elzevir letter."

The Odyssey was published in 1725, likewise by subscription, and Pope gained nearly three thousand pounds by the transaction, avowing, however, that he had only "undertaken" the translation, and had been assisted by friends; and "undertaker Pope" became a favourite byword among his many unfriendly