Note 888 — SECT. VIII. The Morals of the Homeric Age.

The translation in Pope’s Odyssey, which in the most material parts has a more highly charged colouring than the Greek original, here reverses the sense. Homer says Neptune did not laugh, οὐδὲ Ποσειδάωνα γέλως ἔχε: Pope says, ‘even Neptune laughs aloud.’ Pope’s work is a great work: but it is not a good rendering, nor a bad rendering, of Homer: it is no rendering at all. Od. viii. 244.