Which is taken from the prophet Isaiah,

  The Lord God will wipe all tears from off all faces.

  From every face he wipes off ev’ry tear.

And it stands so altered in the newer editions of Mr. Pope’s works.  He proceeded to lay before him all the mistakes and inaccuracies hinted at by the writers, who had attacked Mr. Pope, and added many things, which he himself objected to.  Speaking of his translation in general, he said, that he was not to be blamed for endeavouring to get so large a sum of money, but that it was an ill-executed thing, and not equal to Tickell, which had all the spirit of Homer.  Mr. Addison concluded, in a low hollow voice of feigned temper, that he was not sollicitous about his own fame as a poet; that he had quitted the muses to enter into the business of the public, and that all he spoke was through friendship to Mr. Pope, whom he advised to have a less exalted sense of his own merit.

Mr. Pope could not well bear such repeated reproaches, but boldly told Mr. Addison, that he appealed from his judgment to the public, and that he had long known him too well to expect any friendship from him; upbraided him with being a pensioner from his youth, sacrificing the very learning purchased by the public money, to a mean thirst of power; that he was sent abroad to encourage literature, in place of which he had always endeavoured to suppress merit.  At last, the contest grew so warm, that they parted without any ceremony, and Mr. Pope upon this wrote the foregoing verses, which are esteemed too true a picture of Mr. Addison.

In this account, and, indeed, in all other accounts, which have been given concerning this quarrel, it does not appear that Mr. Pope was the aggressor.  If Mr. Addison entertained suspicions of Mr. Pope’s being carried too far among the enemy, the danger was certainly Mr. Pope’s, and not Mr. Addison’s.  It was his misfortune, and not his crime.  If Mr. Addison should think himself capable of becoming a rival to Mr. Pope, and, in consequence of this opinion, publish a translation of part of Homer; at the same time with Mr. Pope’s, and if the public should decide in favour of the latter by reading his translation, and neglecting the other, can any fault be imputed to Mr. Pope? could he be blamed for exerting all his abilities in so arduous a province? and was it his fault that Mr. Addison (for the first book of Homer was undoubtedly his) could not translate to please the public?  Besides, was it not somewhat presumptuous to insinuate to Mr. Pope, that his verses bore another face when he corrected them, while, at the same time, the translation of Homer, which he had never seen in manuscript, bore away the palm from that very translation, he himself asserted was done in the true spirit of Homer?  In matters of genius the public judgment seldom errs, and in this case posterity has confirmed the sentence of that age, which gave the preference to Mr. Pope; for his translation is in the hands of all readers of taste, while the other is seldom regarded but as a soil to Pope’s.