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Messiah is a 'sacred eclogue' by Alexander Pope, composed in 1712. It is based on the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil, and is an example of English Classicism's appropriation and reworking of the genres, subject matter and techniques of classical Latin literature.

Samuel Johnson, while still a student at Oxford, translated Pope's Messiah into Latin hexameters. The translation appeared in Miscellany of Poems (1731), edited by John Husbands, and is the earliest surviving publication of any of Johnson's writings.

References

1. Alexander Pope (1688–1744). Complete Poetical Works. 1903
2. Bate 1977, pp. 93–94

Sources

• Bate, Walter Jackson (1977), Samuel Johnson, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, ISBN 0-15-179260-7.

External links

• Text of the poem from Bartleby

v t e Alexander Pope
Plays	Three Hours After Marriage (1717)
Essays	"Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry" (1727)
Poetry	"Ode on Solitude" (1700) Pastorals (1709) An Essay on Criticism (1711) Messiah (1712) The Rape of the Lock (1712) Windsor-Forest (1713) The Temple of Fame (1715) Eloisa to Abelard (1717) "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady" (1717) Messiah (Samuel Johnson's Latin translation; 1728) The Dunciad (1728–29, 1742–43) "An Essay on Man" (1734) Moral Essays (1731–35) Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (1735)
Related	Popeswood Binfield Scriblerus Club Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?" Heroic couplet
People	Martha Blount John Caryll

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