And it is plain, from his own references to this nickname in a prolusion delivered in the college, that he owed it not only to his fair complexion, short stature and great personal beauty, but also to the purity, delicacy and refinement of his manners.
"Milton"
John Bailey
As to this little poem being a youthful prolusion of Homer, it seems sufficient to say that from the beginning to the end, it is a plain and palpable parody, not only of the general spirit, but of numerous passages of the Iliad itself; and, even if no such intention to parody were discernible in it, the objection would still remain, that to suppose a work of mere burlesque to be the primary effort of poetry in a simple age, seems to reverse that order in the development of national taste, which the history of every other people in Europe, and of many in Asia, has almost ascertained to be a law of the human mind; it is in a state of society much more refined and permanent than that described in the Iliad, that any popularity would attend such a ridicule of war and the gods as is contained in this poem; and the fact of there having existed three other poems of the same kind attributed, for aught we can see, with as much reason to Homer, is a strong inducement to believe that none of them were of the Homeric age.
"The Odyssey of Homer"
Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
"This anxious struggle to reach the unattainable excellence of the professor," said Mr. Stanley, "often brings to my mind the contest for victory between the ambitious nightingale and the angry lutanist in the beautiful prolusion of Strada."
"Coelebs In Search of a Wife"
Hannah More
