РОРЕ.

1688-1744.

Born in London-Both Parents Roman Catholics-Educated by Priests-Early distinguished as a Poet-Lives at Binfield in Berkshire-Sees Dryden-Becomes acquainted with Wycherley, Walsh, Sir W. Trumbull, &c.-Writes his 'Pastorals '-Publishes his 'Pastorals' in Tonson's Miscellany-Publishes an Essay on Criticism'-Dennis attacks the 'Essay '-Publishes 'The Rape of the Lock' in Lintot's Miscellany-His intimacy with Addison-Publishes 'Windsor Forest '-Commences a Translation of the 'Iliad '-History of the Subscription for the 'Iliad '-Lord Halifax and Pope-Collects his Poems-'Eloisa to Abelard '-' Verses on an Unfortunate Lady '-Commences a Translation of the 'Odyssey '-Fenton and BroomePublication of his Letters to Cromwell-Curll-Edits Shakespeare-Theobald's Attack-The Bathos-History of 'The Dunciad '-Writes his 'Moral Epistles' and' Epistle to Dr. Arhuthnot-The Essay on Man '-Bolingbroke and Warburton-Quarrels with Lord Hervey and Lady Mary Montagu-His Imitations of Horace-Collects a Second Volume of his PoemsPublication of his Letters by Curll-Writes his two Dialogues, 1738'-Quarrels with Cibber -Writes a Fourth Book of The Dunciad '-Theobald Dethroned-Death and Burial at Twickenham--Personal Character-Works and Character-Dryden and Pope comparedCriticism on his Epitaphs.

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ALEXANDER POPE was born in London, May 22, 1688, of parents whose rank or station was never ascertained: we are informed that they were of "gentle blood;"1 that his father was of a family of which the Earl of Downe was the head; and that his mother was the daughter of William Turner, Esq., of York, who had likewise three sons, one of whom had the honour of being killed, and the other of dying, in the service of Charles the First; the third [the eldest] was made a general officer in Spain, from whom the sister

1 Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause

While yet in Britain honour had applause)

Each parent sprung.

POPE: Epistle to Arbuthnot.

2 Compare note in Warton's 'Essay on Pope,' ed. 1782, vol. ii. p. 262.

3 "Pray what authority had you to say that Mr. Pope's mother was Cooper's daughter?... In the Parish of Worsbro, a village very near Lord Strafford, is the following entry:-'1643. Edith, the daughter of Mr. William Turner, bapt. 18 June.' Which Mr. Brooke, one of the Heralds, who is writing an account of Yorkshire families, says is the same person."—Mason to Walpole, Dec. 4, 1782. If this entry is correct, and the usual period only elapsed between birth and baptism, Pope's mother was ninety, and not ninety-three, at her death, on the 7th June, 1788.

inherited what sequestrations and forfeitures had le iu the family.*

This, and this only, is told by Pope, who is more willing, as I have heard observed, to show what his father was not, than what he was. It is allowed that he grew rich by trade, but whether in a shop or on the Exchange was never discovered till Mr. Tyers told, on the authority of Mrs. Rackett, that he was a linen-draper in the Strand. Both parents were Papists.

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Pope was from his birth of a constitution tender and delicate, but is said to have shown remarkable gentleness and sweetness of disposition. The weakness of his body continued through his life; but the mildness of his mind perhaps ended with his childhood. His voice, when he was young, was so pleasing, that he was called in fondness the "little Nightingale."

Being not sent early to school, he was taught to read by an aunt; and when he was seven or eight years old, became a lover of books. He first learned to write by imitating printed books; a species of penmanship in which he retained great excellence through his whole life, though his ordinary hand was not elegant.

When he was about eight, he was placed in Hampshire under

• Pope's own note in his 'Epistle to Arbuthnot.'

Magdalen Rackett-Pope's half-sister, it is said, by his mother's former marriage. She survived Pope, and, with her three sons, is remembered by him in his will. Pope's father in his will speaks of "My son-in-law Charles Rackett, and my dear daughter Magdalen," by. which it is clear that the woman was nearer related to him than the man. A letter from Magdalen Rackett to Mrs. Pope (the poet's mother) concludes, "Dear mother, your dutiful daughter, M. Rackett." She speaks, however, in the same letter of her "mother Rackett," by which she may mean either her own or her husband's mother. (MS. Iliad, vol. ii. 136.) Pope in his will speaks of his "sister-in-law," Magdalen Rackett, meaning perhaps his half-sister. I incline to think that the woman was the nearer related of the two to Pope, and that Magdalen Rackett was the daughter of Mr. Pope by a previous marriage, and not (as hitherto thought) of Mrs. Pope by a former husband. Compare Malone's note in his edition of Spence, p. 68.

6 No, in Lombard Street. Martha Blount described him as "a merchant who dealt in hollands" (Spence by Singer, p. 357). The poet's father became a convert to the Roman Catholic faith when still a youth, living with a merchant in Lisbon.

7 This weakness was so great that he constantly wore stays, as I have been assured by a waterman at Twickenham, who, in lifting him into his boat, had often felt them. His method of taking the air on the water was to have a sedan chair in the boat, in which he sat with the glasses down.-SIR JOHN HAWKINS. (Note in Johnson's 'Lives,' 4 vols. 8vo., 1791.)

8 This was not the case. His ordinary hand was far from inelegant, and his imitations of print made with the pen such as schoolmasters would admire. I possess his copy of some of Dryden's poems in quarto, with, on the fly-leaf, "Alexander Pope," in his best manner of printing with a pen.

Taverner, a Romish priest, who, by a method very rarely practised, taught him the Greek and Latin rudiments together. He was now first regularly initiated in poetry by the perusal of Ogilby's 'Homer,' and Sandys's Ovid.' Ogilby's assistance he never repaid with any praise; but of Sandys he declared in his notes to the 'Iliad,' that English poetry owed much of its beauty to his translations. Sandys very rarely attempted original composition.

From the care of Taverner, under whom his proficiency was considerable, he was removed to a school at Twyford, near Winchester, and again to another school about Hyde-Park Corner, from which he used sometimes to stroll to the play-house, and was so delighted with theatrical exhibitions, that he formed a kind of play from Ogilby's 'Iliad,' with some verses of his own intermixed, which he persuaded his schoolfellows to act, with the addition of his master's gardener, who personated Ajax.

At the two last schools he used to represent himself as having lost part of what Taverner had taught him; and on his master at Twyford he had already exercised his poetry in a lampoon. Yet under those masters he translated more than a fourth part of the 'Metamorphoses.' If he kept the same proportion in his other exercises, it cannot be thought that his loss was great.

He tells of himself, in his poems,1o that "he lisp'd in numbers ;" and used to say that he could not remember the time, when he began to make verses. In the style of fiction it might have been said of him as of Pindar, that when he lay in his cradle, "the bees swarmed about his mouth."

About the time of the Revolution his father, who was undoubtedly disappointed by the sudden blast of Popish prosperity, quitted his trade, and retired to Binfield, in Windsor Forest, with about twenty thousand pounds; for which, being conscientiously determined not to entrust it to the Government, he found no better use than that of locking it up in a chest," and taking from it what his expenses required; and his life was long enough to consume a great part of it before his son came to the inheritance.

9 Johnson follows Ruff head. By Spence (ed. Singer, pp. 192, 259, 283) he is called Banister. Epistle to Arbuthnot.'

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11 This notion of the money chest is a great absurdity. He soon found opportunities of investing his capital in sound foreign securities.

To Binfield Pope was called by his father when he was about twelve years old; and there he had for a few months the assistance of one Deane, another priest, of whom he learned only to construe a little of Tully's Offices.' How Mr. Deane could spend, with a boy who had translated so much of Ovid, some months over a small part of Tully's Offices,' it is now vain to inquire.""

Of a youth so successfully employed, and so conspicuously improved, a minute account must be naturally desired; but curiosity must be contented with confused, imperfect, and sometimes improbable intelligence. Pope, finding little advantage from external help, resolved thenceforward to direct himself, and at twelve formed a plan of study which he completed with little other incitement than the desire of excellence.

His primary and principal purpose was to be a poet, with which his father accidentally concurred by proposing subjects, and obliging him to correct his performances by many revisals; after which the old gentleman, when he was satisfied, would say, "These are good rhymes." 13

In his perusal of the English poets he soon distinguished the versification of Dryden, which he considered as the model to be studied, and was impressed with such veneration for his instructor, that he persuaded some friends to take him to the coffee-house which Dryden frequented, and pleased himself with having seen him.

Dryden died May 1, 1700, some days before Pope was twelve, so early must he therefore have felt the power of harmony and the zeal of genius. Who does not wish that Dryden could have known the value of the homage that was paid him, and foreseen the greatness of his young admirer? 14

He was educated at Univer

12 Thomas Deane, son of Edward Deane, of Malden in Kent. sity College, Oxford, of which he was made a Fellow 4th Dec., 1684; but, becoming a convert in King James's reign, was declared Non-socius. He stood in the pillory at Charing Cross (18th Dec., 1691), under the name of Thomas Franks, for concealing the author of a libellous pamphlet against the Government. He was fond of pamphleteering, and is described by Pope in 1727 as "all his life a dupe to some project or other." See Wood's 'Ath. Ox.,' and 'The Athenæum' of 15th July, 1854.

13 Warburton's note on 'Epistle to Arbuthnot:' and Spence, p. 8.

14 I was informed by an intimate friend of Pope [Walter Harte] that when he was yet a mere boy Dryden gave him a shilling, by way of encouragement, for a translation he had made of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe,' from Ovid.-WARTON: Essay on Pope, i. 82, ed. 1782; and WARTON: Life of Pope, p. xiii.

The earliest of Pope's productions is his 'Ode on Solitude, written before he was twelve, in which there is nothing more than other forward boys have attained, and which is not equal to Cowley's performances at the same age.

His time was now wholly spent in reading and writing. As he read the Classics, he amused himself with translating them; and at fourteen made a version of the first book of the 'Thebais,' which, with some revision, he afterwards published. He must have been at this time, if he had no help," a considerable proficient in the Latin tongue.

By Dryden's Fables,' which had then been not long published, and were much in the hands of poetical readers, he was tempted to try his own skill in giving Chaucer a more fashionable appearance, and putJanuary and May,' and the 'Prologue of the Wife of Bath,' into modern English. He translated likewise the 'Epistle of Sappho to Phaon' from Ovid, to complete the version which was before imperfect; and wrote some other small pieces which he afterwards printed.

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He sometimes imitated the English poets, and professed to have written at fourteen his poem upon 'Silence,' after Rochester's 'Nothing.' He had now formed his versification, and the smoothness of his numbers surpassed his original: but this is a small part of his praise; he discovers such acquaintance both with human and public affairs as is not easily conceived to have been attainable by a boy of fourteen in Windsor Forest.

Next year he was desirous of opening to himself new sources of knowledge by making himself acquainted with modern languages, and removed for a time to London, that he might study French and Italian, which, as he desired nothing more than to read them, were by diligent application soon despatched. Of Italian learning he does not appear to have ever made much use in his subsequent studies.

He then returned to Binfield, and delighted himself with his own poetry. He tried all styles and many subjects. He wrote a comedy, a tragedy, an epic poem, with panegyrics on all the princes of

15 He appears to have had the assistance of Walsh.-Spence by Singer, p. 278.

16 His earliest existing satire is an attack on Settle: To the Author of Successio,' written in imitation of the Earl of Dorset.