THE POETICAL WORKS OF ALEXANDER POPE, ESQ. TO WHICH IS PREFIXED THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR, BY DR. JOHNSON. Philadelphia: PUBLISHED BY J. J. WOODWARD. STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON. 1835. THE LIFE OF ALEXANDER POPE, ESQ. ALEXANDER POPE was born in London, May 22, | school at Twyford, near Winchester, and again to 1688, of parents whose rank or station was never another school about Hyde Park Corner; from ascertained; we are informed that they were of which he used sometimes to stroll to the play"gentle blood;" that his father was of a family of house; and was so delighted with theatrical exhiwhich the Earl of Downe was the head; and that bitions, that he formed a kind of play from 'Ogilby's his mother was the daughter of William Turner, Iliad,' with some verses of his own intermixed, Esq. of York, who had likewise three sons, one of which he persuaded his school-fellows to act, with whom had the honour of being killed, and the other the addition of his master's gardner, who personof dying, in the service of Charles the First: the ated Ajax. third was made a general officer in Spain, from whom the sister inherited what sequestrations and forfeitures had left in the family. 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 This, and this only, is told by Pope; who is more exercised his poetry in a lampoon. Yet under those willing, as I have heard observed, to show what his masters he translated more than a fourth part of the father was not, than what he was. It is allowed Metamorphoses.' If he kept the same proportion that he grew rich by trade; but whether in a shop in his other exercises, it cannot be thought that his or on the Exchange, was never discovered, till Mr. loss was great. Tyers told, on the authority of Mrs. Racket, that he was a linen-draper in the Strand. Both parents were papists. He tells of himself, in his poems, that "he lisp'd in numbers;” and used to say that he could not remember the time when he began to make verses Pope was from his birth of a constitution tender In the style of fiction it might have been said of him and delicate; but is said to have shown remarkable as of Pindar, that, when he lay in his cradle, “the gentleness and sweetness of disposition. The weak-bees swarmed about his mouth." ness of his body continued through his life;* but the About the time of the Revolution, his father, who mildness of his mind perhaps ended with his child-was undoubtedly disappointed by the sudden blast hood. His voice, when he was young, was so of Popish prosperity, quitted his trade, and retired pleasing, that he was called in fondness "the little to Binfield, in Windsor Forest, with about twenty Nightingale." thousand pounds; for which, being conscientiously Being not sent early to school, he was taught to determined not to entrust it to the government, he read by an aunt; and, when he was seven or eight found no better use than that of locking it up in a years old, became a lover of books. He first learn- chest, and taking from it what his expenses reed to write by imitating printed books; a species of quired; and his life was long enough to consume a penmanship in which he retained great excellence great part of it, before his son came to the inherthrough his whole life, though his ordinary hand itance. was not elegant. · To Binfield, Pope was called by his father when When he was about eight, he was placed in he was about twelve years old; and there he had Hampshire, under Taverner, a Romish priest, who, for a few months the assistance of one Deane, anoby a method very rarely practised, taught him the ther priest, of whom he learned only to construe a Greek and Latin rudiments together. He was now little of Tully's Offices.' How Mr. Deane could first regularly initiated in poetry by the perusal of spend, with a boy who had translated so much of 'Ogilby's Homer,' and 'Sandys' Ovid.' Ogilby's Ovid, some months over a small part of Tully's assistance he never repaid with any praise; but of Offices,' it is now vain to inquire. Sandys' he declared, in his notes to the Iliad,' that Of a youth so successfully employed, and so conEnglish poetry owed much of its beauty to his spicuously improved, a minute account must be natutranslations. Sandys very rarely attempted origi- rally desired; but curiosity must be contented with nal composition. confused, imperfect, and sometimes improbable inFrom the care of Taverner, under whom his pro- telligence. Pope, finding little advantage from exficiency was considerable, he was removed to aternal help, resolved thenceforward to direct himself, and at twelve formed a plan of study, which *This weakness was so great that he constantly wore he completed with little other incitement than the stay. His method of taking the air on the water was to have a sedan chair in the boat, in which he sat with the desire of excellence. glasses down. His primary and principal purpose was to be a |