POPE. 



639 



der, nor is it a cause of reproach against the church, 

 that it has produced vicious popes. But no dynasty 

 of Europe can show that it has had, during the last 

 few centuries, such a long series of excellent men. 

 By the institutions connected with the papal power, 

 care is taken that it shall be less arbitrary than that 

 of any other ruler in Europe. 



POPE, ALEXANDER, a celebrated English poet, 

 was born May 22, 1688, in Lombard street, London, 

 where his father, a linen-draper, acquired a consid- 

 erable fortune. Both his parents were Roman 

 Catholics. Soon after the birth of his son, who 

 was of very delicate constitution, small, and much 

 deformed, the father of Pope retired from business 

 to a small house at Binfield, near Windsor forest ; 

 and, on account of his attachment to the exiled 

 king, not choosing to vest his property in the pub- 

 lic securities, he lived frugally on the capital. The 

 young poet was taught to read and write at home, 

 and, at the age of eight, was placed under the care 

 of a Catholic priest, named Taverner, from whom 

 he learned the rudiments of Latin and Greek. 

 Being fond of reading, he became acquainted, at 

 this early period, with Ogilby's version of Homer, 

 and Sandys' translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, 

 which books first turned his attention to poetry. 

 He was successively placed at two other schools, 

 the first at Twyford, and the second at Hyde-park- 

 corner, where he formed a play taken from Ogilby's 

 Homer, intermixed with verses of his own, and had 

 it acted by his school-fellows. About his twelfth 

 year, he was taken home, and privately instructed 

 by another priest ; and to this period is assigned 

 his earliest printed poem, the. Ode on Solitude. He 

 subsequently appears to have been the director of 

 his own studies, in which the cultivation of poetry 

 occupied his chief attention. He particularly exer- 

 cised himself in imitation and translation, of which 

 his versions of the first book of the Thebais and of 

 the Sappho to Phaon, made at the age of fourteen, 

 afford a remarkable testimony. He was sixteen 

 when he wrote his pastorals, which procured him 

 the notice of several eminent persons. His ode for 

 St Cecilia's Day and Essay on Criticism were his 

 next performances of note, the latter of which was 

 written in 1709, and published in 1711, in which 

 year, also, appeared his Elegy on an Unfortunate 

 Lady. He became embroiled with Ambrose Philips 

 in consequence of an ironical comparison of that 

 writer's pastorals with his own in the Guardian, and 

 with the irascible critic John Dennis, owing to a 

 humorous allusion to him under the name oiAppius, 

 in the Essay on Criticism. The Elegy on an Un- 

 fortunate Lady was followed by the Rape of the 

 Lock, grounded on a trifling incident in fashionable 

 life. In this production the poet displays admirable 

 vivacity and the most polished wit, but its imagina- 

 tive power is chiefly conspicuous in the exquisite 

 machinery of the sylphs, wrought into it as an after- 

 thought ; for the poem first appeared without it. 

 This addition was opposed by Addison a piece of 

 advice which Pope subsequently, upon no very 

 direct evidence, attributed to literary jealousy. He 

 next published the Temple of Fame, altered and 

 modernized from Chaucer, which was followed, in 

 1713, by his Windsor Forest, commenced at sixteen. 

 In the same year, he published proposals for a 

 translation of the Iliad, by subscription, which were 

 received with great encouragement ; and the first 

 volume, containing four books, appeared in 1715 (in 

 4to). An open breach with Addison preceded 

 this publication, owing to an alleged jealousy on 

 the part of the latter, to whom a rival translation 

 of Homer, published under the name ofTickell, 

 was attributed by Pope. Whether by Addison or 



Tickell, the rival version soon sank before that of 

 Pope, who was enabled, by the great success of his 

 subscription, to take a handsome house at Twick- 

 enham, to which he removed with his father and 

 mother. About this time, he wrote his impassioned 

 Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, one of the most vi- 

 vid and impressive of all amatory poems. In 1717, 

 he republished his poetry in a quarto volume, to 

 which he prefixed an elegant preface, and in 1720, 

 completed the Iliad. In 1721, he undertook the 

 editorship of Shakspeare's works a task for which 

 lie was wholly unfit ; and a severe castigation from 

 Theobald laid the foundation of a lasting enmity 

 between them. With the assistance of Broomeand 

 Fenton, he also accomplished a translation of the 

 Odyssey, the subscription to which brought him a 

 considerable sum. In the mean time, he had for- 

 med a friendship with Martha Blount, the daughter 

 of a Catholic gentleman near Reading, who became 

 his intimate confidante and companion through life. 

 A sort of literary flirtation also commenced with 

 the celebrated lady Mary Wortley Montagu, which, 

 after much intercourse and correspondence, termi- 

 nated (See Montagu, lady Mary fFbrtley) in the 

 bitterest enmity. In 1727, he joined Swift in a 

 publication of Miscellanies, in which he inserted a 

 treatise Of the Bathos, or Art of Sinking, illustra- 

 ted by examples from the inferior poets of the day. 

 In 1728, he sent out the three first books of his 

 Dunciad, a mock-heroic poem, the object of which 

 was to overwhelm his antagonists with ridicule. It 

 is a finished example of diction and versification, 

 but displays much irritability, illiberality and injus- 

 tice. Personal satire, to which he was first encour- 

 aged by bishop Atterbury, appears in most of his 

 subsequent productions. Being particularly connec- 

 ted with the tory party, he had become intimate 

 with lord Bolingbroke, to whose suggestion the 

 world is indebted for the Essay on Man, first pub- 

 lished anonymously in 1733, and the next year com- 

 pleted, and avowed by the author. This work 

 stands in the first class of ethical poems. It was 

 followed by Imitations of Horace, accompanied by 

 a Prologue and Epilogue to the Satires, and by 

 Moral Epistles or Essays, which exhibit him as a 

 satirist of the school of Boileau, with more spirit and 

 poetry, and equal causticity. The persons whom, 

 in these works, he treats with most severity are 

 lady Mary W. Montagu and lord Hervey. Curll, 

 the bookseller, having published some letters writ- 

 ten by Pope, the latter affected great anger ; yet 

 there is some evidence to countenance the notion 

 that he contrived the plot himself, in order to form 

 an excuse for the publication of a quarto volume of 

 letters, in his own name, for which he took subscrip- 

 tions. They are elegant and sprightly, although 

 studied and artificial ; but, as many characteristic 

 epistles are given from those of his correspondents, 

 the collection is interesting and valuable. In 

 1742, at the suggestion of Warburton, he added a 

 fourth book to ins Dunciad, intended to ridicule 

 useless and frivolous studies, in- which he attacked 

 Colley Cibber, then poet- laureate. Cibber retali- 

 ated by a pamphlet, which told some ludicrous 

 stories of his antagonist, and so irritated the latter, 

 that, in a new edition of the Dunciad, he deposed 

 Theobald, its original hero, and promoted Cibber 

 in his place, who, although a great coxcomb, could 

 scarcely be deemed a dunce. An oppressive asth- 

 ma began now to indicate a commencing decline; 

 and, in this state of debility, he was consoled by 

 the affectionate attention of his friends, and parti- 

 cularly of lord Bolingbroke. When the last scene 

 was approaching, he allowed one of his intimates, 

 the historian Hooke, himself a Catholic, to send for 



