POPE, ALEXANDER (1688-1744), English poet, was born in Lombard street, London, on May 21, 1688. His father, Alex ander Pope, a Roman Catholic, was a linen-draper who afterwards retired from business with a small fortune and fixed his residence about 1700 at Binfield in Windsor forest. Pope's education was desultory. Before he was 12 he had obtained a smattering of Latin and Greek from various masters; by his 17th year excessive study had undermined his health and he had developed the per sonal deformity which later on largely distorted his view of life. Under the treatment, however, of the famous physician John Radcliffe, he recovered his health and continued his studies.
Pope was early an eager aspirant to the highest honours in poetry, and his connections with neighbouring Roman. Catholic families of influence in the literary world gave direction to his ambitions. Pope was thus brought under the notice of Sir William Trumbull, a retired diplomatist, living at Easthampstead. Thomas Dancastle, lord of the manor of Binfield, took an active interest in his writings, and at Whiteknights, near Reading, lived another Roman Catholic, Anthony Englefield, "a great lover of poets and poetry." Through him Pope made the acquaintance of Wycherley and of Henry Cromwell, the former introducing him to William Walsh, then of gfeat renown as a critic. Before the poet was 17 he was admitted in this way to the society of London "wits" and men of fashion, and was cordially encouraged as a prodigy.
Pope recognized soon that a long course of preparation was needed for the translation of Homer into English verse, on which he had decided. He learnt most, as he acknowledged, from Dry den, but the harmony of his verse also owed something to an earlier writer, George Sandys, the translator of Ovid. At the beginning of the 18th century Dryden's success had given great vogue to translations and modernizations. Dryden had rewritten three of the Canterbury Tales; Pope tried his hand at the Mer chant's Tale, Prologue to the Wife of Bath's Tale, the House of Fame, and further experimented with translations from some Latin authors and the Odyssey.
Precocious Pope was, but he was also industrious; and he spent nine years in arduous discipline, before anything of his ap peared in print. His first publication was his "Pastorals"; they appeared in May 1709 at the end of the sixth volume of Ton son's Poetical Miscellanies, containing contributions from Am brose Philips, Sheffield, Garth and Rowe, with "January and May," Pope's version of Chaucer's "Merchant's Tale."
Pope's next publication was the Essay on Criticism 0710, written two years earlier, and printed without the author's name. The sales were slow until Pope caused copies to be sent to Lord Lansdowne and others, but its success was none the less brilliant for the delay. The town was fairly dazzled by the young poet's learning, judgment, and felicity of expressions, and Pope gained credit for much that might have been found where he found it, in the Institutes of Quintilian, in the numerous critical writings of Rene Rapin, and in Rene le Bossu's treatise on epic poetry. Addison has been made responsible for the exaggerated value once set on the essay, but Addison's paper (Spectator, No. 253) was not unmixed praise. He and Pope became acquainted and Pope's sacred eclogue, "Messiah," was printed as No. 378 of the Spec tator. In the Essay on Criticism Pope provoked one bitter per sonal enemy in John Dennis, the critic, by describing him as Appius, who "stares, tremendous, with a threat'ning eye." Dennis retorted in Reflections . . . upon a late Rhapsody . . I), • abusing Pope among other things for his personal deformity; and Pope never forgot this brutal attack.
The Rape of the Lock, in its first form, appeared in 1712 in Lintot's Miscellanies; the "machinery" of sylphs and gnomes was an afterthought, and the poem was republished as we now have it early in 1714. William, 4th Baron Petre, had surreptitiously cut off a lock of Miss Arabella Fermor's hair, and the liberty had been resented ; Pope hearing of this, caught at the hint, and treated the subject in mock heroic vein—the result being a poem which is generally admitted to be a masterpiece of airiness, in genuity, and exquisite finish. It was followed by the publication in March, 1713, of Windsor Forest, which was begun, according to Pope, when he was 16 or 17. Hitherto, Pope had avoided poli tics, but this work appeared with a flattering dedication to the secretary for war, George Granville, Lord Lansdowne, and an opportune allusion to the Treaty of Utrecht. When the poem appeared, it was made the subject of an insidious attack by the Addison coterie, who about this time became estranged from Pope. Addison disavowed connivance of this coarse attack, but a coolness between the two friends ensued.