POPE, ALEXANDER (1688-1744). An English poet. born in London, Nay 21, 1088. His father. a linen draper, withdrew from business about 1700, and settled at Binfield, in Windsor Forest; in 1716 he moved to Chiswick on the Thames, near London. The poet's mother was Edith Turner, who belonged to a Yorkshire family. The 0 elder Pope was a Roman Catholic, and to this faith the poet also nominally adhered, thus de barring himself from a university career. He learned to read from an old aunt and received some education in two Catholic schools as well as from private tutors (Roman Catholic priests), • but for the most part he taught himself. He read widely in English poetry and studied French, 0 Italian, Latin, and Greek. Thus left to himself. he never became an accurate scholar. Soon after the death of his father (1717) he leased (1719) a • house and five acres of laud at Twickenham. on the banks of the Thames, whither be withdrew • with his mother. to whom he was tenderly at tached, and there be dwelt till his death. In the famous villa Pope was visited by the most cele brated wits, statesmen, and beauties of the day. He died May 30, 1744. In his tenth year Pope Was . stricken by an illness which distorted his frame and robbed him of his plumpness and his color.
his physical infirmity, susceptible temperament, 1 and incessant study rendered his life "one long disease." He was Lord Chesterfield said, "the most irritable of all the genus irritabile ratum, offended with trifles, and never forgetting or for giving them." Of his many quarrels, that with Addison was least justifiable. Yet when no dis turbing jealousy, vanity, or rivalry intervened, Pope was generous and affectionate. as witness the long friendship with Arbuthnot, Gay, and Swift, and his devotion to his mother.
Pope was the most precocious of English poets. ' At the age of twelve he wrote the Ode to Solitude , and a translation of the first book of the Thebais of Statics (not published till 1712) ; and at fourteen or thereabouts, an epic called Alexander, which he burned about 1717. By 1706 he had com posed his Pastorals, which were first published in Tonson's .Miscellanies in 1709. The smooth and melodious verses at once made Pope known. The experiment in the pastoral was followed by the Essay on Criticism (1711), which ex pounded the canons of taste: the Messiah (1712); Windsor Forest (1713), a descriptive poem, less artificial than the Pastorals; and the Rape of the Lock (first draft 1712; completed in 1714), the most graceful, airy, and fanciful of Pope's poems. In 1714 appeared The Wife of Bath,
imitated from Chaucer, from whom he also got The Temple of Fame. In 1717 Pope published a collection of his works, where first appeared the Epistle of Eloise. to Abelard and the Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady, his most noteworthy lyrics. Pope was already engaged on the work that was to give him solid fame. His translation of the Iliad was published in six volumes (1715-201. Out of the profits of the work he purchased and adorned his villa. The translation, though want ing in Homeric simplicity, naturalness. and prim itiveness, is nevertheless a splendid piece of writ ing, judged apart from its original. The Iliad was followed by the Odyssey (1725-26), which was, however, mostly the work of William Broome and Elijah Fenton. Though a financial success, the Odyssey added nothing to Pope's fame. Pope now made his famous attack on Grub Street. The Duneiad was finished by 1727; but before publishing it Pope stirred up his ene mies with the Bathos, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry, in the Miscellanies (March. 1728), writ ten in conjunction with Swift and Arbuthnot. The Dunciad, in three books, first appeared on May 2S, 1728, and was enlarged the next year. Pope took as his supreme dunce Lewis Theobald (q.v.), who had criticised an edition of Shake speare that Pope had brought out in 1725. Around Theobald gyrated the other dunces. In 1742 Pope added a fourth book, dethroned Theo bald and put Colley C'ibber (q.v.) in his place. This long lampoon, though mean in spirit, is brilliant in style. Pope closed his poetical career with the Moral Essays (1731-38) and a group of satires called Imitations from (1733-38). The former group contains the famous Essay on Man, a philosophical poem, in which is expound ed the deism of Bolingbroke, taken back in the sequel, the Unirersal Prayer. To the latter group belongs the delightful Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.