The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, vol 1 | Page 2

most interesting
passages in biography. Thus met Galileo with Milton, Milton with
Dryden, Dryden with Pope, and Burns with Scott. Carruthers strikingly
remarks, "Considering the perils and uncertainties of a literary life--its
precarious rewards, feverish anxieties, mortifications, and
disappointments, joined to the tyranny of the Tonsons and Lintots, and
the malice and envy of dunces, all of which Dryden had long and
bitterly experienced--the aged poet could hardly have looked at the
delicate and deformed boy, whose preternatural acuteness and
sensibility were seen in his dark eyes, without a feeling approaching to
grief, had he known that he was to fight a battle like that under which
he was himself then sinking, even though the Temple of Fame should

at length open to receive him." At twelve, he wrote the "Ode to
Solitude;" and shortly after, his satirical piece on Elkanah Settle, and
some of his translations and imitations. His next period, he says, was in
Windsor Forest, where for several years he did nothing but read the
classics and indite poetry. He wrote a tragedy, a comedy, and four
books of an Epic called "Alexander," all of which afterwards he
committed to the flames. He translated also a portion of Statius, and
Cicero "De Senectute," and "thought himself the greatest genius that
ever was." His father encouraged him in his studies, and when his
verses did not please him, sent him back to "new turn" them, saying,
"These are not good rhymes." His principal favourites were Virgil's
"Eclogues," in Latin; and in English, Spencer, Waller, and
Dryden--admiring Spencer, we presume, for his luxuriant fancy, Waller
for his smooth versification, and Dryden for his vigorous sense and
vivid sarcasm. In the Forest, he became acquainted with Sir William
Trumbull, the retired secretary of state, a man of general
accomplishments, who read, rode, conversed with the youthful poet;
introduced him to old Wycherley, the dramatist; and was of material
service to his views. With Wycherley, who was old, doted, and
excessively vain, Pope did not continue long intimate. A coldness,
springing from some criticisms which the youth ventured to make on
the veteran's poetry, crept in between them. Walsh of Abberley, in
Worcestershire, a man of good sense and taste, became, after a perusal
of the "Pastorals" in MS., a warm friend and kind adviser of Pope's,
who has immortalised him in more than one of his poems. Walsh told
Pope that there had never hitherto appeared in Britain a poet who was
at once great and correct, and exhorted him to aim at accuracy and
elegance.
When fifteen, he visited London, in order to acquire a more thorough
knowledge of French and Italian. At sixteen, he wrote the "Pastorals,"
and a portion of "Windsor Forest," although they were not published
for some time afterwards. By his incessant exertions, he now began to
feel his constitution injured. He imagined himself dying, and sent
farewell letters to all his friends, including the Abbé Southcot. This
gentleman communicated Pope's case to Dr Ratcliffe, who gave him
some medical directions; by following which, the poet recovered. He

was advised to relax in his studies, and to ride daily; and he prudently
followed the advice. Many years afterwards, he repaid the benevolent
Abbé by procuring for him, through Sir Robert Walpole, the
nomination to an abbey in Avignon. This is only one of many proofs
that, notwithstanding his waspish temper, and his no small share of
malice as well as vanity, there was a warm heart in our poet.
In 1707, Pope became acquainted with Michael Blount of Maple,
Durham, near Reading; whose two sisters, Martha and Teresa, he has
commemorated in various verses. On his connexion with these ladies,
some mystery rests. Bowles has strongly and plausibly urged that it was
not of the purest or most creditable order. Others have contended that it
did not go further than the manners of the age sanctioned; and they say,
"a much greater license in conversation and in epistolary
correspondence was permitted between the sexes than in our decorous
age!" We are not careful to try and settle such a delicate question--only
we are inclined to suspect, that when common decency quits the words
of male and female parties in their mutual communications, it is a very
ample charity that can suppose it to adhere to their actions. And
nowhere do we find grosser language than in some of Pope's prose
epistles to the Blounts.
His "Pastorals," after having been handed about in MS., and shewn to
such reputed judges as Lord Halifax, Lord Somers, Garth, Congreve,
&c., were at last, in 1709, printed in the sixth volume of Tonson's
"Miscellanies." Like all well-finished commonplaces, they were
received with instant and universal applause. It is humiliating to
contrast the reception of these empty echoes of inspiration, these
agreeable