TO THE FIFTH VOLUME OF

Bell's

COURT AND FASHIONABLE

MAGAZINE.

LIFE OF ALEXANDER POPE.

with him: "Though (adds he) I would have
interceded for the first page, and put it, with
your leave, among my curiosities." What the
poet himself observes upon these early picces
is agreeable enough; and shows, that though
at first a little intoxicated with the waters of
Helicon, he afterwards arrived to great so-
briety of thinking, "I confess (says he) there
was a time when I was in love with myself;
and my first productions were the children of
self-love upon innocence. I had made an epic
poem, and panegyrics on all the princes; and
I thought myself the greatest genius that ever
was. I cannot but regret these delightful vi-
sions of my childhood, which, like the fine
colours we see when our eyes are shut, are
vanished for ever." His Pastorals, begun in
1704, first introduced him to the wits of the
time; among whom were Wycherly and Walsh.
This last gentleman proved a sincere friend to
him; and soon discerning that his talent lay,
not so much in striking out new thoughts of
his own, as in improving those of other men,
and in an easy versification, told him, among
other things, that there was one way left open
for him to excel his predecessors in, which
was correctness: observing, that though we
had several great poets, yet none of them were
correct. Pope took the hint, and turned it to
good account; for no doubt the distinguishing

ALEXANDER POPE was descended from good families, and boru the sth of June, 1688, at London, where his father was then a considerable merchant. He was taught to read very early by an aunt; and learned to write without any assistance, by copying printed books. The family being of the Romish religion, he was put, at eight years of age, under one Taverner,|| a priest, who taught him the rudiments of the Latin and Greek tongues together; and soon after was sent to a Popish seminary at Winchester, whence he was removed to a school at Hyde-Park Corner. He discovered early an inclination to versifying; and the translations of Ogilby and Sandys from Virgil and Ovid first falling in his way, they were his favourite anthors. At twelve he retired with his parents to Binfield, in Windsor Forest, and there became acquainted with the writings of Spenser, Waller, and Dryden. Dryden struck him most, probably because the cast of that poet was most congenial with his own; and therefore he not only studied his works intensely, but ever after mentioned him with a kind of rapturous veneration. He once obtained a sight of him at a coffee-house, but never was known to him: a misfortune which be laments in these short but expressive words, Virgilium tantum vidi. Though Pope had been under more tutors than one, yet it seems they were so insufficient for the purpose of teach-harmony of his numbers was in a great meaing, that he had learned very little from them: so that, being obliged afterwards to begin all over again, he may justly be considered as self-taught. At fifteen he had acquired a readiness in the two learned languages, to which he soon after added the French and Italian. He had already scribbled a great deal of poetry in various ways; and this year set about an epic poem called Alcander. He long after communicated it to Atterbury, with a declared intention to burn it, and that friend concurred

sure owing to it. The same year, 1704, he wrote the first part of his Windsor Forest, though the whole was not published till 1710. In 1708, he wrote the Essay on Criticism; which production was justly esteemed a masterpiece in its kind, and showed not only the peculiar turn of his talents, but that those talents, young as he was, were ripened into perfection. He was not yet twenty years old; and yet the maturity of judgment, the know. ledge of the world, and the penetration inte