To this circumstance Pope has referred in his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot:

"For right hereditary tax'd and fined,

He stuck to poverty with peace of mind.”

On Pope's coming to reside at Binfield, he was placed under the instruction of another priest; but this continued only for a few months, after which he determined to become his own instructor. To the proficiency which he made, we find occasional references in his conversations with Mr. Spence. "My next period," says he, "was in Windsor Forest, where I sat down with an earnest desire of reading, and applied as constantly as I could to it for some years. I was between twelve and thirteen when I first went thither, and continued in this close pursuit of pleasure and languages till nineteen or twenty. Considering how very little I had when I came from school, I think may be said to have taught myself Latin, as well as French, or Greek; and in all these my chief way of getting them was by translation."

I

It is to this early period of his life that Pope refers in the lines:

“As yet a child, and all unknown to fame,

I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came."

He frequently said that he could not remember the time when he began to make verses. On which Johnson observes, that "in the style of fiction, it might have been said of him as of Pindar, that when he lay in the cradle, the bees swarmed about his mouth." His propensity to poetry was fortunately encouraged by his father, who not only suggested subjects for his pen,

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This," says Pope, was all the teaching I ever had, and God knows that it extended a very little way." Spence's Anec. p. 193. Singer's ed.

but corrected his verses, till he observed of them, "these are good rhymes "."

One of the very few pieces that remain of these his early productions, is his Ode to Solitude, written doubtless as well with a reference to his own feelings as to his father's situation at Binfield. Though this Ode, written at twelve years of age, is said to be his earliest production, yet Dodsley, who was honoured with his intimacy, had seen several pieces of a still earlier date. He may therefore justly be enumerated amongst those, in whom the display of early powers has been the indication of superior genius, as observable in Michelagnolo, Torquato Tasso, Milton, and Cowley.

Not long afterwards he produced his satirical lines, addressed To the Author of a Poem intitled Successio, or Elkanah Settle, against whom he seems to have inherited all the enmity of his predecessor Dryden. This poem was published in a volume of Lintot's Miscellanies; but having been rejected by the author from his general collection of 1717, has not hitherto been inserted in any edition of his works. It bears the strongest internal evidence of being the production of Pope, and affords a striking proof of his early talents and sarcastic temperament. To which it may be added, that it is expressly recognized by Warburton as the work of Pope in a note on the Dunciad, (book i. line 181,) and on other occasions. It is therefore inserted in the present edition .

The immediate consequence of his release from school discipline was, that it enabled him to devote more of

5 Mr. Pope's father (who was an honest merchant, and dealt in Hollands wholesale) was no poet, but he used to set him to make English verses when very young. He was pretty difficult in being pleased, and often used to send him back to new turn them. "These are not good rhymes;" for that was my husband's word for verses. Mr. Pope's Mother: Spence's Anec. p. 8. Singer's ed.

6 If any external evidence of its authenticity were wanting, it has been amply supplied by Mr. D'Israeli, in his Quarrels of Authors, vol. ii. p. 55.

his time to reading; for which, as he informs us, he had a very great eagerness and enthusiasm, especially for poetry; and in a few years he had dipped into a great number of English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek authors. This he did without any design but that of pleasing himself, and got the languages by hunting after the stories in the several poets he read, rather than read the books to get the languages. followed," says he, "every where, as my fancy led me, and was like a boy gathering flowers in the woods and fields just as they fell in my way, and these five or six years I still look upon as the happiest part of my life."

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The writings of Dryden soon, however, attracted his notice, and became the more particular object of his admiration. He attentively examined his style and turn of thought, observed the construction of his periods, and endeavoured to discover the art and mystery of his versification, so superior in richness, variety, and harmony, to all that had preceded it. What the result was, appears in his own writings, where the spirit of his master is combined with his own more correct, condensed, and chastened style 8.

From admiring the works of Dryden, he became

7 Spence's Anec. p. 19. Malone's ed.

8 "I learned versification wholly from Dryden's works; who had improved it much beyond any of our former poets, and would probably have brought it to perfection, had not he been unhappily obliged to write so often in haste." Pope. Spence's Anec. p. 281. Singer's ed.

How finely has Pope characterized his great prototype in his imitation of the first Epistle of the second book of Horace!

"Waller was smooth, but Dryden taught to join

The varying verse, the full resounding line,

The long majestic march and energy divine."

Imitated in a still higher strain of poetry, but perhaps not with greater dignity and effect, by Gray:

"But see where Dryden's less presumptuous car

Wide o'er the fields of glory bear

Two coursers of ethereal race,

With necks in thunder cloth'd and long resounding pace."

desirous of seeing their author, for which purpose he prevailed upon a friend to accompany him to town, and introduce him to Will's coffee-house, which Dryden then frequented. This circumstance must have occurred when Pope was about twelve years of age, He has himself referred to

as Dryden died in 1700. it in his first letter to Mr. Wycherley: "It was certainly a great satisfaction to me to hear you, at our very first meeting, doing justice to your dead friend, Mr. Dryden. I was not so happy as to know him. Virgilium tantum vidi. Had I been born early enough, I must have known and loved him, for I have been assured, not only by yourself, but by Mr. Congreve and Sir William Trumbull, that his personal qualities were as amiable as his poetical; notwithstanding the many libellous misrepresentations of them, against which the former of these gentlemen has told me he will one day vindicate him. I suppose those injuries were begun by the violence of party, but it is no doubt they were continued by envy at his success and fame; and those scribblers who attacked him in his latter times, were only like gnats in a summer evening, which are never very troublesome but in the finest and most glorious season; for his fire, like the sun's, shined clearest towards its setting." How remarkable is it, that the youthful poet, in pouring out this enthusiastic tribute to the memory of his illustrious predecessor, should so nearly have described his own character, and his own fate!

His partiality for dramatic subjects seems still to have continued, as his next productions were a comedy and a tragedy; the latter of which was founded on the

9 Ruffhead, p. 23.-The friend here alluded to was probably Sir Charles Wogan. See a letter from him in Sir Walter Scott's edition of Swift, vol. xviii. p. 21, where he says: "I had the honour of bringing Mr. Pope from our retreat in the Forest of Windsor, to dress à la mode, and introduce at Will's coffee-house."

story of St. Geneviève. Of the subject of the former, no account has been preserved'.

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These dramatic pieces were followed by an epic poem, called Alcander, consisting of four books of about one thousand lines each. "Alcander was a prince of Rhodes, driven from his crown by Deucalion, father of Minos. In this poem Alcander displayed all the virtues of suffering, like Ulysses, and all the courage of Æneas. Apollo, as the patron of Rhodes, was his great protector, and Cybele was his great enemy, as being patroness of Deucalion and Crete. She raises a storm against him, as Juno does against Æneas; he is cast away and swims to shore, as Ulysses did to the island of Phæacia"." Hence it appears that the young poet was desirous of displaying his learning in collecting the beauties of such preceding epic writers as he was acquainted with, and adding to them from the stores of his own imagination. This attempt he afterwards considered in its true light, and thus expressed himself respecting it: "I confess 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 of Europe, and I thought myself the greatest genius that ever was. I cannot but regret these delightful visions of my childhood, which, like the fine colours we see when our eyes are shut, are vanished for ever."

It is not however improbable that this poem contained some passages deserving of commendation; as the author, whose judgment respecting his own works seldom failed him, communicated it, many years afterwards, to

1 Ruffhead, Life of Pope, pp. 23, 24.

2 Ruffhead, p. 25.

3 I wrote things, I am ashamed to say how soon-part of an epic poem when about twelve. The scene of it lay at Rhodes, and some of the neighbouring islands, and the poem opened under water, with a description of the court of Neptune.-Spence's Anec. p. 24. Singer's ed.

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Spence's Anec. Singer's ed.