translunary madness" of the creative poet), are crude and defective in style. Pope as a versifier was never a boy. He was born to refine our numbers and to add the charm of finished elegance to our poetical literature, and he was ready for his mission at an age when most embryo poets are labouring at syntax, or struggling for expression. Nor was it only his taste and fine ear for metrical harmony that were thus early developed. His power of condensing thought and embodying observation in language terse and appropriate, his critical judgment, the satirical bias of his mind, and a tendency, it must be confessed, to dwell on indelicate and disagreeable images, all are visible in these juvenile poems. Waller, Spenser, and Dryden were Pope's favourite poets, and when a boy, he said, he could distinguish the difference between softness and sweetness in their versification. On the same points, Dryden is found to be softer, Waller sweeter; and the same distinction prevails between Ovid and Virgil. The Eclogues of Virgil he thought the sweetest poems in the world. Some further notices of Pope's boyish studies and predilections are given in Spence: "The epic poem, which I begun a little after I was twelve, was Alcander, Prince of Rhodes. There was an under-water scene in the first book; it was in the Archipelago. I wrote four books toward it of about a thousand verses each; and had the copy by me till I burnt it by the advice of the Bishop of Rochester, a little before he went abroad. I endeavoured (said he, smiling) in this poem to collect all the beauties of the great epic writers into one piece: there was Milton's style in one part, and Cowley's in another; here the style of Spenser imitated, and there of Statius; here Homer and Virgil, and there Ovid and Claudian." It was an imitative poem, then, as your other exercises were imitations of this or that story? "Just that." Mr. Pope wrote verses imitative of sounds so early as in this epic poem. 'Shields, helms, and swords all jangle as they hang, And sound formidinous with angry clang.' "There were also some couplets in it which I have since inserted in some of my other poems without any alteration. As in the Essay on Criticism: "Whose honours with increase of ages grow, As streams roll down enlarging as they flow.' "Another couplet in the Dunciad: "As man's meanders to the vital spring Roll all their tides, then back their circles bring.' "In the scattered lessons I used to set myself about that time I translated above a quarter of the Metamorphoses, and that part of Statius which was afterwards printed with the corrections of Walsh. My next work after my epic was my Pastorals, so that I did exactly what Virgil says of himself: "Cum canerem reges et prælia, Cynthius aurem Vellit, et admonuit; pastorem, Tityre, pingues Pascere oportet oves; deductum dicere carmen.'-Eclog. vi. 3. ["I first transferred to Rome Sicilian strains; Nor blush'd the Doric Muse to dwell on Mantuan plains. And fighting kings and bloody battles sung, Apollo check'd my pride, and bade me feed My fattening flocks, nor dare beyond the reed.'-Dryden.] "I translated Tully's piece De Senectute in this early period, and there is a copy of it in Lord Oxford's library. My first taking to imitating was not out of vanity but humility. I saw how defective my own things were, and endeavoured to mend my manner by copying good strokes from others. My epic was about two years in hand, from thirteen to fifteen." These citations exhibit the early tastes and indefatigable application of Pope. There are errors, however, in Spence's statement, which forbid implicit reliance on all his revelations,20 and it should be borne in mind that none of Pope's 20 Atterbury, for example, did not advise the burning of the epic poem. In a letter to Pope, Feb. 18, 1717, he says, "I am not sorry your Alcander is burnt; had I known your intentions I would have interceded for the first page, and put it, with your leave, among my curiosities." This was six years before Atterbury went abroad. There is no evidence of Walsh having corrected the Statius; Cromwell was the party, though Walsh corrected the Pastorals. Spence also makes Pope say, that he submitted the Essay on Criticism to Walsh in the year 1706, whereas it was not written till 1709, a year after Walsh's death. GREAT READING PERIOD. 27 juvenile poems were published before he was in his twentieth year, and it is probable that all underwent careful correction. Even after their publication many (including the Ode on Solitude) were retouched. He was too critical, and too jealous of his reputation, to suffer any gross verbal inaccuracies or puerilities to remain even in his specimens of youthful composition. He never tired of correcting, and the lima labor was seldom misplaced. The system of self-tuition by which Pope endeavoured to acquire the Latin and Greek was unsuited to modern languages, in which pronunciation forms so essential a part. He therefore, in his fifteenth year, went to London to learn French and Italian. In the family at Binfield this was looked upon as "a wildish sort of resolution," for as his health would not permit him to travel, they could not see any reason for it. Mrs. Rackett said her brother "had a maddish way with him," and "Rag Smith" (Edmund Smith, the dramatic poet), after being in Pope's company when he was about fourteen, pronounced the oracular opinion that the young fellow would "either be a madman or make a very great poet."21 Pope never wanted the golden curb of prudence in forming literary plans and decisions on men or books; but his eager thirst for knowledge, his incessant studies, impatience, and irritability must often have made him appear wayward and capricious in the family circle, though his talents and affectionate disposition rendered him an object of all but idolatry. He did not make much progress with his French and Italian in London. Voltaire said Pope knew nothing of French, but it is evident he could read it.22 With Italian literature he never evinced any acquaintance; and after a few months' stay in the metropolis, the impatient poet aban 21 Spence, Singer's edit. p. 25. Most of the details of Pope's early life are drawn from this popular work. 22 Illustrations of this occur in the early letters to Cromwell. He read Voiture. He had also sent his friend some "love verses" for correction, and on receiving Cromwell's strictures he replies, "Your judgment of 'em, which you give in French, is (I think) very right." The words in italics are in the original, not in the printed copies. Yet we find Pope using the following forms of superscription: "A Mademoiselles Therese and Marth. Blount." 'Au Mademoiselles, Mademoiselles de Mapledurham." doned the aid of masters, and was again alone at his studies in the Forest. He had then what he termed his great reading period of several years. "I followed everywhere as my fancy led me, and was like a boy gathering flowers in the fields and woods, just as they fall in his way." The five or six years spent in this way he looked back upon as the happiest part of his life, though he also told Spence that he was seven years (from the age of twenty to twenty-seven) unlearning what he had then acquired. We question whether he could have followed a better plan; but his constant application at length told on his health and spirits. Medical assistance proved fruitless-for his imagination was no doubt half the disease-and in despondency he lay down prepared to die. He sent farewells to his friends, and amongst these was a priest, Thomas Southcote, who, on receiving Pope's valedictory communication, went immediately to consult Dr. Radcliffe, the eccentric but able physician. Radcliffe's prescription was a very simple one-the young man was to study less and ride on horseback every day. With this recipe the Father posted to Binfield, and Pope, having the good sense to follow the prescribed course, speedily got well. Southcote's timely aid was not forgotten. Twenty years afterwards the poet, hearing of a vacant abbacy at Avignon, wrote immediately to Sir Robert Walpole, requesting his influence with Cardinal Fleury to obtain the appointment for his friend. Walpole applied to his brother Horace, then British Ambassador to the French Court, and Southcote was made Abbot. The incident is a pleasing one, and honourable to all parties. Pope in his sixteenth year was engaged on his Pastorals. Dreams of the golden age and of rural innocence, which have long since faded even from our poetry, were congenial to the young classic student in Windsor Forest. The ideas and images he found in Theocritus, Virgil, and Spenser, "whose works," he says, "as I had leisure to study, so I hope I have not wanted care to imitate." The versification was his chief object, and he elaborated it with such attention to the sweetness he prized in Virgil and Waller, and with such exactness and nicety in the construction of his lines, that even in advanced life, when poetry had long been his study, he con sidered the Pastorals the most correct and musical of all his works. The manuscript was submitted to the perusal of his neighbour, Sir William Trumbull, who may be considered as Pope's earliest patron, though in his case patronage never degenerated into dependence or servility. The paternal cell and limited fortune at Binfield secured independence. Sir William Trumbull was a benevolent and accomplished man. After long public and diplomatic service, first as Ambassador at the Ottoman Porte, and subsequently as Secretary of State to King William III., he retired in the year 1697 to his native village of Easthampstead, and formed an acquaintance with the Popes at Binfield. He read the manuscript of the Pastorals in the year 1704; and notwithstanding the disparity in age and circumstances, the acquaintance between the travelled knight and the retired young poet soon ripened into a cordial intimacy. They rode out together almost daily, read their favourite classic authors together, and when absent kept up a correspondence. Sir William was the first to suggest to Pope that he should undertake a translation of the Iliad. Some years later, when the young poet had been drawn into the vortex of gay and not very select society, the old statesman, with paternal anxiety, wrote to him, earnestly beseeching that he would get out of all tavern company, and fly away tanquam ex incendio. "What a misery is it for you to be destroyed by the foolish kindness (it is all one whether real or pretended) of those who are able to bear the poison of bad wine, and to engage you in so unequal a combat!" The first of Pope's "poet friends" was Wycherley, the "earliest of the chiefs of our prose drama," as his latest and best editor, Mr. Leigh Hunt, terms him, and whom the weight of sixty-four years, and a life as careless and as strangely diversified as that of any of the fine gentlemen in his comedies, had neither sobered nor depressed. He had what Pope called "the nobleman look;" he was still a wit and beau, but in ruins. As the author of the Plain Dealer, the friend of Dryden, and the once-fashionable and irresistible courtier, Wycherley had powerful attractions for young Pope. In town, he says, he " ran after him like a dog," and in his letters, he overflowed with elaborate expressions of humility and gratitude. His first glimpses of town |