Alexander Pope was born in London, May 22, 1688, of parents whose rank or station was
never ascertained: we are informed that they were of "gentle blood;" that his father was of
a family of which the Earl of Downe was the head, and that his mother was the daughter
of William Turner, Esquire, of York, who had likewise three sons, one of whom had the
honour of being killed, and the other of dying, in the service of Charles the First; the third
was made a general officer in Spain, from whom the sister inherited what sequestrations
and forfeitures had left in the family. This, and this only, is told by Pope, who is more
willing, as I have heard observed, to show what his father was not, than what he was. It is
allowed that he grew rich by trade; but whether in a shop or on the Exchange was never
discovered till Mr. Tyers told, on the authority of Mrs. Racket, that he was a linendraper
in the Strand. Both parents were Papists.
Pope was from his birth of a constitution tender and delicate, but is said to have shown
remarkable gentleness and sweetness of disposition. The weakness of his body continued
through his life, but the mildness of his mind perhaps ended with his childhood. His voice
when he was young was so pleasing, that he was called in fondness "The Little
Nightingale."
Being not sent early to school, he was taught to read by an aunt; and, when he was seven
or eight years old, became a lover of books. He first learned to write by imitating printed
books, a species of penmanship in which he retained great excellence through his whole
life, though his ordinary hand was not elegant. When he was about eight he was placed in
Hampshire, under Taverner, a Romish priest, who, by a method very rarely practised,
taught him the Greek and Latin rudiments together. He was now first regularly initiated
in poetry by the perusal of "Ogilby's Homer" and "Sandys' Ovid." Ogilby's assistance he
never repaid with any praise; but of Sandys he declared, in his notes to the "Iliad," that
English poetry owed much of its beauty to his translations. Sandys very rarely attempted
original composition.
From the care of Taverner, under whom his proficiency was considerable, he was
removed to a school at Twyford, near Winchester, and again to another school about
Hyde Park Corner, from which he used sometimes to stroll to the play-hones, and was so
delighted with theatrical exhibitions, that he formed a kind of play from "Ogilby's Iliad,"
with some verses of his own intermixed, which he persuaded his schoolfellows to act,
with the addition of his master's gardener, who personated Ajax.
At the two last schools he used to represent himself as having lost part of what Taverner
had taught him, and on his master at Twyford he had already exercised his poetry in a
lampoon. Yet under those masters he translated more than a fourth part of the
"Metamorphoses." If he kept the same proportion in his other exercises, it cannot be
thought that his loss was great. He tells of himself, in his poems, that "he lisped in
numbers;" and used to say that he could not remember the time when he began to make
