The Rape of the Lock: An Essay on Man and Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (Classic Reprint)

A lexakdeb Pope was born in London in 1688 He was the only son of parents who both came of respectable English stock. His father, a successful linen merchant, retired early from business, buying an estate at Binfield, on the edge of Windsor Forest. Here the family lived till 1716, when they removed to Chiswick, where a year later the father died. Soon afterwards Pope, then a man of note, leased the small estate at Twickenham, on which he lived till his death in 1744. The Popes were Roman Catholics, and the boy was consequently debarred from public school and university ;so that beyond the inferior instruction afforded by the small Catholic schools which he attended till his twelfth year, Pope had no formal education. At that age he had learned the rudiments of Greek, and could read Latin fluently, if not correctly. In tlie mean time, partly perhaps because he was thrown so much upon his own resources, his powers were already ripening. At twelve he wrote couplets wliich he afterwards inserted without change in the Essay on Critir eism, and even in The Dunciad, The Pastorals, composed at sixteen, tliough conventional in conception and often mechanical in execution, contain passages in tlie poets most mature and polished manner. With tlie Essay on Criticism, published five yeais later, Pope reached his matunty. Whatever development is to be found in his later work is the result of an increase in satirical power. His style was already formed.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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