POP E.

A

LEXANDER POPE was

born in London, May 22, 1688, of parents whofe rank or ftation was never afcertained: 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, Efquire, of York, who had likewife three fons, one of whom had the honour of being killed, and the other of dying, in the fervice of Charles the First;

the third was made a general officer in Spain, from whom the fifter inherited what fequeftrations and forfeitures had left in the family.

This, and this only, is told by Pope; who is more willing, as I have heard obferved, to fhew 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 has never been difcovered. Both parents were papifts.

Pope was from his birth of a conftirution tender and delicate; but is faid to have shewn remarkable gentleness and sweetness of difpofition. The weaknefs of his body continued through his life, but the mildnefs of his mind perhaps ended with his childhood. His

voice, when he was young, was fo pleafing, that he was called in fondnefs the little Nightingale.

Being not fent early to fchool, he was taught to read by an aunt; and when he was feven or eight years old became a lover of books. He first learned to write by imitating printed books; a fpecies 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 Romifh priest, who, by a method very rarely practifed, taught him the Greek and Latin rudiments together. He was now first regularly initiated in poetry by

the perufal of Ogylby's Homer, and Sandys's Ovid: Ogylby's affiftance he never repaid with any praife; but of Sandys he declared, in his notes to the Iliad, that English poetry owed much of its prefent beauty to his tranflations. Sandys very rarely attempted original compofition.

From the care of Taverner, under whom his proficiency was confidérable, he was removed to a fchool at Twyford near Winchester, and again to another fchool about Hyde-park Corner; from which he used fometimes to stroll to the playhouse, and was fo delighted with theatrical exhibitions, that he formed a kind of play from Ogylby's Iliad, with fome verfes of his own intermixed, which

6