poet persevered. The Ode on Solitude, said to have been written at the age of twelve, does not merit the parent's criticism. Many other juvenile pieces-chiefly imitations or translations developed the style of which Pope found himself master at twenty-three. His greatest youthful effort was an epic poem of about 4000 lines on Alcander, Prince of Rhodes. This long work was perhaps fortunately left uncompleted and was later burned by Pope himself.

Pope's boyhood, then, little as it saw of the pastimes and comradeship that go to the development of most Englishmen, prepared him peculiarly for his life-work. As he sat, book in hand, in Windsor Forest, or spent long afternoons fumbling the pages of Virgil or Horace, and sometimes Spenser and Milton, in his father's library, his life centred itself on the one thing he knew. He had few friends; how he must have loved his books! And as he translated and imitated, himself occasionally striking off a deathless phrase, how he must have warmed to his poetry, rejoiced in the feeling that day by day crept over him," I, too, am a poet!"

This desire to write verse, moreover, was no idle fancy of youth, but a conviction borne out by the praise of great men. As early as 1706 William Walsh had advised him to make correctness his aim; "we have had great poets," said Walsh," but never one great poet that was correct." The Pastorals, though not published till 1709, were largely written when Pope was sixteen, and Wycherley, a writer of plays and relic of the Restoration, so admired them that he at once formed an intimate friendship with the young author. On their publication the Pastorals brought Pope great popularity. However artificial, they were "correct," and that

to an Augustan meant much. It is significant that Pope, at the age of twenty-one, took his place among great wits like Addison, Steele, and Swift.

At the same time that he stepped into literary prominence Pope began his quarrels. He always moved in a bright circle of friends; but he seemed unable long to avoid falling out with some one. Hardly any of his long poems arose without jealous dispute; and the Dunciad-one of his latest works and really the consummation of his genius-rounded out a life of quarrels by paying off in keen satire the accumulated scores of years.

Much of Pope's irritability and petty wrangling may be traced directly to his deformity; he was the victim of both physical and mental disease. At times suffering was intense; he could work for only a few hours together. Dr. Johnson thus describes him: "When he rose, he was invested in a bodice made of stiff canvas, being scarcely able to hold himself erect till it was laced, and he then put on a flannel waistcoat. One side was contracted. His legs were so slender that he enlarged their bulk with three pair of stockings, which were drawn on and off by a maid." Dr. Johnson goes on, evidently with considerable fellow-feeling, to recount how Pope was "too indulgent to his appetite." "If he sat down to a variety of dishes he would oppress his stomach to repletion."

Closely connected with his physical weakness was a mental disease, probably fostered by his solitary youth. Pope was morbidly suspicious, often of his friends. He had so diligently hoarded and fingered his poetic store that he became bitterly jealous of rivalry, fearful of honest emulation. Under the influence of this malady he

would stoop to almost any trick. By publishing concocted correspondence, by distorting facts, by spreading scandal, by slandering the innocent, he made in many ways a despicable figure among the great wits. He successively quarreled with Wycherley, Dennis, Addison, Tickell, Phillipps, Theobald, Cibber, and, finally, with Bolingbroke.

Yet-in remarkable contrast-Pope was a great man in a circle of great men. Thackeray thus enumerates his closest friends: "Garth, the accomplished and benevolent, whom Steele has described so charmingly, of whom Codrington said that his character was 'all beauty,' and whom Pope himself called the best of Christians without knowing it; Arbuthnot, one of the wisest, wittiest, most accomplished, gentlest of mankind; Bolingbroke, the Alcibiades of his age; the generous Oxford; the magnificent, the witty, the famous, and chivalrous Peterborough: these were the fast and faithful friends of Pope, the most brilliant company of friends, let us repeat, that the world has ever seen. The favorite recreation of his leisure hours was the society of painters, whose art he practiced. In his correspondence are letters between him and Jervas, whose pupil he loved to be― Richardson, a celebrated artist of his time... — and the wonderful Kneller, who bragged more, spelt worse, and painted better than any artist of his day." In this list should be added Dean Swift, who, as his letters show, was one of the poet's firmest friends and greatest admirers.

In spite of his deformity, Pope for a time longed to be a coffee-house swell. His first glimpse of the life was at an early age, when he was taken, in 1700, to see the great Mr. Dryden presiding over the wits at