ce of his ambition he won his place, and held it, in spite of religious
prejudice, and in the face of physical and temperamental obstacles that
would have discouraged a stronger man. For Pope was deformed and sickly,
dwarfish in soul and body. He knew little of the world of nature or of the
world of the human heart. He was lacking, apparently, in noble feeling, and
instinctively chose a lie when the truth had manifestly more advantages.
Yet this jealous, peevish, waspish little man became the most famous poet
of his age and the acknowledged leader of English literature. We record the
fact with wonder and admiration; but we do not attempt to explain it.

LIFE. Pope was born in London in 1688, the year of the Revolution. His
parents were both Catholics, who presently removed from London and settled
in Binfield, near Windsor, where the poet's childhood was passed. Partly
because of an unfortunate prejudice against Catholics in the public
schools, partly because of his own weakness and deformity, Pope received
very little school education, but browsed for himself among English books
and picked up a smattering of the classics. Very early he began to write
poetry, and records the fact with his usual vanity:

As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.

Being debarred by his religion from many desirable employments, he resolved
to make literature his life work; and in this he resembled Dryden, who, he
tells us, was his only master, though much of his work seems to depend on
Boileau, the French poet and critic.[187] When only sixteen years old he
had written his "Pastorals"; a few years later appeared his "Essay on
Criticism," which made him famous. With the publication of the _Rape of the
Lock_, in 1712, Pope's name was known and honored all over England, and
this dwarf of twenty-four years, by the sheer force of his own ambition,
had jumped to the foremost place in English letters. It was soon after this
that Voltaire called him "the best poet of England and, at present, of all
the world,"--which is about as near the truth as Voltaire generally gets in
his numerous universal judgments. For the next twelve years Pope was busy
with poetry, especially with his translations of Homer; and his work was so
successful financially that he bought a villa at Twickenham, on the Thames,
and remained happily independent of wealthy patrons for a livelihood.

Led by his success, Pope returned t