e few instances in literature
in which genius and unwearied labour have been so successfully united.
It is to Pope's credit, that, with everything against him in the race of
life, he attained the goal for which he started in his youth. The means
he employed to reach it were frequently perverse and discreditable, but
the courage with which he overcame the obstacles in his path commands
our admiration.

[Sidenote: Alexander Pope (1688-1744).]

Alexander Pope was born in London on May 21st, 1688. He was the only son
of his father, a merchant or tradesman, and a Roman Catholic at a time
when the members of that church were proscribed by law. The boy was a
cripple from his birth, and suffered from great bodily weakness both in
youth and manhood. Looking back upon his life in after years he called
it a 'long disease.' The elder Pope seems to have retired from business
soon after his son's birth, and at Binfield, nine miles from Windsor,
twenty-seven years of the poet's life were spent. As a 'papist' Pope was
excluded from the Universities and from every public career, but even
under happier circumstances his health would have condemned him to a
secluded life. He gained some instruction from the family priest, and
also went for a short time to school, but for the most part he was
self-educated, and studied so severely that at seventeen his life was
probably saved by the sound advice of Dr. Radcliffe to read less and to
ride on horseback every day. The rhyming faculty was very early
developed, and to use his own phrase he 'lisped in numbers.' As a boy he
felt the magic of Spenser, whose enchanting sweetness and boundless
wealth of imagination have been now for three hundred years a joy to
every lover of poetry. Something, too, he learned from Waller and from
Sandys, both of whom, but especially the former, had been of service in
giving smoothness to the iambic distich, in which all of Pope's best
poems are written. Dryden, however, whom when a little boy he saw at
Will's coffee-house--'_Virgilium tantum vidi_' records the memorable
day--was the poet whose influence he felt most powerfully. Like Gray
several years later, he declared that he learnt versification wholly
from his works. From 'knowing Walsh,' the best critic in the nation in
Dryden's opinion, the youthful Pope received much friendly counsel; and
he had another wise friend in Sir William Trumbull, formerly Secretary
of State, who recognized his genius, and gave him