eye was fixed unremittingly upon the sole purpose of his life. The whole
energies of his mind were absorbed in the struggle to place his name as
high as possible in that temple of fame, which he painted after Chaucer
in one of his early poems. External conditions pointed to letters as the
sole path to eminence, but it was precisely the path for which he had
admirable qualifications. The sickly son of the Popish tradesman was cut
off from the bar, the senate, and the church. Physically contemptible,
politically ostracized, and in a humble social position, he could yet
win this dazzling prize and force his way with his pen to the highest
pinnacle of contemporary fame. Without adventitious favour and in spite
of many bitter antipathies, he was to become the acknowledged head of
English literature, and the welcome companion of all the most eminent
men of his time. Though he could not foresee his career from the start,
he worked as vigorously as if the goal had already been in sight; and
each successive victory in the field of letters was realized the more
keenly from his sense of the disadvantages in face of which it had been
won. In tracing his rapid ascent, we shall certainly find reason to
doubt his proud assertion,--

That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways,

but it is impossible for any lover of literature to grudge admiration to
this singular triumph of pure intellect over external disadvantages, and
the still more depressing influences of incessant physical suffering.

Pope had indeed certain special advantages which he was not slow in
turning to account. In one respect even his religion helped him to
emerge into fame. There was naturally a certain free-masonry amongst the
Catholics allied by fellow-feeling under the general antipathy. The
relations between Pope and his co-religionists exercised a material
influence upon his later life. Within a few miles of Binfield lived the
Blounts of Mapledurham, a fine old Elizabethan mansion on the banks of
the Thames, near Reading, which had been held by a royalist Blount in
the civil war against a parliamentary assault. It was a more interesting
circumstance to Pope that Mr. Lister Blount, the then representative of
the family, had two fair daughters, Teresa and Martha, of about the
poet's age. Another of Pope's Catholic acquaintances was John Caryll, of
West Grinstead in Sussex, nephew of a Caryll who had been the
representative of James II. at the Court of Rome,