The young Alexander Pope and the poetic art

Abstract

POPE claimed in his ‘Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot’ (1735) that he could not help becoming a poet:

Why did I write? What sin to me unknown Dipp’d me in ink, my parents’, or my own? As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, I lisp’d in numbers, for the numbers came.

Born on 21 May 1688, Pope dedicated himself to poetry at an early age. His family belonged to England’s Roman Catholic minority, and many of his friendships were among old Catholic families. His father was a merchant who made enough to retire in 1688. Pope grew up at Binfield and around the age of twelve contracted that tuberculosis of the spine that left him dwarfed (4′ 6″), twisted and hunchbacked. Joseph Spence (1699–1768), a minor writer, critic and compiler of a series of ‘Anecdotes’ about Pope and some of his friends, reports that he taught himself Latin and Greek at the age of twelve and went up to London to study French and. Italian. While there is some doubt about the details of this precocity, there is no question of his early ability. His first poems date from as early as 1700.