ALEXANDER POPE

Of a youth so successfully employed, and so conspicuously improved, a minute account must be naturally desired; but curiosity must be contented with confused, imperfect, and sometimes improbable intelligence.  Pope, finding little advantage from external help, resolved thenceforward to direct himself, and at twelve formed a plan of study, which he completed with little other incitement than the desire of excellence.  His primary and principal purpose was to be a poet, with which his father accidentally concurred by proposing subjects and obliging him to correct his performances by many revisals, after which the old gentleman, when he was satisfied, would say, “These are good rhymes.”  In his perusal of the English poets he soon distinguished the versification of Dryden, which he considered as the model to be studied, and was impressed with such veneration for his instructor, that he persuaded some friends to take him to the coffee-house which Dryden frequented, and pleased himself with having seen him.

Dryden died May 1, 1701, some days before Pope was twelve; so early must he therefore have felt the power of harmony, and the zeal of genius.  Who does not wish that Dryden could have known the value of the homage that was paid him, and foreseen the greatness of his young admirer?

The earliest of Pope’s productions is his “Ode on Solitude,” written before he was twelve, in which there is nothing more than other forward boys have attained, and which is not equal to Cowley’s performance at the same age.  His time was now wholly spent in reading and writing.  As he read the classics he amused himself with translating them, and at fourteen made a version of the first book of the “Thebais,” which, with some revision, he afterwards published.  He must have been at this time, if he had no help, a considerable proficient in the Latin tongue.


Excerpt From: Samuel Johnson. Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope. [1779] Apple Books.