ALEXANDER POPE

1688-1744

Alexander Pope was born in London in 1688. He was the son of a linen-draper who had made some fortune in that trade. In childhood he was noted for the sweetness and gentleness of his temper-qualities which certainly did not distinguish his later years-for the beauty of. his voice, and for his manual dexterity in writing. At eight years of age he began the study of Latin and Greek. He was next sent to a Roman Catholic seminary at Twyford, whence he was removed for a lampoon-one of his first efforts in poetry-on his master. In 1700, when twelve years old, he retired with his father, who, like other Romanists of the time, was attached to the fortunes of James II, to Binfield, in Berkshire. Here, at this early age, he determined to become a poet. To indulge this passion, he left no calling or profession, as so many have done. He was invariably and solely a poet from the beginning of his life to its end. His "Ode to Solitude written when he was twelve, the Pastorals at sixteen, and the 'Essay on Criticism at twenty. With the money received for the first books of his translation of the "Iliad" he purchased the villa at Twickenham, which has ever since been associated with his name. Here and in London he lived until the end of his days, at times the foe, but oftener the associate and companion and friend of the wits and men of letters of the day. He suffered through life from physical infirmity and constant ill-health. He died in 1744.

was

Pope was confessedly the most eminent poet of his age, and he still remains unequalled in his particular style of poetry. Less vigorous and various than Dryden, on whom he modelled himself, he was a greater artist. His life was uneventful, varied only by the successive publication of his poems, and by literary quarrels into which a vain and jealous temperament was constantly leading him. Like Dryden, he modernized stories from Chaucer, wrote satires, and translated a great ancient poet. But in his satires (the "Dunciad" excepted) he is more didactic than Dryden; and in his "Moral Epistles," and still more in his Essay on Man," he aims at the character of a philosophical writer. His translation of Homer, though utterly unlike the Greek in its general features, and far from an accurate representation of it in details, will probably keep his name alive as long as any of his original poems, brilliant and highly finished as these undoubtedly are. His prose writings consist chiefly of one or two prefaces, three or four occasional papers, and a large number of letters, which he elaborated with great care, and contrived to have published during his own lifetime. They are marked by great rhetorical adroitness and dexterity; but there is an absence of ease about them, even when the style is most familiar. Gray, however, himself a delightful letter-writer, said of the letters, that though not good letters, they were better things; while Cowper, on the other hand, thought him the most disagreeable maker of epistles he ever met with. The essays "On Dedications" and 'On Epic Poetry were both contributed to "The Guardian."

CHOICE EXAMPLES OF EARLY PRINTING AND

ENGRAVING.

Fac-similes from Rare and Curious Books.

EARLY VENETIAN PRINTING.

Page from the "Life of Petrus Mocenicus.”

This work, in three books, was printed by Bernardo Pictor and E-hardt Ratdolt at Ven.ce in 1477. The page before us contams the dedication of the work to the illustrious admiral, Petrus Mocenicus, under whom the author, Coriolano Cepione, served as cap din of a trireme. Note in this case the novelty and originalty of effect produced by the spangled border and its waving serpentine lines and ranifications. The beauty of the spacing is alike admirable.