Virgilium tantum vidi," he writes in a letter to Wycherley; and adds, "Had I been born early enough, I must have known and loved him." The early life of the poet is associated with Windsor Forest, and there was once dedicated to his memory a famous beech-tree, which has since perished in a storm. There, he tells us, he studied as constantly as he could for some years, and it speaks well for the boy's determination that at fifteen he should have gone alone to London to learn French and Italian. His half-sister, Mrs. Rackett, says, " I think my brother, when he was young, read more books than any man in the world." This is the exaggeration of a woman, proud of Pope's reputation; but that he did study at Binfield, as Milton studied at Horton, is, we think, evident, from the prescription of Dr. Radcliffe, that the young man was to study less, and to ride on horseback every day.*

It would be curious to collect some of the contradictory opinions with regard to Pope asserted frequently as if they bore the authority of facts. He has been called the most modest and the most laborious of our poets, and he has been called the most lazy. The 'Quarterly Review' gives him credit for an intense eagerness after knowledge; De Quincey dwells upon his luxurious indolence, and intimates that reading so desultory as his cannot be called study; Mrs. Oliphant considers-and she is safe in making the observation -that she cannot tell whether he would have made a greater poet if he had tossed his books aside, renounced his "unintermitting study," and lived more under the eye of nature. "His time," says

Before the youth was eighteen he associated with men of letters, and won more praise than at that period he merited. Anyone who reads the 'Pastorals' in our day, a feat which Mrs. Oliphant declares herself unable to accomplish, will marvel how it came to pass that these poems attracted the attention of men like Congreve and Lord Somers. Pope was appreciated from the first, and had not, like some poets, to struggle through a long period of neglect. Before he was twenty he had won the friendship of Wycherley; before he was twenty-four he was praised by Addison in the Spectator,' and gained the friendship, which was not destined to be permanent, of that great literary leader. A year later, he was introduced to Swift, and through Swift to the most conspicuous statesmen of the age. This popularity had its

Dr. Johnson, "was wholly spent in reading and writing;" and he observes that "he improved the benefits of nature by incessant and unwearied diligence." Again he adds in a genuine bit of Johnsonese: "He was one of the few whose labour is their pleasure; he was never elevated to negligence, nor wearied to impatience; he never passed a fault unamended by indifference nor quitted it by despair. He laboured his works first, to gain reputation, and afterwards to keep it." We may add that, considering what Pope accomplished in a life which was one "long disease," it is impossible to doubt that he possessed the power of work as well as the creative faculty. In truth, a man of real genius who is incapable of steady application is a comparatively rare phenomenon.

drawbacks, for even ministers of state were accustomed in those days to frequent taverns and to drink hard. Pope tried this life for awhile, but it proved too much for him, as one of his earliest and best friends foretold. "I beg of you earnestly," writes Sir William Trumbull, "to get out of all tavern company, and fly away tanquam ex incendio. What a misery is it for you to be destroyed by the foolish kindness (it is all one whether real or pretended) of those who are able to bear the poison of bad wine and to engage you in so unequal a combat !"

Pope's first friendship for

"The fair-haired Martha and Teresa brown "

dates about this period, or a little earlier, and this friendship, to which we shall refer elsewhere, influenced his whole life. The poet's letters, Mr. Carruthers informs us, are still preserved at Mapledurham, and the mansion in which the young ladies welcomed their poetical adorer "continues in the most perfect state, with its fine avenue of elms and spacious lawn, and forms one of our best specimens of Elizabethan architecture unspoiled by innovation." It is only ten miles from Binfield, and Pope, who, notwithstanding his weakness, was in early life

a good horseman, would reck little of the distance which separated him from his lady-loves. To both of them, until a quarrel, obscure to his biographers, parted him from Teresa, the poet wrote with a gallantry that was tolerated and indeed expected in that age, but which sounds ridiculous in ours. That Pope ever had a genuine love affair seems unlikely, but he gained, no doubt, several female admirers, women who liked to chat with him, perhaps to flirt with him, as the first poet of the day; women who could forgive his satires against the sex, in consideration of his preference for themselves.

To Sir William Trumbull, Pope was indebted for the suggestion that he should translate the Iliad.' It was a grand achievement, if not a successful translation, and we may say of it what Goldsmith said of his incomparable fiction: "There are a hundred faults in this thing, and a hundred things might be said to prove them beauties, but it is needless." About the time that he commenced it, Pope wrote: "I have the greatest proof in nature of the amusing power of poetry, for it takes me up so entirely that

It was otherwise when he grew older, if we are to accept literally the words addressed by Swift to Pope in 1730: "I can walk eight or ten miles a day and ride thirty Irish ones. You cannot ride a mile nor walk two."

I scarcely see what is passing under my nose, and hear nothing that is said about me." This passage may remind the reader of a similar remark by Cowper, when engaged upon the same work. "I am the busiest man," he wrote, "that ever lived sequestered as I do, and am never idle. My days accordingly roll away with a most tremendous rapidity."

The translation of the fame, and 5000l. to boot.

Iliad' brought the poet
The first four books

were published in 1715, the last volume appeared in 1720. Then followed the Odyssey,' which occupied Pope and his assistants about two years. The translation brought in between 30007. and 40007., out of which Pope had to pay Fenton and Broome.

The correspondence between Pope and his coadjutors, consisting of more than one hundred letters, may be read in Mr. Elwin's edition. The picture it presents is not agreeable. Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Broome, observes that Warburton thought Pope had lied in his postscript to the 'Odyssey' as to the services rendered by his assistants. From Bennet Langton, through Spence, Johnson afterwards ascertained the number of books undertaken by Fenton and Broome, and considered that they were shabbily paid for their labour. The