The New Student's Reference Work/Pope, Alexander

Pope, Alexander, English poet, was born at London, May 21, 1688, his father being a Roman Catholic and a man of means. Although Pope's early education was irregular and unsystematic, his father retiring from business soon after the son's birth, his application to study must have been close, for even in his juvenile poems are traces of profound thought. In 1711 Pope published his Essay on Criticism, which placed him at once in the front rank of the literary men of his day; and in 1712 appeared the Rape of the Lock, the most imaginative of his poems. Soon after appeared his translation of Homer's Iliad, which brought a fortune of $30,000. (See Homer). A translation of the Odyssey followed a few years later, and in 1728 he issued the third volume of The Dunciad. The Essay on Man, published in 1734, is a didactic poem, and, although almost wholly deficient in the imaginative quality, is a masterpiece of wit and versification. Pope's command of terse and smooth expression is at its highest here; and it has been well said that this poem contains more familiar quotations than any other poem of equal length in the English language. Pope died at Twickenham, near London, May 30, 1744, leaving behind him a literary fame that has suffered no eclipse in over a century and a half.