=1. His Life.= Pope was born in London, the only child of a considerable city tradesman. From his birth two conditions were to influence very deeply the career of the future poet: first, he was puny and delicate, and, secondly, he was baptized into the Roman Catholic faith. His bodily infirmity, which amounted almost to deformity, caused him to be privately educated; and to the end of his life his knowledge had that extensive range, joined to the liability to make the grossest blunders, which is so often the mark of an eager and precocious intelligence imperfectly trained. Pope’s religious faith, though he was never excessively devout as a Roman Catholic, closed to him all the careers, professional and political, in which a man of his keen intelligence might have been expected to succeed. He was thus forced into the pursuit of letters as his only road to fame. From his earliest youth we find him passionately desirous of making his name as an author. His youth was passed at Binfield, his father’s small estate near Windsor Forest. Before he was twenty years old he got into touch with Wycherley, now old and besotted. Through him Pope became acquainted with Addison, Swift, and Steele, whose friendship he eagerly cultivated. His early verses, admirably attuned to the ear of the age, brought him recognition and applause; his translation of Homer brought him wealth; and from that point he never looked back. He became the dominating poetical personality of the day. In 1718 he removed to his house at Twickenham, whose pinchbeck beauties became the wonder, envy, and derision of literary and social London. It remained his home till “that long disease, his life,” was finished in 1744. =2. His Character.= In this book it is fortunately seldom that we are called upon to analyze the character of an English writer in any detail, but in the case of Pope it is necessary. With no man more than Pope are such personal considerations relevant and cogent; for in no writings more than in Pope’s do we find the author’s vices and his weaknesses--as well as his virtues--so fully portrayed.