Alexander Pope was born in London, June S, 1688. His father was a merchant, of good family, attached to the Roman Catholic religion; and his own childish years were spent, first under the tuition of a priest, then at a Roman Catholic Seminary at Twyford, near Winchester. He taught himself to write by copying printed books, in the execution of which he attained great neatness and exactness. When little more than eight years old he accidentally met with Ogilby’s Translation of Homer. The versification is insipid and lifeless; but the stirring events and captivating character of the story so possessed his mind, that Ogilby became a favourite book. When about ten years old he was removed from Twyford to a school at Hyde Park Corner. He had there occasional opportunities of frequenting the theatre; which suggested to him the amusement of turning the chief events in Homer into a kind of play, composed of a succession of speeches from Ogilby, strung together by verses of his own. In these two schools he seems, instead of advancing, to have lost what he had gained under his first tutor. When twelve years old he went to live with his parents at Binfield, in Windsor Forest. He there became acquainted with the writings of Spenser, Waller, and Dryden. For the latter he conceived the greatest admiration. He saw him once, and commemorates the event in his correspondence, under the words “Virgilium tantum vidi:” but he was too young to have made acquaintance with that master of English verse, who died in 1701. He studied Dryden’s works with equal attention and pleasure, adopted them as a model of rhythm, and copied the structure of that author’s periods. This was, however, so far from a grovelling imitation, that it enabled him to raise English rhyme to the most perfect melody of which it is capable. [Illustration: _Engraved by J. Posselwhite._ POPE. _From the Picture by Hudson in the possession of His Grace the Duke of Buckingham._ Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. _London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._ ]