In the retirement of Binfield, Pope laboured successfully to make amends for the loss of past time. At fourteen years of age he had written with some elegance, and at fifteen had attained some knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages, to which he soon added French and Italian. In 1704 he began his pastorals, published in 1709, which introduced him, through Wycherley, to the acquaintance of Walsh, who proved a sincere friend to him. That gentleman discovered at once that Pope’s talent lay less in striking out new thoughts of his own, than in easy versification, and in improving what he borrowed from the ancients. Among other useful hints, he pointed out that we had several great poets, but that none of them were correct; he therefore admonished him to make that merit his own. The advice was gratefully received; and Pope’s correspondence shows that it was carefully followed. His melodious numbers, so marked a feature of his style, were in a great measure the result of that suggestion. In the same year, 1704, he wrote the first part of his ‘Windsor Forest’: the whole was not published till 1713. The fault charged on this poem is, that few images are introduced which are not equally applicable to any other sylvan scenery. It was dedicated to Lord Lansdowne, whom he mentions as one of his earliest acquaintance. To those already named, may be added Bolingbroke, Congreve, Garth, Swift, Atterbury, Talbot, Somers, and Sheffield, whose friendship he had gained at sixteen or seventeen years of age. Pope, to his credit be it set down, cultivated friendships not only with the great, but with his brethren among the poets. Wycherley indeed was infected with the weakness of the archbishop in ‘Gil Blas,’ touching his own compositions, and the young poet was imprudently caustic in his criticism on the old one. Their correspondence was consequently dropped; and though renewed through the mediation of a common friend, it was with no revival of cordiality. But in 1728, some time after Wycherley’s death, his poems were republished; and in the following year Pope printed several letters which had passed between them, in vindication of Wycherley’s fame as a poet, in answer to certain misrepresentations prefixed to that edition. This quarrel was a trying affair in the outset of Pope’s career, and his conduct had been above his years; but young as he was, his talents were now beginning to ripen. His example confirms the truth of Lord Bacon’s remark, that personal deformity acts as a spur to that improvement of the mind, which is most likely to rescue him who is curtailed of his due proportion from a sense of degradation.