the third was made a general officer in Spain, from whom the fifter inherited what fequeftrations and forfeitures had left in the family.

This, and this only, is told by Pope; who is more willing, as I have heard obferved, to fhew what his father was not, than what he was. It is allowed that he grew rich by trade; but whether in a fhop or on the Exchange has never been difcovered. Both parents were papists.

Pope was from his birth of a conftitution tender and delicate; but is faid to have fhewn remarkable gentleness and sweetness of difpofition. The weaknefs of his body continued through his life, but the mildness of his mind perhaps ended with his childhood. His

voice, when he was young, was fo pleafing, that he was called in fondness the little Nightingale.

Being not fent early to fchool, he was taught to read by an aunt; and when he was feven or eight years old became a lover of books. He first learned to write by imitating printed books; a fpecies of penmanship in which he retained great excellence through his whole life, though his ordinary hand was not elegant.

When he was about eight, he was placed in Hampshire under Tayerner, a Romish priest, who, by a method very rarely practifed, taught him the Greek and Latin rudiments together. He was now first regularly initiated in poetry by

the perufal of Ogylby's Homer, and Sandys's Ovid: Ogylby's affiftance he never repaid with any praife; but of Sandys he declared, in his notes to the Iliad, that English poetry owed much of its prefent beauty to his tranflations. Sandys very rarely attempted original compofition.

From the care of Taverner, under whom his proficiency was confiderable, he was removed to a fchool at Twyford near Winchester, and again to another fchool about Hyde-park Corner; from which he ufed fometimes to ftroll to the play houfe, and was fo delighted with theatrical exhibitions, that he formed a kind of play from Ogylby's Iliad, with fome verfcs of his own intermixed, which

6

which he perfuaded his fchool-fellows

to act, with the addition of his master's gardener, who perfonated Ajax.

At the two laft. fchools he used to reprefent himself as having loft part of what Taverner had taught him, and on' his mafter at Twyford he had already exercifed his poetry in a lampoon. Yet under thofe mafters he tranflated more than a fourth part of the Metamorphofes. If he kept the fame proportion in his other exercifes, it cannot be thought that his lofs was great.

He tells of himself, in his poems, that be lip'd in numbers; and used to fay that he could not remember the time when he began to make verfes. In the ftyle of fiction it might have been faid

of him as of Pindar, that when he lay

in his cradle the bees fwarmed about his mouth.

About the time of the Revolution his father, who was undoubtedly disfappointed by the fudden blaft of popish profperity, quitted his trade, whatever it was, and retired to Binfield in Windfor Foreft, with about twenty thousand pounds; for which, being confcientioufly determined not to intruft it to the government, he found no better use than that of locking it up in a cheft, and taking from it what his expences required; and his life was long enough to confume a great part of it, before his fon came to the inheritance.

To