Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub
[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]

THE

Voetical Works

Alexander
Pope,

[graphic]

Vital spark of heavinly lame! Qui, O quit this mortal frame!

The Dying Christian to his out. p.

LONDON.

Publish'd by W. Suttaby, & B. Crosby & Co Stationer's Court;

and C.Corrall, Charing Crots.

1807.

Corrall, Printer.

[graphic][ocr errors][ocr errors]
[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]

The education of our great author was attended with circumstances very singular, and some of them extremely unfavourable; but the amazing force of his genius fully compensated the want of any advantage in his earliest instruction. He owed the knowledge of his letters to an aunt; and having learned very early to read, took great delight in it, and taught himself to write by copying after printed books, the characters of which he would imitate to great perfection. He began to compose verses farther back than he could well remember; and at eight years of age, when he was put under one Taverner a priest, who taught him the rudiments of the Latin and Greek tongues at the same time, he met with Ogilby's Homer, which gave him great delight; and this was increased by Sandy's Ovid. The raptures which these authors, even in the disguise of such translations, then yielded him were so strong, that he spoke of them with pleasure ever after. From Mr. Taverner's tuition he was sent to a private school at Twiford, near Winchester, where he continued about a year, and was then removed to another near Hyde-Park Corner; but was so unfortunate as to lose under his two last masters what he had acquired under the first.

While he remained at this school, being permitted to go to the playhouse with some of his schoolfellows of a more advanced age, he was so charmed with dramatic representations, that he formed the translation of the Iliad into a play, from several of the speeches in Ogilby's translation connected with verses of his own; and the several parts were performed by the upper boys of the school, except that of Ajax by the master's gardener. At the age of twelve our young poet went to his father, to reside at his house at Binfield, in Windsor Forest, where he was, for a few months, under the tuition of another priest, with as little success as before; so that he resolved now to become his own mas

by reading those classic writers which gave

[graphic]
« ПредишнаНапред »