Reprinted May and November 1898, GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. I. AUTHOR'S LIFE. ALEXANDER POPE was born in London on May 21, 1688, the year of the Revolution that finally dismissed the Stuarts from the English throne. His father was a linen merchant, whose place of business was in Lombard Street in the city, a street more famous for its association with banks than with poetry. In the poem in which Pope gives us most autobiographical details, the Epistle to Arbuthnot (also called the Prologue to the Satires), he tells us that "Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause, There is no reason to deny this statement because his father was in trade, in spite of the illiberal way in which trade was then viewed. Whilst the son was yet young, the father, having made at least a competency for himself, retired from business, and bought a country house. at Binfield, not far from Windsor Forest. Both parents vii |