twelve left school altogether, and settling down at his father's house
in the country began to read to his heart's delight. He roamed through
the classic poets, translating passages that pleased him, went up for a
time to London to get lessons in French and Italian, and above all read
with eagerness and attention the works of older English poets,--Spenser,
Waller, and Dryden. He had already, it would seem, determined to become
a poet, and his father, delighted with the clever boy's talent, used to
set him topics, force him to correct his verses over and over, and
finally, when satisfied, dismiss him with the praise, "These are good
rhymes." He wrote a comedy, a tragedy, an epic poem, all of which he
afterward destroyed and, as he laughingly confessed in later years, he
thought himself "the greatest genius that ever was."

Pope was not alone, however, in holding a high opinion of his talents.
While still a boy in his teens he was taken up and patronized by a
number of gentlemen, Trumbull, Walsh, and Cromwell, all dabblers in
poetry and criticism. He was introduced to the dramatist Wycherly,
nearly fifty years his senior, and helped to polish some of the old
man's verses. His own works were passed about in manuscript from hand to
hand till one of them came to the eyes of Dryden's old publisher,
Tonson. Tonson wrote Pope a respectful letter asking for the honor of
being allowed to publish them. One may fancy the delight with which the
sixteen-year-old boy received this offer. It is a proof of Pope's
patience as well as his precocity that he delayed three years before
accepting it. It was not till 1709 that his first published verses, the
'Pastorals', a fragment translated from Homer, and a modernized version
of one of the 'Canterbury Tales', appeared in Tonson's 'Miscellany'.

With the publication of the 'Pastorals', Pope embarked upon his life as
a man of letters. They seem to have brought him a certain recognition,