hree sons, one of whom had
the honour of being killed, and the other of dying, in the service of
Charles the first; the third was made a general officer in Spain, from
whom the sister inherited what sequestrations and forfeitures had left
in the family.

This, and this only, is told by Pope; who is more willing, as I have
heard observed, to show what his father was not, than what he was. It is
allowed that he grew rich by trade; but whether in a shop or on the
exchange was never discovered till Mr. Tyers told, on the authority of
Mrs. Racket, that he was a linendraper in the Strand. Both parents were
papists.

Pope was, from his birth, of a constitution tender and delicate; but is
said to have shown remarkable gentleness and sweetness of disposition.
The weakness of his body continued through his life[108]; but the
mildness of his mind, perhaps, ended with his childhood[109]. His voice,
when he was young, was so pleasing, that he was called, in fondness,
"the little nightingale."

Being not sent early to school, he was taught to read by an aunt; and
when he was seven or eight years old, became a lover of books. He first
learned to write by imitating printed books; a species of penmanship in
which he retained great excellence through his whole life, though his
ordinary hand was not elegant[110].

When he was about eight, he was placed in Hampshire, under
Taverner[111], a Romish priest, who, by a method very rarely practised,
taught him the Greek and Latin rudiments together. He was now first
regularly initiated in poetry by the perusal of Ogilby's Homer, and
Sandys's Ovid. Ogilby's assistance he never repaid with any praise; but
of Sandys he declared, in his notes to the Iliad, that English poetry
owed much of its present beauty to his translations. Sandys very rarely
attempted original composition.

From the care of Taverner, under whom his proficiency was considerable,
he was removed to a school at Twyford, near Winchester, and again to
another school about Hyde-park Corner; from which he used sometimes to
stroll to the playhouse: and was so delighted with theatrical
exhibitions, that he formed a kind of play from Ogilby's Iliad, with
some verses of his own intermixed, which he persuaded his schoolfellows
to act, with the addition of his master's gardener, who personated Ajax.

At the two last schools he used to represent himself as having lost part
of what Taverner had taught him; and on his master at Twyford h