Alexander Pope:
(1688-1744)
English poet Alexander Pope was born in London on 21 May 1688, His mother (Edith) was the daughter of William Turner and his father had a well accomplished business of wholesale linen, both were Catholics, and at that time to be a Catholic, especially from an ambitious man, was a serious disability. But this was only one pope’s difficulties. At the age of 12 as a result of a tubercular disease he grew up only four feet 6 inches in height. Studios when young, he was in large measure self educated.
Pope's
earliest poems, though not free from imitation, were of an astonishing
maturity. His grasp of the couplet form was approaching mastery, while his
observant eye and telling for description was already far beyond the
ordinary. One of his ambitious poems was ‘Essay on Criticism',
published anonymously in 1711, in which he showed the genius for satire that
was later to dominate his work. With this poem he made for himself a prominent
place in the literary world of his time.
Alexander Pope’s art of using word economically and yet with maximum effect has made him one of the most quoted (and misquoted ) of English poets.
These are some straight lines from his poems:
A little learning in a dang’rous thing:
drink deep, or taste not to Pierian.
To err is human, to forgive, divine.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.
Some of his admirable poems include Solitude, Lines from an Essay on Man, and the most famous “The Rape of the Lock”.
In 1742 when the last and final edition of 'The Dunciad' was released, he began to revise and assemble his poetry, translations for a collected edition. Before he could complete the work on May 30, 1744, he died of dropsy (edema) and acute asthma .
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