were carved. The trunk was broken by a tempest some years ago, and a neighbouring farmer completed the destruction by grubbing up the roots.

The annexed engraving will enable the reader to bring before his mind the wide extent of undulating landscape from which Pope drew the descriptive parts of his Windsor Forest.

We must now take a rapid survey of a life which is one of the most remarkable in the annals of literature.

The Works of Pope occupy the transition period between the Poets of the Caroline era, and those of the latter part of the eighteenth century. He was born in the year after Waller died, and, at the time of Pope's death, several famous poets of the modern era had attracted, or were about to gain, the notice of men. Johnson was then thirty-five years old, and had just come up to London with his " Irene." Gray was twenty-eight, and had already written some of his enduring works. Akenside published his "Pleasures of the Imagination" in the year of Pope's death. Goldsmith was then in his sixteenth year, and about to enter Trinity College, Dublin. Eight years after the death of Pope, Chatterton began his strange life: Burns was born seven years later than Chatterton : and Cowper was thirteen years old at the death of Pope. The poet of Binfield and Twickenham is therefore the link between the modern schools of poetry and the age of Milton, Cowley, and Denham.

ALEXANDER POPE was born in a year of momentous change, in 1688, the epoch of the Revolution. On the 22nd of May, four days after the presentation

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of the Bishops' petition to James II., the future poet was born in Lombard Street, London. His mother's name was Editha, daughter of a Mr. Turner, of York, and his father was Alexander Pope, who appears to have carried on the business of a linen-merchant. Johnson says he was a draper, and lived in the Strand; and some of Pope's jealous rivals reminded him that his father had been a hatter; but the poet himself insinuated, that his parent was connected with the family of the Earl of Downe. It is however admitted, that the father of Pope gained a considerable fortune by trade, from which he retired soon after the accession of William III. This early withdrawal from business, (for he was then but forty-six years old,) may have been caused by the great unpopularity which the infatuation of James II. had drawn down upon all members of the Romish Church, to which both parents of the poet belonged.

The family seem to have at first retired from London to Kensington, and there Pope probably received his first education. He was taught to read by an aunt, but is said to have learned to write by copying the letters in printed books. It is not certain at what time Pope's father took up his abode at Binfield, or at what age his son was enabled to wander amidst the rich scenery of the forest. Johnson says, Pope was at Binfield in his twelfth year; but Lysons states that he came there when but six years old. Both statements may be true. The time given by Johnson refers to the period of the poet's settled residence, after leaving the schools in which he had been for a time