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Pope : Alexander (1688-1744) was born in London, his education was affected by the recently enacted Test Acts, which banned Catholics from teaching, attending a university, voting, or holding public office on pain of perpetual imprisonment. Taught to read by his aunt, he went to two Catholic schools in London which, while illegal, were tolerated in some areas. Pope educated himself mostly by reading Horace, Juvenal, Homer, Virgil, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, John Dryden, while he studied European languages & read English, French, Italian, Latin, & Greek poets. Among his famous friends at Binfield, was John Caryll, the future dedicatee of The Rape of the Lock, who was twenty years older & had many acquaintances in the London literary world. He introduced Pope to the playwright William Wycherley, & William Walsh who helped him revise his first major work, The Pastorals (see Essay on Criticism), & the Blount sisters, Teresa & Martha, who remained lifelong friends. Pope also made friends with Tory writers John Gay (see Shepherd’s Week), Jonathan Swift, Thomas Parnell & John Arbuthnot (see John Bull), who together formed the Scriblerus Club with the aim of satirising ignorance & pedantry in the form of the fictional scholar Martinus Scriblerus. He also made friends with Whig writers Joseph Addison (q.v.) & Richard Steele (see Spectator & Tatler). Pope used language with genuine inventiveness. His qualities of imagination are seen in the originality with which he handled traditional forms, in his satiric vision of the contemporary world, & in his inspired use of classical models. Around 1719, he is said to have been employed by the publisher Jacob Tonson to produce an opulent new edition of Shakespeare. His friendship with the former statesman Henry St. John Bolingbroke, who had settled a few miles from Twickenham, stimulated his interest in philosophy & led to the composition of An Essay on Man. Some ideas expressed in it were probably suggested by Bolingbroke, e.g., earthly happiness is enough to justify the ways of God to man. In essence, the Essay is not philosophy but a poet’s belief of unity despite differences, of an order embracing the whole multifaceted creation. The most central of Pope’s ideas were the doctrine of plenitude, which Pope expressed through the metaphors of a “chain” or “scale” of being, & that the discordant parts of life are bound harmoniously together. Pope wrote Imitations of Horace from 1733 to 1738. He also wrote many epistles to friends, in defence of his use of personal & political satire. After he wrote the Universal Prayer in 1738, he concentrated on revising & expanding his masterpiece The Dunciad.