But what
grace, what taste, what swiftness to feel, what justness and
perfection in expressing his feeling!... His first masters were
insignificant; he educated himself: at twelve years old he learned
Latin and Greek together, and almost without a master; at fifteen he
resolved to go to London, in order to learn French and Italian
there, by reading the authors. His family, retired from trade, and
Catholic, lived at this time upon an estate in the forest of
Windsor. This desire of his was considered as an odd caprice, for
his health from that time hardly permitted him to move about. He
persisted, and accomplished his project; he learned nearly
everything thus by himself, making his own choice among authors,
getting the grammar quite alone, and his pleasure was to translate
into verse the finest passages he met with among the Latin and Greek
poets. When he was about sixteen years old, he said, his taste was
formed as much as it was later.... If such a thing as literary
temperament exist, it never discovered itself in a manner more
clearly defined and more decided than with Pope. Men ordinarily
become classic by means of the fact and discipline of education; he
was so by vocation, so to speak, and by a natural originality.
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