ABSTRACT
When Pope returned to London at the age of seventeen he wanted to conquer the literary world. Pope arrived in London bringing with him a leather-bound manuscript into which he had copied his three pastorals, 'Spring', 'Summer' and 'Winter', leaving six pages blank for 'Autumn' which he had yet to finish. The men who had helped and encouraged him in Binfield were not authors and it was authors who Pope believed could best advise him. Walsh was valuable to Pope at the start of his career as a perfect barometer of refined public taste. The Pastorals are interesting, however, not just because Pope turned them into a technical tour de force but because, within the tightly imposed limits of a particular verse medium, he expressed perennial feelings about the human lot. The warm welcome George Granville gave Pope was not entirely disinterested. Pope was fascinated by Henry Cromwell's amorous successes and would dearly have loved the same for himself.
