ABSTRACT
Alexander Pope had two aims with his programme of self instruction: to give himself the kind of education a gentleman usually received so that he could hold his own in genteel society, and to teach himself poetic craftsmanship. Pope was not unusual in being educated outside the system. During his lifetime one in three of the gentry, mentioned in the Dictionary of National Biography, went neither to school nor to university. Some of that third of educated Englishmen had tutors and a knowledgeable, imaginative tutor might have saved Pope having to repeat his programme of instruction twice. The process of teaching himself to be a poet went on at the same time he was reading for knowledge and enjoyment. He was deliberately limiting himself when he made his debut with the Pastorals. He could have begun his bid for recognition in any number of ways because, during the years of his apprenticeship to poetry, he practised most kinds of writing.
