ABSTRACT
Alexander Pope was born off Lombard Street in London, the son of a linen importer and exporter Roman Catholic. Pope had two or three years' schooling in Catholic schools, and he was largely self-educated. However, demonstrated his metrical skills in 'Pastorals', written by the time he was sixteen. Although he wrote some lyric and dramatic verse, his talents lay in narrative and satire. The Rape of the Lock is an early work, first published in Lintot's Miscellaneous Poems and Translations in 1712, then republished in much-expanded. Pope's language regarded the Romantics at the end of the century as consciously poetic and artificial, arising partly from his use of archaisms, partly from his Latinism, and partly from the inflation which here plays a comic role. This excerpt, however, is not without colloquialisms which serve comically to deflate the pretensions of the more poetic language.
