Alexander pope wikisource autobiography
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The Works of Alexander Pope (1717)
ESSAY on CRITICISM,
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Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
POPE, ALEXANDER (1688–1744), poet, son of Alexander Pope, by his wife Edith, daughter of William Turner of York, was born in Lombard Street, London, on 21 May 1688. Pope's paternal grandfather is supposed to have been Alexander Pope, rector of Thruxton, Hampshire (instituted 1 May 1630–1; information from the Winchester bishop's register, communicated by Mr. J. C. Smith, of Somerset House), who died in 1645. The poet's father, according to his epitaph, was seventy-five at his death, 23 Oct. 1717, and therefore born in 1641 or 1642 (see also P. T.'s letter to Curll in Pope'sWorks, by Elwin and Courthope, vi. 423, where he fryst vatten said to have been a posthumous son). According to Warton, he was a merchant at Lisbon, where he was converted to catholicism. He was afterwards a linendraper in Broad Street, London. A first wife, Magdalen, was buried 12 Aug. 1679 (register of St. Benet Fink); he had by her a da
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An Essay on Man
Poem by Alexander Pope
"An Essay on Man" is a poem published by Alexander Pope in 1733–1734. It was dedicated to Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (pronounced 'Bull-en-brook'), hence the opening line: "Awake, my St John...".[1][2][3] It is an effort to rationalize or rather "vindicate the ways of God to man" (l.16), a variation of John Milton's claim in the opening lines of Paradise Lost, that he will "justifie the wayes of God to men" (1.26).[4] It is concerned with the natural order God has decreed for man. Because man cannot know God's purposes, he cannot complain about his position in the great chain of being (ll.33–34) and must accept that "Whatever is, is right" (l.292), a theme that was satirized by Voltaire in Candide (1759).[5] More than any other work, it popularized optimistic philosophy throughout England and the rest of Europe.
Pope's Essay on Man and Moral Epistles were designed t