Alexander Pope was born in London in 1688, the only child of middle-aged, Catholic parents. His religion barred him from politics and from attending university. His teenage tuberculosis made him a hunchback barely 4′ 6″ tall.

Is it any wonder he wrote with a pen more pointed than any needle?
 
William Broome, one of the victims of Pope’s satire, wrote:

     “I often resemble him to a hedge hog; he lies snug and warm, and sets his bristles out against all mankind. Sure he is fond of being hated. I wonder he is not thrashed: but his littleness is his protection; no man shoots a wren.”

We owe many of our favorite phrases to Alexander Pope. It was in his Essay on Criticism that we first heard,

      “… A little learning is a dangerous thing.”

 and “…For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.”

(keep those 2 lines in mind when you click to the next page.)

Lytton Strachey concluded that such lines, when aimed at their targets, “resembled nothing so much as spoonfuls of boiling oil, ladled out by a fiendish monkey at an upstairs window upon such passers-by whom the wretch had a grudge against — and we are delighted.”