As it was, Pope was condemned to a desultory education.

He picked up some rudiments of learning from the family priest; he was sent to a school at Twyford, where he is said to have got into trouble for writing a lampoon upon his master; he went for a short time to another in London, where he gave a more creditable if less characteristic proof of his poetical precocity.

Like other lads of genius, he put together a kind of play--a combination, it seems, of the speeches in Ogilby's Iliad--and got it acted by his schoolfellows.

These brief snatches of schooling, however, counted for little.

Pope settled at home at the early age of twelve, and plunged into the delights of miscellaneous reading with the ardour of precocious talent.