So he
was pleased with the admiration of the boy poet fifty years
younger than himself, and glad to accept his help. At first this
flattered Pope's vanity, but after a little he quarreled with his
old friend and left him. This was the first of Pope's literary
quarrels, of which he had many.
Already, as a boy, Pope was becoming known. He had published a
few short poems, and others were handed about in manuscript among
his friends. "That young fellow will either be a madman or make
a very great poet,"* said one man after meeting him when he was
about fourteen. All the praise and attention which Pope received
pleased him much. But he took it only as his due, and his great
ambition was to make people believe that he had been a
wonderfully clever child, and that he had begun to write when he
was very young. He says of himself with something of
pompousness, "I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came."
*Edmund Smith.
Pope's keenest desire was to be a poet, and few poets have rushed
so quickly into fame.
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