Alexander Pope, Imitations of Horace, '

"Learn to live well, or fairly make your will;
You've played, and loved, and ate, and drunk your fill:
Walk sober off; before a sprightlier age
Comes tittering on, and shoves you from the stage."
- Alexander Pope, Imitations of Horace, 'The Major Works'

Alexander Pope was a poet, born the son of a Roman Catholic linen‐draper in London. His health was ruined and his growth stunted by a severe illness at the age of 12. He showed his precocious metrical skill in his ‘Pastorals’ (1709) written, according to himself, when he was 16. With the growth of Romanticism, Pope's poetry was increasingly seen as artificial. It was not until Leavis and Empson that a serious attempt was made to rediscover Pope's richness, variety, and complexity.