Alexander Pope was born in 1688, the son of a Roman Catholic draper. A childhood illness left him deformed and sickly, and, according to his enemies, permanently soured in outlook. Pope was a cruelly brilliant satirist and a tireless warrior in the great bookworld combats of his day. His mastery of the heroic couplet was polished to perfection in pastorals, mock-epics and translations as well as in long ruminative works, like "Essay on Criticism" and "Essay on Man". Pope's fiercest energies, however, were reserved for his long work, "The Dunciad", in which he savaged and immortalized his literary enemies. Pope died in 1744.