This however was not Twyford, according to an anonymous pamphleteer
of the times but a Catholic seminary in Devonshire Street that is,
in the Bloomsbury district of London, and the same author asserts,
that the scene of his disgrace as indeed seems probable beforehand,
was not the first but the last of his arenas as a schoolboy Which
indeed was first, and which last, is very unimportant; but with a
view to another point, which is not without interest, namely, as to
the motive of Pope for so bitter a lampoon as we must suppose it to
have been, as well as with regard to the topics which he used to
season it, this anonymous letter throws the only light which has
been offered; and strange it is, that no biographer of Pope should
have hunted upon the traces indicated by him. Any solution of
Pope's virulence, and of the master's bitter retaliation, even
_as_ a solution, is so far entitled to attention; apart from
which the mere straightforwardness of this man's story, and its
minute circumstantiality, weigh greatly in its favor. To our
thinking, he unfolds the whole affair in the simple explanation,
nowhere else to be found, that the master of the school, the mean
avenger of a childish insult by a bestial punishment, was a Mr.
Bromley, one of James II.'s Popish apostates; whilst the particular
statements which he makes with respect to himself and the young
Duke of Norfolk of 1700, as two schoolfellows of Pope at that time
and place, together with his voluntary promise to come forward in
person, and verify his account if it should happen to be
challenged,--are all, we repeat, so many presumptions in favor of
his veracity. "Mr. Alexander Pope," says he, "before he had been
four months at this school, or was able to construe Tully's
Offices, employed his muse in satirizing his master. It was a libel
of at least one hundred verses, which (a fellow-student having
given information of it) was found in his pocket; and the young
satirist was soundly whipped, and kept a prisoner to his room for
seven days; whereupon his father fetched him away, and I have been
told he never went to school more." This Bromley, it has been
ascertained, was the son of a country gentleman in Worcestershire,
and must have had considerable prospects at one time, since it
appears that he had been a gentleman-commoner at Christ's Church,
Oxford. There is an error in the punctuation of the letter we have
just quoted, which affects the sense in a way very important to the
question before us. Bromley is described as "one of King James's
converts in Oxford, some years _after_ that prince's
abdication;" but, if this were really so, he must have been a
conscientious convert. The latter clause should be connected with
what follows:" _Some years after that prince's abdication he kept
a little seminary_; "that is, when his mercenary views in
quitting his religion were effectually defeated, when the Boyne had
sealed his despair, he humbled himself into a petty schoolmaster.
These facts are interesting, because they suggest at once the
motive for the merciless punishment inflicted upon Pope. His own
father was a Papist like Bromley, but a sincere and honest Papist,
who had borne double taxes, legal stigmas, and public hatred for
conscience' sake. His contempt was habitually pointed at those who
tampered with religion for interested purposes. His son inherited
these upright feelings. And we may easily guess what would be the
bitter sting of any satire he would write on Bromley. Such a topic
was too true to be forgiven, and too keenly barbed by Bromley's
conscience. By the way, this writer, like ourselves, reads in this
juvenile adventure a prefiguration of Pope's satirical destiny.