The two most important elements in Alexander Pope's life were his being born a Catholic and his contracting, during his twelfth year, a severe tubercular infection from which he never fully recovered. Because of his Catholicism, Pope was compelled to live outside of London and was not allowed to enroll in a formal university program. Because of his illness, Pope attained a height of only four and a half feet, suffered from migraine headaches, was obliged to wear several pairs of hose and an elaborate harness to compensate for the slightness of his legs and the curvature of his spine, and was subject to frequent and caustic ridicule by critics, such as John Dennis, who directed their rancor at his physical deformities as much as at his poetic efforts. Pope's physical ailments and the acrimony with which political and literary pundits attacked both his person and his work should never be forgotten in evaluating, say, the optimistic faith of An Essay on Man or the acidulous satire of The Dunciad. The affirmations of the former poem were not written out of ignorance of human suffering, and the vituperations of the latter poem cannot be understood apart from the contumely which Pope suffered at the hands of his adversaries "Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Lord Hervey, John Dennis, Joseph Addison, and Lewis Theobald, to name a few. Pope's reference in Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot to "this long disease, my life,"" is no literary confabulation but an accurate description of his sufferings (Adler Internet; Gurney Internet). .
There were, however, compensations. In the library of his father, a wealthy linen merchant who retired to a vast estate at Binfield in 1700, Pope acquired a profound, if desultory, knowledge of English history and letters. In his youth he was, moreover, the special favorite of William Wycherley, who encouraged the publication of Pope's Pastorals in Jacob Tonson's Miscellany (1709).