ALEXANDER POPE once wrote that "if fame comes at all, it comes unlook'd for". Made rich by sales of his translation of Homer, he became so famous that he can realistically claim to have been the first celebrity author of the modern age. His fame, unlook'd for or not, is such that almost three centuries after his death an exhibition has been created at Waddesdon Manor, in Buckinghamshire, that is based on images of his own face and head. Even while he lived, casts of his bust were the most often reproduced and purchased by the great families of the day—outnumbering those of Shakespeare or any of the Greek poets. And yet, though Pope came to befriend most of the great figures of Enlightenment England, he was born into a modest merchant family and grew up partially crippled by a congenital curvature of the spine. He was also, equally unfashionably, a Roman Catholic, born in the same year (1688) as the "Glorious Revolution" saved England from the Catholicisation planned by James II.
