The greatest poet of the eighteenth century was a literary shortarse. Four feet six and hunchbacked, the result of a childhood illness, he also had the misfortune to be a Roman Catholic during the Jacobite rebellion. Anti-papist laws barred him from public office, and forced him to up-sticks from his house in Twickenham whenever the royal family happened to be in town.   Given this combination of handicaps and prejudice, it's no wonder he specialised in satire: arch couplets that dissected those inane critics who called him "a vile toad", and dished out object lessons in how to write for posterity. Very quotable: "A little learning is a dang'rous thing", "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread", etc. He died after eating pickled lampreys. Consider that a warning to the vertically challenged: avoid vindaloos. NS

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