In the "Did you know" column (The Argus, 7 February) we were informed with your characteristic elegance of style that "famous misery-guts" include the poet Alexander Pope, "who was miserable all his life".

As a matter of fact, he was not. Sometimes bitter and acerbic, perhaps, but he had every reason to be.

At the age of 12, he was crippled by a tubercular infection of the spine which arrested his growth and left him a permanent semi-invalid, in more or less constant pain and only four feet six inches in height as an adult.

Despite these cruel handicaps, he was a brilliant writer and conversationalist with a wide circle of distinguished friends, as well as being a pioneer of landscape gardening.

Pope was also a frequent visitor to Sussex, being an intimate of the Caryll family, the Catholic squires of West Grinstead, where he is said to have composed his delightful mock-heroic poem The Rape Of The Lock - certainly not the work of a misery-guts.

-Richard Gamman, Sillwood Place, Brighton