FOOTNOTES:

Had [he said in a letter to Sir John Pringle] the different strata of clay, gravel, marble, coals, limestone, sand, minerals, &c., continued to lie level, one under the other, as they may be supposed to have done before these convulsions, we should have had the use only of a few of the uppermost of the strata, the others lying too deep and too difficult to be come at; but the shell of the earth being broke, and the fragments thrown into this oblique position, the disjointed ends of a great number of strata of different kinds are brought up to-day, and a great variety of useful materials put into our power, which would otherwise have remained eternally concealed from us. So that what has been usually looked upon as aruinsuffered by this part of the universe, was, in reality, only a preparation or means of rendering the earth more fit for use, more capable of being to mankind a convenient and comfortable habitation.

The scientific conjectures of Franklin may not always have been sound, but they are invariably so readable that we experience no difficulty in understanding why the Abbé Raynal should have preferred his fictions to other men's truths.

FOOTNOTES:[51]The lightning rod in its origin encountered the same religious misgivings as inoculation and insurance and many other ideas which have promoted human progress and happiness. The Rev. Thomas Prince at the time of the Lisbon earthquake thought that the more lightning rods there were the greater was the danger that the earth might become perilously surcharged with electricity. "In Boston," he said, "are more erected than anywhere else in New England; and Boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken. Oh! there is no getting out of the Mighty Hand of God! If we think to avoid it in the Air we can not in the Earth. Yea, it may grow more fatal."[52]The lines under the portrait of Franklin by Cochin do not hesitate to exalt him above the most powerful forces of Nature and the authority of the Gods:"C'est l'honneur et l'appui du nouvel hémisphère,Les flots de l'Océan s'abaissent à sa voix;Il réprime ou dirige à son gré le tonnerre.Qui désarme les dieux peut-il craindre les rois?"[53]"With Franklin grasp the lightning's fiery wing," is a line in Thomas Campbell'sPleasures of Hope. In hisAge of Bronze, Byron asks in one place why the Atlantic should "gird a tyrant's grave""While Franklin's quiet memory climbs to heaven,Calming the lightning which he thence hath riven."And in another place in the same poem he speaks of"Stoic Franklin's energetic shade,Robed in the lightnings which his hand allayed."Crabbe in his tribute to "Divine Philosophy" in theLibraryexclaims,"'Tis hers the lightning from the clouds to call,And teach the fiery mischief where to fall."[54]The inductive process by which Franklin arrived at the identity of lightning and electricity was set forth in one of his letters to John Lining, of Charleston, dated March 18, 1755. The minutes kept by him of his experiments and observations, contained, he said, the following entry:"November 7, 1749. Electrical fluid agrees with lightning in these particulars. 1. Giving light. 2. Colour of the light. 3. Crooked direction. 4. Swift motion. 5. Being conducted by metals. 6. Crack or noise in exploding. 7. Subsisting in water or ice. 8. Rending bodies it passes through. 9. Destroying animals. 10. Melting metals. 11. Firing inflammable substances. 12. Sulphureous smell. The electric fluid is attracted by points. We do not know whether this property is in lightning. But since they agree in all particulars wherein we can already compare them, is it not probable they agree likewise in this? Let the Experiment be made."[55]The standing of Franklin as an inventor would be better established if he had not been so resolute in his unwillingness to take out patents upon his inventions. Besides the various inventions mentioned by us in the text, he was the father of other valuable mechanical conceptions. The first hint of the art of engraving upon earthenware appears to have originated with him. Moved by his constant desire to inculcate moral truths, he suggested about 1753 to a correspondent the idea of engraving from copper plates on square chimney tiles "moral prints"; "which," to use his words, "being about our Chimneys, and constantly in the Eyes of Children when by the Fireside, might give Parents an Opportunity, in explaining them, to impress moral Sentiments."He also appears to have anticipated the Argand burner. A description has come down to us of a lamp devised by him which, with only three small wicks, had a lustre equal to six candles. It was fitted with a pipe that supplied fresh and cool air to its lights. If Franklin did not invent, he was the first to communicate to his friend, Mr. Viny, the wheel manufacturer at Tenderden, Kent, the art of flexing timber used in making wheels for vehicles. But of few things did Franklin take a gloomier view than the fate of the inventor as his observations in a letter to John Lining, dated March 18, 1755, demonstrate. "One would not," he said, "of all faculties or qualities of the mind, wish, for a friend, or a child, that he should have that of invention. For his attempts to benefit mankind in that way, however well imagined, if they do not succeed, expose him, though very unjustly, to general ridicule and contempt; and, if they do succeed, to envy, robbery, and abuse."

[51]The lightning rod in its origin encountered the same religious misgivings as inoculation and insurance and many other ideas which have promoted human progress and happiness. The Rev. Thomas Prince at the time of the Lisbon earthquake thought that the more lightning rods there were the greater was the danger that the earth might become perilously surcharged with electricity. "In Boston," he said, "are more erected than anywhere else in New England; and Boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken. Oh! there is no getting out of the Mighty Hand of God! If we think to avoid it in the Air we can not in the Earth. Yea, it may grow more fatal."

[52]The lines under the portrait of Franklin by Cochin do not hesitate to exalt him above the most powerful forces of Nature and the authority of the Gods:"C'est l'honneur et l'appui du nouvel hémisphère,Les flots de l'Océan s'abaissent à sa voix;Il réprime ou dirige à son gré le tonnerre.Qui désarme les dieux peut-il craindre les rois?"

[52]The lines under the portrait of Franklin by Cochin do not hesitate to exalt him above the most powerful forces of Nature and the authority of the Gods:

"C'est l'honneur et l'appui du nouvel hémisphère,Les flots de l'Océan s'abaissent à sa voix;Il réprime ou dirige à son gré le tonnerre.Qui désarme les dieux peut-il craindre les rois?"

[53]"With Franklin grasp the lightning's fiery wing," is a line in Thomas Campbell'sPleasures of Hope. In hisAge of Bronze, Byron asks in one place why the Atlantic should "gird a tyrant's grave""While Franklin's quiet memory climbs to heaven,Calming the lightning which he thence hath riven."And in another place in the same poem he speaks of"Stoic Franklin's energetic shade,Robed in the lightnings which his hand allayed."Crabbe in his tribute to "Divine Philosophy" in theLibraryexclaims,"'Tis hers the lightning from the clouds to call,And teach the fiery mischief where to fall."

[53]"With Franklin grasp the lightning's fiery wing," is a line in Thomas Campbell'sPleasures of Hope. In hisAge of Bronze, Byron asks in one place why the Atlantic should "gird a tyrant's grave"

"While Franklin's quiet memory climbs to heaven,Calming the lightning which he thence hath riven."

And in another place in the same poem he speaks of

"Stoic Franklin's energetic shade,Robed in the lightnings which his hand allayed."

Crabbe in his tribute to "Divine Philosophy" in theLibraryexclaims,

"'Tis hers the lightning from the clouds to call,And teach the fiery mischief where to fall."

[54]The inductive process by which Franklin arrived at the identity of lightning and electricity was set forth in one of his letters to John Lining, of Charleston, dated March 18, 1755. The minutes kept by him of his experiments and observations, contained, he said, the following entry:"November 7, 1749. Electrical fluid agrees with lightning in these particulars. 1. Giving light. 2. Colour of the light. 3. Crooked direction. 4. Swift motion. 5. Being conducted by metals. 6. Crack or noise in exploding. 7. Subsisting in water or ice. 8. Rending bodies it passes through. 9. Destroying animals. 10. Melting metals. 11. Firing inflammable substances. 12. Sulphureous smell. The electric fluid is attracted by points. We do not know whether this property is in lightning. But since they agree in all particulars wherein we can already compare them, is it not probable they agree likewise in this? Let the Experiment be made."

"November 7, 1749. Electrical fluid agrees with lightning in these particulars. 1. Giving light. 2. Colour of the light. 3. Crooked direction. 4. Swift motion. 5. Being conducted by metals. 6. Crack or noise in exploding. 7. Subsisting in water or ice. 8. Rending bodies it passes through. 9. Destroying animals. 10. Melting metals. 11. Firing inflammable substances. 12. Sulphureous smell. The electric fluid is attracted by points. We do not know whether this property is in lightning. But since they agree in all particulars wherein we can already compare them, is it not probable they agree likewise in this? Let the Experiment be made."

[55]The standing of Franklin as an inventor would be better established if he had not been so resolute in his unwillingness to take out patents upon his inventions. Besides the various inventions mentioned by us in the text, he was the father of other valuable mechanical conceptions. The first hint of the art of engraving upon earthenware appears to have originated with him. Moved by his constant desire to inculcate moral truths, he suggested about 1753 to a correspondent the idea of engraving from copper plates on square chimney tiles "moral prints"; "which," to use his words, "being about our Chimneys, and constantly in the Eyes of Children when by the Fireside, might give Parents an Opportunity, in explaining them, to impress moral Sentiments."He also appears to have anticipated the Argand burner. A description has come down to us of a lamp devised by him which, with only three small wicks, had a lustre equal to six candles. It was fitted with a pipe that supplied fresh and cool air to its lights. If Franklin did not invent, he was the first to communicate to his friend, Mr. Viny, the wheel manufacturer at Tenderden, Kent, the art of flexing timber used in making wheels for vehicles. But of few things did Franklin take a gloomier view than the fate of the inventor as his observations in a letter to John Lining, dated March 18, 1755, demonstrate. "One would not," he said, "of all faculties or qualities of the mind, wish, for a friend, or a child, that he should have that of invention. For his attempts to benefit mankind in that way, however well imagined, if they do not succeed, expose him, though very unjustly, to general ridicule and contempt; and, if they do succeed, to envy, robbery, and abuse."

He also appears to have anticipated the Argand burner. A description has come down to us of a lamp devised by him which, with only three small wicks, had a lustre equal to six candles. It was fitted with a pipe that supplied fresh and cool air to its lights. If Franklin did not invent, he was the first to communicate to his friend, Mr. Viny, the wheel manufacturer at Tenderden, Kent, the art of flexing timber used in making wheels for vehicles. But of few things did Franklin take a gloomier view than the fate of the inventor as his observations in a letter to John Lining, dated March 18, 1755, demonstrate. "One would not," he said, "of all faculties or qualities of the mind, wish, for a friend, or a child, that he should have that of invention. For his attempts to benefit mankind in that way, however well imagined, if they do not succeed, expose him, though very unjustly, to general ridicule and contempt; and, if they do succeed, to envy, robbery, and abuse."

Franklin, as Hume truly said, was the first great man of letters, for whom Great Britain was beholden to America, and, among his writings, are some that will always remain classics. But it is a mistake to think of him as in any sense a professional author. He was entirely accurate when he declared in theAutobiographythat prose-writing had been of great use to him in the course of his life and a principal means of his advancement; but always to him a pen was but an implement of action. When it had accomplished its purpose, he threw it aside as a farmer discards a worn-out plowshare, or a horse casts a shoe.[56]There is nothing in his writings or his utterances to show that he ever regarded himself as a literary man, or ever harbored a thought of permanent literary fame. The only productions of his pen, which suggest the sandpaper and varnish of a professional writer, are his Bagatelles, such asThe Craven Street GazetteandThe Ephemera, composed for the amusement of his friends; and, in writing them, the idea of permanency was as completely absent from his mind asit was from that of the Duke of Crillon, when he sent up his balloon in honor of the two Spanish princes. The greater part of his writings were composed in haste, and published anonymously, and without revision. And, when once published, if they did not remain dispersed and neglected, it was only because their merits were too great for them not to be snatched from the "abhorred abyss of blank oblivion" by some disciple or friend of his, who had more regard for posterity than he had. So far as we are aware, no edition of his scientific essays or other writings was ever in the slightest degree prompted by any personal concern or request of his. As soon as the didactic purpose of the earlier chapters of theAutobiographyhad been gratified by the composition of those chapters, it was only by incessant proddings and importunities that he could be induced to bring his narrative down to as late a period as he did. When Lord Kames expressed a desire to have all his publications, the only ones on which he could lay his hands were theObservations Concerning the Increase of Mankind,Peopling of Countries, etc., theAccount of the New-invented Pennsylvanian Fireplaces, and some little magazine sketches. He had had, he wrote Lord Kames, daily expectations of procuring some of his performances from a friend to whom he had formerly sent them, when the author was in America, but this friend had at length told him that he could not find them. "Very mortifying this to an author," said Franklin, "that his works should so soon be lost!" When Jefferson called upon him, during his last days, he placed in the former's hands the valuable manuscript of his negotiations with Lord Howe, and it was not until he had twice told Jefferson to keep it, in reply to statements by Jefferson that he would return it, after reading it, that the recipient could realize that the intention was to turn over the manuscript to him absolutely. In a letter to Vaughan, he mentions that, after writing a parable,probably that on Brotherly Love, he laid it aside and had not seen it for thirty years, when a lady, a few days before, furnished him with a copy that she had preserved.

The indifference of Franklin to literary reputation is all the more remarkable in view of the clearness with which he foresaw the increased patronage that the future had in store for English authors. "I assure you," he wrote on one occasion to Hume, "it often gives me pleasure to reflect, how greatly theaudience(if I may so term it) of a good English writer will, in another century or two, be increased by the increase of English people in our colonies." Twenty-four years later, he had already lived long enough to see his prescience in this respect to no little extent verified.

By the way [he wrote to William Strahan], the rapid Growth and extension of the English language in America, must become greatly Advantageous to the book-sellers, and holders of Copy-Rights in England. A vast audience is assembling there for English Authors ancient, present, and future, our People doubling every twenty Years; and this will demand large and of course profitable Impressions of your most valuable Books. I would, therefore, if I possessed such rights, entail them, if such a thing be practicable, upon my Posterity; for their Worth will be continually augmenting.

This grave advice was followed by the jolly laugh that was never long absent from the intercourse between Franklin and Strahan. "This," Franklin said, "may look a little like Advice, and yet I have drank noMadeirathese Ten Months."

The manner in which Franklin acquired the elements of his literary education is one of the inspiring things in the history of knowledge. At the age of ten, as we have seen, he was done forever with all schools except those of self-education and experience; but he had one of thoseminds that simply will not be denied knowledge. Even while he was pouring tallow into his father's moulds, he was reading thePilgrim's Progress, Burton'sHistorical Collections, "small chapmen's books, and cheap, 40 or 50 in all," Plutarch'sLives, Defoe'sEssay on Projectsand Cotton Mather'sEssay upon the Good that is to be Devised and Designed by those who desire to answer the Great end of Life, and to do Good while they Live; all books full of wholesome and stimulating food for a hungry mind. Happily for him, his propensity for reading found ampler scope when his father bound him over as an apprentice to James Franklin. Here he had access to better books.

An acquaintance with the apprentices of book-sellers [he tells us in theAutobiography] enabled me sometimes to borrow a small one, which I was careful to return soon and clean. Often I sat up in my room reading the greatest part of the night, when the book was borrowed in the evening and to be returned early in the morning, lest it should be missed or wanted.

This clandestine use of what did not belong to him or to his obliging young friends was an illicit enjoyment; but was one of those offences, we may be sure, for which the Recording Angel has an expunging tear. More legitimate was the use that he made of the volumes lent to him by Mr. Matthew Adams, who had a pretty collection of books, and who frequented the printing-house, took notice of him and invited him to his library, and very kindly lent him such books as he chose to read. As we have seen, it was not long before Benjamin struck a bargain with his brother, by which the obligation of the latter to board him was commuted into a fixed weekly sum, which, though only half what had been previously paid by James for his weekly board, proved large enough to afford the boy a fund for buying books with. Not only under thisarrangement did he contrive to save for this purpose one half of the sum allowed him by James but also to secure an additional margin of time for reading.

My brother and the rest [Franklin tells us in theAutobiography] going from the printing-house to their meals, I remained there alone, and, despatching presently my light repast, which often was no more than a bisket or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins or a tart from the pastry-cook's, and a glass of water, had the rest of the time till their return for study, in which I made the greater progress, from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which usually attend temperance in eating and drinking.

Then it was that he read Locke'sEssay on Human Understandingand theArt of Thinkingby "Messrs. du Port Royal." To the same period belongs his provoking dalliance with the Socratic method of reasoning.

From reading the works of others to what Sir Fopling Flutter called "the natural sprouts" of one's own brain is always but a short step for a clever and ambitious boy. Franklin's first literary ventures were metrical ones, the lispings that filled the mind of his uncle Benjamin with such glowing anticipations, and "some little pieces" which excited the commercial instincts of James Franklin to the point of putting Benjamin to composing occasional ballads. The subject of one ballad,The Light House Tragedy, was the death by drowning of Captain Worthilake and his two daughters; another ballad was a sailor's song on the taking of Teach (or Blackbeard), the flagitious pirate. The opinion of these ballads held by Franklin is probably just enough, if we may judge by his subsequent irruptions into the province of Poetry.

They were wretched stuff, in the Grub-Street-ballad style [he says in theAutobiography], and when they were printed he (James Franklin) sent me about the town to sell them. The first sold wonderfully, the event being recent, havingmade a great noise. This flattered my vanity; but my father discouraged me by ridiculing my performances, and telling me verse-makers were generally beggars. So I escaped being a poet, most probably a very bad one.

From the doggerel, thus condemned by the hard head of Josiah, Benjamin turned to prose. Believing that in oral discussion with his friend Collins on the qualifications of women for learning, he had been borne down rather by the fluency than the logic of his antagonist, he reduced his arguments to writing, copied them in a fair hand and sent them to Collins. He replied, and Franklin rejoined, and no less than three or four letters had been addressed by each of the friends to the other when the correspondence happened to fall under the eye of Josiah. Again the son had reason to be thankful for the candid discernment of the father, for Josiah pointed out to him that, while he had the advantage of Collins in correct spelling and pointing (thanks to the printing-house) he fell far short of Collins in elegance of expression, method and perspicuity, all of which he illustrated by references to the correspondence.

The son realized the justice of the father's criticisms, and resolved to amend his faults. The means to which he resorted he has laid before us in theAutobiography:

About this time [he says] I met with an odd volume of theSpectator. It was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, try'd to compleat the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared mySpectatorwith the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. But Ifound I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales, and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collection of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavoured to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method of the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extreamly ambitious. My time for these exercises and for reading was at night, after work or before it began in the morning, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the printing-house alone, evading as much as I could the common attendance on public worship which my father used to exact of me when I was under his care, and which indeed I still thought a duty, though I could not, as it seemed to me, afford time to practise it.

The next step in Benjamin's literary development was when he contrived to disguise his handwriting and thrust the first of his Silence Dogood letters under the door of his brother's printing-house; and we can readily imagine what his feelings were when the group of contributors to theCourant, who frequented the place, read it and commented on it, in his hearing, and afforded him what he terms in theAutobiographythe exquisite pleasure offinding that it met with their approbation; and that in their different guesses at the author none were named but men of some character in the town for learning and ingenuity. Encouraged by his success, he wrote and communicated to theCourantin the same furtive way the other letters in the Silence Dogood series, keeping his secret, he tells us, until his small fund of sense for such performances was pretty well exhausted, when he disclosed his authorship, only to arouse the jealousy of the churlish brother, who, alone of theCourantcircle, failed to regard him with augmented respect. If there was no extrinsic evidence to fix the authorship of the Dogood letters, their intrinsic characteristics, incipient as they are, would be enough to disclose the hand of Franklin. The good dame, who finally succumbed to the rhetoric of her reverend master and protector, after he had made several fruitless attempts on the more topping part of her sex, bears very much the same family lineaments as the Anthony Afterwit and Alice Addertongue of thePennsylvania Gazette. Deprived of her good husband by inexorable death, when her sun was in its meridian altitude, she proceeds to gratify her natural inclination for observing and reproving the faults of others, and to open up her mind in a way that leaves us little room for doubt as to who the lively, free-spirited and free-spoken boy was that she concealed beneath her petticoats. "A hearty Lover of the Clergy and all good Men, and a mortal Enemy to arbitrary Government & unlimited Power," she was, she assures us in one letter, besides being courteous and affable, good-humored (unless first provoked) and handsome, and sometimes witty. In her next paper, she tells us that she had from her youth been indefatigably studious to gain and treasure up in her mind all useful and desirable knowledge, especially such as tends to improve the mind and enlarge the understanding. With this frontispiece, she, from time to time, delivers her viewson various topics with glib vivacity, set off by Latin quotations. In one letter, she falls asleep in her usual place of retirement under the Great Apple Tree, and is transported in a dream to the Temple of Learning (Harvard College), which we can only hope was not quite so bad as it appeared to be when seen through the distorting medium of her slumbers. Describing the concourse of outgoing students, she says, "SomeI perceiv'd took to Merchandizing, others to Travelling, some to one Thing, some to another, and some to Nothing; and many of them from henceforth, for want of Patrimony, liv'd as poor as church Mice, being unable to dig, and asham'd to beg, and to live by their Wits it was impossible." In another letter, Silence unsparingly lashes the existing system of female education. "Their Youth," she says, borrowing the words of an "ingenious writer," is spent to teach them to stitch and sow, or make Baubles. "They are taught to read indeed and perhaps to write their Names, or so; and that is the Heigth of a Womans Education."

In another letter, she holds up hoop-petticoats to laughter. If a number of them, she declared, were well mounted on Noddle's Island, they would look more like engines of war for bombarding the town than ornaments of the fair sex; and she concludes by asking her sex, "whether they, who pay no Rates or Taxes, ought to take up more Room in the King's Highway, than the Men, who yearly contribute to the Support of the Government."

Another letter makes unmerciful fun of an Elegy upon the much Lamented Death of Mrs. Mehitebell Kitel, the wife of Mr. John Kitel, of Salem etc.

Two lines,

"Come let us mourn, for we have lost aWife, a Daughter, and a Sister,"

affords Silence an opportunity for some merry satire. Contrasting these lines with Dr. Watts'

"Gunstonthe Just, the Generous, and the Young,"

she says:

The latter (Watts) only mentions three Qualifications ofonePerson who was deceased, which therefore could raise Grief and Compassion but forOne. Whereas the former, (our most excellent Poet) gives his Reader a Sort of an Idea of the Death ofThree Persons, viz.—a Wife, a Daughter, and a Sister,which isThree Timesas great a Loss as the Death ofOne, and consequently must raiseThree Timesas much Grief and Compassion in the Reader.

—a Wife, a Daughter, and a Sister,

which isThree Timesas great a Loss as the Death ofOne, and consequently must raiseThree Timesas much Grief and Compassion in the Reader.

It was a pity, Silence added, that such an excellent piece should not be dignified with a particular name. Seeing that it could not justly be called eitherEpic,Saphhic,LyricorPindaric, nor any other name yet invented, she presumed it might (in honour and remembrance of the dead) be called the Kitelic.

The next letter on freedom of speech was, or purported to be, an extract from theLondon Journal, and is written in such a totally masculine spirit that the reader might well have exclaimed like Hugh Evans in theMerry Wives of Windsor: "I like not when a 'oman has a great peard; I spy a great peard under her muffler." This is one of its masculine sentiments: "Who ever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech; aThingTerrible to Publick Traytors."

And this is another, phrased very much as Grover Cleveland might have phrased it. "The Administration of Government is nothing else but the Attendance of theTrustees of the Peopleupon the Interest and Affairs of the People."

The next letter inveighs against hypocritical pretenders to religion. It had for some time, Silence says, been aquestion with her whether a commonwealth suffers more by hypocritical pretenders to religion, or by the openly profane; but she is inclined to think that the hypocrite is the most dangerous person of the two, especially if he sustains a post in the Government, and his conduct is considered as it regards the public. The local application of these remarks to Boston at the time could be left to take care of itself.

The next letter gives us another peep under Silence's petticoats, for it advances a plan for the insurance of widows, worked out with actuarial precision, and bearing the unmistakable earmarks of the projecting spirit of the founder of the Junto. "For my own Part," Silence ends, "I have nothing left to live on, but Contentment and a few Cows; and tho' I cannot expect to be reliev'd by this Project, yet it would be no small Satisfaction to me to See it put in Practice for the Benefit of Others."

The next letter contains a missive from Margaret After cast, a forlorn Virgin, well stricken in years and repentance, to Silence, in which the writer, prompted by the provision for widows proposed by Silence, begs her to form a project also for the relief of "all those penitent Mortals of the fair Sex, that are like to be punish'd with their Virginity until old Age, for the Pride and Insolence of their Youth."

The next letter is a clever discourse on drunkenness. It hints at the truth that Franklin afterwards insisted upon in the "Dialogue between Horatio and Philocles" that we must stint sensual pleasure to really enjoy it, and sets forth a vocabulary of cant terms for intoxication similar to that subsequently published by him in thePennsylvania Gazette.

The next letter is on the forbidding subject of night-walkers. The familiarity that it exhibits with the peripatetic side of Boston Common after dark at that day makes it a little difficult for us to understand why Franklinshould ever have had occasion to tell us in theAutobiography, as he does, how on his second voyage from Boston to New York, a grave, sensible, matronlike Quakeress rescued him from the clutches of two young women, who afterwards proved to be a couple of thievish strumpets.

The final letter in the series is on the danger of religious zeal, if immoderate.

We have referred to these letters at some length, not only because they are not too immature to be even now read with pleasure for their wit and humor, but because they help to give us a still more faithful idea of the rebellious youth of Franklin, which, if it had not been so full of scornful protest against the whole system of New England Puritanism, might have shaded off, with the chastening effects of time, into too passive a type of liberalism for such a career as his.

From the Dogood letters Benjamin passed as we have seen to the editorship of theCourantand to the gibes at the Boston clergy and magistracy, which ended in his ignominious flight from that city. But never was there a time in his youth, however restive under the check-rein, when his love of books was not the chief resource of his life. When on his return from Boston to Philadelphia, after receiving his father's blessing, it was the fact that he had a great many books with him which led Governor Burnet of New York to send for him, and to show him his large library, and to discourse with him at considerable length about books and authors. He had previously begun to have "some acquaintance among the young people" of Philadelphia "that were lovers of reading," and subsequently came those academic strolls with Osborne, Watson and Ralph through the woods along the Schuylkill. And later even London, with all its tumult and dissipation, could not long extinguish his thirst for the sweet, cool wells of human thought and sentiment from which the soulof a gifted boy drinks with such passionate eagerness. Circulating libraries were unknown at that time, but he agreed on reasonable terms with Wilcox, a bookseller, with an immense collection of second-hand books, whose shop was next door to his place of lodging in Little Britain, that he might take home and read and return any of his wares. We have already quoted the passages in theAutobiographyin which he tells us that, during the eighteen months that he was in London in his youth, he spent little upon himself except in seeing plays, and for books; and that he read considerably.

TheDissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain, which he wrote while in London, of little value as it was in itself, yet also aided in confirming his literary tendencies; for it arrested the attention of Lyons, the author ofThe Infallibility of Human Judgment, who introduced him to Bernard Mandeville, the author of theFable of the Bees, "a most facetious, entertaining companion," and Dr. Henry Pemberton, the author ofA View of Sir I. Newton's Philosophy.

The love of reading, thus acquired by Franklin in early life, never deserted him, and was afterwards strengthened by his own ever-increasing library, which, before his death, became so large that he had to build a spacious room for its reception at his home in Philadelphia, the books owned by the other members of the Junto, the extensive library of James Logan at Stenton, and the collections of the Philadelphia Library Company. Even when his private business was too exacting to allow him time for any other form of recreation, he still found time for reading, including the acquirement of several modern languages, and the consequence was that, when he began to write in earnest, he was well supplied with all the materials for literary workmanship.

While Franklin never became a professional writer, he was very scrupulous about the typographical dress of whathe wrote and not a little of a purist in his choice of words. Nor does he seem to have been less averse than authors usually are to editorial mutilation. Among his letters is one to Woodfall, the printer of Junius' Letters, asking him to take care that the compositor observed "strictly the Italicking, Capitalling and Pointing" of the copy enclosed with the letter. Referring in a letter to William Franklin to a reprint in theLondon Chronicleof his "Edict by the King of Prussia," he said:

It is reprinted in theChronicle, where you will see it, but stripped of all the capitaling and italicing, that intimate the allusions and mark the emphasis of written discourses, to bring them as near as possible to those spoken: printing such a piece all in one even small character, seems to me like repeating one of Whitefield's sermons in the monotony of a schoolboy.

On another occasion he was led by the alterations made in the text of one of his papers to write to William Franklin in these terms: "The editor of that paper, one Jones, seems a Grenvillian, or is very cautious, as you will see by his corrections and omissions. He has drawn the teeth and pared the nails of my paper, so that it can neither scratch nor bite."

Among the many delightful letters of Franklin is one that he wrote in his extreme old age to Noah Webster, acknowledging the receipt of a copy of the latter'sDissertations on the English Language, and applauding his zeal for preserving the purity of the English language both in its expressions and pronunciation; and in correcting the popular errors into which several of the States were continually falling with respect to both. In this letter, the writer again takes occasion to reprobate the use in New England of the word "improved" in the sense of "employed." The word in that signification appears to have been decidedly obnoxious to him, for he had previously banned it in a letter to Jared Eliot. Among the ludicrousinstances that he gave in his letter to Webster of its use in its perverted sense was an obituary statement to the effect that a certain deceased country gentleman had been for more than thirty yearsimprovedas a justice of the peace. He also found, he said, that, during his absence in France, several newfangled words had been introduced into the parliamentary vocabulary of America, such as the verb formed from the substantive "Notice," as "I should not have NOTICED this, were it not that the Gentleman, &c.," the verb formed from the substantive "Advocate," as "the Gentleman who ADVOCATES or has ADVOCATED that Motion, &c.," and the verb formed from the substantive "progress," the most awkward and abominable of the three, as "the committee, having PROGRESSED resolved to adjourn." He also found that the word "opposed," though not a new word, was used in a new manner, as "the Gentlemen who are OPPOSED to this Measure." From these verbal criticisims he passed to the advantages that had inured to the French language from obtaining the universal currency in Europe previously enjoyed by Latin. It was perhaps, he thought, owing to the fact that Voltaire's treatise on Toleration was written in French that it had exerted so sudden and so great an effect on the bigotry of Europe as almost entirely to disarm it. The English language bid fair to occupy a place only second to that of the French, and the effort therefore should be to relieve it still more of all the difficulties, however small, which discouraged its more general diffusion. A book, ill-printed, or a pronunciation in speaking, not well articulated, would render a sentence unintelligible, which from a clear print, or a distinct speaker, would have been immediately comprehended.

Instead of diminishing, however, the obstacles to the extension of the English language, Franklin declared, had increased. The practice, for illustration, of beginningall substantives with a capital letter, which had done so much to promote intelligibility, had been laid aside. And so, from the same fondness for an even and uniform appearance, had been the practice of italicizing important words, or words which should be emphasized when read. Another innovation was the use of the short round s instead of the long one which had formerly served so well to distinguish a word readily by its varied aspect. Certainly the omission of these prominent letters made the line appear more even, but it rendered it less immediately legible; as the paring all men's noses might smooth and level their faces, but would render their physiognomies less distinguishable. All these, Franklin said, were improvements backwards, and classed with them too should be the modern fancy that gray printing—read with difficulty by old eyes—unless in a very strong light and with good glasses, was more beautiful than black. A comparison between a volume of theGentleman's Magazine, printed between the years 1731 and 1740, and one printed in the last ten years would demonstrate the contrary. Lord Chesterfield pleasantly remarked this difference to Faulkener, the printer of theDublin Journal, when he was vainly making encomiums on his own paper as the most complete of any in the world. "But, Mr. Faulkener," said my Lord, "don't you think it might be still farther improved by using Paper and Ink not quite so near of a Colour"? Another point in favor of clear and distinct printing was that it afforded the eye, when it was being read aloud, an opportunity to take a look forward in time to supply the voice with the proper modulations for coming words. But, if words were obscurely printed or disguised by omitting the capitals and the long s, or otherwise, the reader was apt to modulate wrong, and, finding that he had done so, would be obliged to go back, and begin the sentence again, with a loss of pleasure to his hearers.

Two features, however, of the old system of printing did not meet with the approval of Franklin. It was absurd to place the interrogation point at the end of a sentence where it is not descried until it is too late for the inflection of interrogation to be given. The practice of the Spanish of putting this point at the beginning of the sentence was more sensible. The same reasoning was applicable to the practice of putting the stage direction "aside" at the end of a sentence.

Nice, however, as were the prejudices of Franklin with respect to the use of words, some of his own did not escape the vigilant purism of Hume, who, notwithstanding his admiration for Franklin, as the first great man of letters produced by America, was, where fastidious diction was concerned, not unlike John Randolph of Roanoke, whose exquisite fidelity to correct English impelled him even on his death-bed, when asked whether helayeasily, to reply with marked emphasis, "Ilieas easily as a dying man can." After reading Franklin's Canada pamphlet and essay on Population, Hume took exception to several of his expressions; as is shown by one of the latter's letters to him.

I thank you [wrote Franklin] for your friendly admonition relating to some unusual words in the pamphlet. It will be of service to me. The "pejorate" and the "colonize," since they are not in common use here, I give up as bad; for certainly in writings intended for persuasion and for general information, one can not be too clear; and every expression in the least obscure is a fault. The "unshakeable" too, though clear, I give up as rather low. The introducing new words, where we are already possessed of old ones sufficiently expressive, I confess must be generally wrong, as it tends to change the language; yet, at the same time, I can not but wish the usage of our tongue permitted making new words, when we want them, by composition of old ones whose meanings are already well understood. The German allows of it, and it is a commonpractice with their writers. Many of our present English words were originally so made; and many of the Latin words. In point of clearness, such compound words would have the advantage of any we can borrow from the ancient or from foreign languages. For instance, the wordinaccessible, though long in use among us, is not yet, I dare say, so universally understood by our people, as the worduncomeatablewould immediately be, which we are not allowed to write. But I hope with you, that we shall always in America make the best English of this Island our standard, and I believe it will be so.

Franklin has left behind him his own conception of what constitutes a good piece of writing.

To be good [he says] it ought to have a tendency to benefit the reader, by improving his virtue or his knowledge. But, not regarding the intention of the author, the method should be just; that is, it should proceed regularly from things known to things unknown, distinctly and clearly without confusion. The words used should be the most expressive that the language affords, provided that they are the most generally understood. Nothing should be expressed in two words that can be as well expressed in one; that is, no synonymes should be used, or very rarely, but the whole should be as short as possible, consistent with clearness; the words should be so placed as to be agreable to the ear in reading; summarily it should be smooth, clear and short, for the contrary qualities are displeasing.

Though entirely familiar, as we know from one of his letters, with the fate that befell Gil Blas, when he was so imprudent as to comply with the invitation of his master, the Archbishop, Franklin did not shrink from the peril of telling Benjamin Vaughan at his request what the faults of his writings were; and the terms in which he performed this delicate and hazardous office were suggested in part at least by his own methods of composition.

Your language [he told Vaughan] seems to me to be good and pure, and your sentiments generally just; but your style of composition wants perspicuity, and this I think owing principally to a neglect of method. What I would therefore recommend to you is, that, before you sit down to write on any subject, you would spend some days in considering it, putting down at the same time, in short hints, every thought which occurs to you as proper to make a part of your intended piece. When you have thus obtained a collection of the thoughts, examine them carefully with this view, to find which of them is properest to be presentedfirstto the mind of the reader that he, being possessed of that, may the more easily understand it, and be better disposed to receive what you intend for thesecond; and thus I would have you put a figure before each thought, to mark its future place in your composition. For so, every preceding proposition preparing the mind for that which is to follow, and the reader often anticipating it, he proceeds with ease, and pleasure, and approbation, as seeming continually to meet with his own thoughts. In this mode you have a better chance for a perfect production; because the mind attending first to the sentiments alone, next to the method alone, each part is likely to be better performed, and I think too in less time.

The writings of Franklin as a whole were true to his literary ideals, for they are, as a rule, smooth, clear and short; and the paper of preliminary hints that he drew up for the composition of theAutobiographywas in accord with his advice to Vaughan in regard to the value of such aids to perspicuity. His familiar letters, agreeable as they are, bear evidence at times of haste and lack of revision, and even his more informal writings, other than letters, occasionally betray a certain sort of carelessness of construction and expression. This is conspicuously true of theAutobiography, and, indeed, it is one of the merits of that work, so perfectly is it in keeping with its easy, meandering narrative. But, generally speaking, the compositions of Franklin are fully in harmony with his best standards of literary accomplishment. They are flowing and euphonious,moving with a steady, smooth and sometimes powerful, current from things known to things unknown, distinctly and lucidly without confusion. They are as clear as a trout stream. If one of his sentences is read a second time, it is not for his meaning, but merely for a renewal of the gratification that the mind derives from a thought presented free from the slightest trace of intercepting obscurity. They are so concise that the endeavor to make an abstract of one of them is likely to result in a sacrifice of brevity. But smoothness, clearness, and brevity, are far from being the only merits of Franklin's writings. He was not richly endowed with imagination; though he was by no means destitute of that sovereign faculty; placid and sober as the ordinary operations of his mind were. But Fancy, the graceful sister of Imagination, Invention, Wit and Humor, and remarkable powers of statement and reasoning, all, except humor in its more wayward moods, under the complete sway of a sound judgment, gave life and strength to almost all that he wrote. His similes and metaphors are often strikingly original and apt; never more so than when they light up with a sudden flash the dark core of some abstruse scientific problem. A vivacity of spirits that nothing could long depress, accompanied by a quick but kindly sense of the ludicrous rises like bubbles of mellow wine to the surface of his intimate letters, and other lighter compositions; and, when associated with conceptions lured from the bright heaven of invention, and elaborated with the utmost finish, as in the case of his Bagatelles, imparts to his productions a quality that does not belong to any but the best creations of literary genius. It is interesting to note how even the most intractable subject, the new-invented Pennsylvania fireplace, smoky chimneys, interest calculations become suffused with some sort of intellectual charm, born of absolute transparency of speech, if nothing else, as soon as they pass through the luminousand tapestried cells of his spacious mind. That mind, indeed, like all minds of the same comprehensive character, in which the balance has not been lost between the subjective and objective faculties, was prone to see everything in large pictorial outlines. Fable, epilogue, parable, a story that was not so much the jest of a moment as the wisdom of all time, a historical incident, that pointed some grave moral, or enforced some invaluable truth, came naturally to his mind as they might well do to the minds of all men who are creed-founders, or teachers, in any sense, on a large scale, of the mass of men, as he was. How naturally such methods of instruction belonged to him is well illustrated in the story told of him by John Adams. One evening, at a social gathering, shortly before he left England, at the close of his second mission to that country, a gentleman expressed the opinion that writers like Æsop and La Fontaine had exhausted the resources of fable. Franklin, so far from concurring with this view, declared that many new and instructive fables could still be invented, and, when asked whether he could think of one, replied that, if he was furnished with pen and paper, he would produce one forthwith. The pen and paper were handed to him, and, in a few minutes, he summed up the existing relations between England and America in this fable:

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