memorable "puffy" roll in the streets, observed as he went along by Miss Read, his future wife; his first sleep in the city in the Quaker meeting; his printing-house work and education; his singular association with Governor Keith, and the notice which he received from Burnet, the Governor of New York, as he journeyed along, marking thus early his career and influence with titled personages, which carried him to the thrones of kings themselves.

That "odd volume of the Spectator," too, which directed his youthful tastes, how often do we meet with its kindly influences in American literature. It turns up again and again in the pages of Freneau, Dennie, Paulding, Irving; and we have had another good look at it lately through the lorgnette of Master Ik Marvel.*

Franklin left Boston at seventeen, in 1723; visited England the following year, worked at his trade, and wrote a treatise of infidel metaphysics, and returned to Philadelphia in 1726. The plan

for the conduct of life which he wrote on this voyage homewards, has been lost. Its scope may be readily gathered from his writings. Industry, we may be sure, formed a prominent feature in it, and economy of happiness the next, by which a man should live on as good terms as possible with himself and his neighbors. In his early life, Franklin had exposed himself to some danger by his habit of criticism. More than one passage of his writings warns the reader against this tendency. Though he never appears to have wanted firmness on proper occasions, he settled down upon the resolution to speak ill of no one whatever, and as much good as possible of everybody.

On his return to Philadelphia, he established the club, the Junto, which lasted many years, and was a means not only of improvement but of political influence, as his opportunities for exercising it increased. The steps of Franklin's progress were now rapid. He established himself as a printer, purchased the Pennsylvania Gazette, then recently started, and which he had virtually projected in 1729; published the same year a pamphlet, A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency; married in 1730; assisted in founding the Philadelphia Library in 1731; the next year published his Almanac; was chosen in 1736 clerk of the General Assembly; became deputy postinaster at Philadelphia in 1737; was all this while a printer, and publishing the newspaper, not dividing the duties of his printing office with a partner until 1748; in 1741 published The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for all the British Plantations in America; invented the stove which bears his name in 1742; proposed the American Philosophical Society in 1743; established the Academy, out of which the University of Pennsylvania finally grew, in 1749; in 1752 demonstrated his theory of the identity of lightning with electricity by his famous kite experiment in a field near Philadelphia; on the anticipation of war with France was sent as a delegate to the Congress of Commissioners of the Colonies at Albany in 1754, where he proposed a system of

Franklin did not forget the Spectator, the friend of his boyhood, in his last days. In his will be bequeathes to the son of his friend, Mrs Hewson, a set of Spectators, Tatlera, and Guardians, handsomely bound."

union which in important points anticipated the present Confederation; opposed taxation by parliament; assisted Braddock's Expedition by his energy; was himself for a short time a military commander on the frontier in 1756; was the next year sent to England by the Assembly, a popular representative against the pretensions of the Proprietaries, when Massachusetts, Maryland, and Georgia also appointed him their agent; took part in the Historical Review of Pennsylcania, a trenchant volume on the affairs of the Colony, in 1759; wrote a pamphlet, The Interest of Great Britain Considered in the retention of Canada, in 1760; received the degree of Doctor of Laws from the Universities of Edinburgh and Oxford, and returned to America in 1762. Two years after he returned to England as Colonial agent; pursued his course industriously and courteously for the interests of the old Government, but firmly for the right claimed at home; bore a full Examination before Parliament on the relations of America to the Stamp Act, which was published and read with general interest; was confronted by Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General for the crown, as counsel for Hutchinson at the memorable privy council examination of January, 1774; returned again to Philadelphia in 1775; signed the Declaration of Independence in Congress; went ambassador to France in October of the same year, when he was seventy, and displayed his talents in diplomacy and society; returning after signing the treaty of peace in 1785 to America, when he was made President of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for three years; was a delegate to the Federal Convention in 1787, and retaining his full powers of mind and constitutional cheerfulness to the last, died April 17, 1790, in his eighty-fourth year.

The famous epitaph which he wrote in his days of youth, at the age of twenty-three, was not placed over his grave in Philadelphia.

The Body
Of

Benjamin Franklin,
Printer,

(Like the cover of an old book,

Its contents torn out,

And stript of its lettering and gilding,)
Lies here, food for worms.

Yet the work itself shall not be lost,
For it will, as he believed, appear once more,
In a new

And more beautiful edition,
Corrected and amended

By The Author."

We have already printed, ante, p. 22. Woodbridge's epitaph on Cotton, supposed to be the original of this. There is another old New England source in the lines written in 1681, by Joseph Capen, Minister of Topsfield, on the death of John Foster, who, Mr. Sparks tells us, set up the first printing-press in Boston.

Thy body, which no activeness did laok,
Now's laid aside like an old alınanac;
But for the present only's out of date,
Twill have at length a far more active state.
Yea, though with dust thy body solled be,
Yet at the resurrection we shall see

A fair edition, and of matchless worth.
Free from Errata, new in Heaven set forth;
'Tis but a word from God, the great Creator,
It shall be done when he saith Imprimatur,
Davis, in his Travels in America, Ands another source for

crafty old sophister, in the account of the conversation of old Bradford with Keimer, the printer, on Franklin's first introduction; or the adroitness with which, when he is about being caught in his own web, when he is recommending modesty in proposing critical opinions, and falls himself to amending a couplet of Pope-he ventures his emendation, and recovers his position by adding, "This, however, I should submit to better judg ments."

There is a simplicity in this book which charins us in the same way with the humorous touches of nature in the Vicar of Wakefield. Franklin's Boston brother in the printing-office,-irascible, jealous, and mortified on the return of the success ful adventurer, who is playing off his prosperity before the workmen, is an artist's picture of life, drawn in a few conclusive touches. So, too, is Keimer as happily hit off as any personage in Gil Blas, particularly in that incident at the break-up of Franklin's system of vegetable diet, which he had adopted; he invites his journeymen and two women friends to dine with him, providing a roast pig for the occasion, which being prematurely served up, is devoured by the enthusiast, before the company arrives; in that effective sketch, in a paragraph of the Philadelphia City Croaker, whose ghost still walks every city in the world, mocking prosperity of every degree,-“ a person of note, an elderly man, with a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking." The Autobiography was written in several portions. It was first commenced at Twyford, the country residence of the good bishop of St. Asaph, in 1771, and addressed to his son the Governor of New Jersey, and continued at intervals, till the Revolutionary War occupied the writer's time exclusively. It was again, at the solicitation of his friends James and Vaughan, resumed at Passy, in 1784, and afterwards continued in America. The history of the several editions of this work is curious. It was first, as was the case with Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia," published in French, translated from the author's manuscript. This version was re-translated into English, and published for the first time in that language, in London, in 1793. Oddly enough, in another French edition, which appeared in Paris, in 1798, the autobiography was again translated into French, from the English version of the foreign language. The work, as Franklin wrote it, in his native tongue, was first given to the world in the collection of his writings, by his grandson, William Temple Franklin, in 1817. The translation from the French is still in circulation in this country, notwithstanding the publication of Franklin's original; though the authoritative edition of Sparks has of late set an example which will drive all other copies than the genuine one from the market.*

To the old American editions a continuation was added by Dr. Henry Stuber. He was of German parentage, born in Phi ladelphia, about 1770. He was a pupil of Dr. Kunze, in Greek, Latin, and German, when that divine, afterwards established in New York, was connected with the University of Pennsylva nia. He studied medicine, which his health hardly allowed him to practise. Obtaining a situation in one of the public offices of the United States government, he was engaged in the study of the law, when he died early in life. He wrote for the Journals of the day; but the only publication by which he will Do remembered, is his continuation of the Life of Franklin.

107

ankle

amidst the cares of state, that he composed those literary essays of such general fame the Ephe mera, Petition of the Cats, the Whistle, and the Dialogue with the Gout, written for the amusement of the brilliant friends, including Madame Helvetius and Madame Brillon, who enlivened his age and cares at Passy and Auteuil.

While Franklin was a printer in London, he gave vent to his philosophical views by printing a pamphlet entitled A Dissertation on Liberty and Neces sity, Pleasure and Pain, in a Letter to a Friend. This was in 1725. Though he expresses a dislike of the publication, he recurs to it with some paternal affection both in the Autobiography and in his Correspondence. The essay belonged to the school of Mandeville in obliterating the distinctions between virtue and vice, and readily introduced the young printer, who was not nineteen years of age at that time, to that arch-skeptic, the author of "The Fable of the Bees," who held an entertaining club in Cheapside. The pamphlet was started in the busy brain of the compositor by his setting up Wollaston's "Religion of

Beyond this, the memory of the man had almost perished when the foregoing particulars were with difficulty collected by Dr. John W. Francis, of this city, who communicated them to Mr. Sparks, by whom they were published in the tenth volume of the Life and Writings of Franklin.

Nature," to which it was intended as a reply. | Its argument was a sublimated optimism arguing everything in the world to be right from the attributes of the Deity of wisdom, goodness, and power. The motto was from Dryden:

Whatever is, is right. But purblind man
Sees but a part o' the chain, the nearest links;
His eyes not carrying to that equal beam,
That poises all above.

One hundred copies only of the work were printed; a few were given to friends; the author became dissatisfied with the production, and burnt the remainder, excepting a copy filled with manuscript notes, by his acquaintance at the time, a surgeon named Lyons, who wrote on the "Infallibility of Human Judgment." This tract has not been printed in any edition of Franklin's works. When Mr. Sparks published his edition in 1840, it was thought to be entirely lost. That editor expressed his belief that "no copy of this tract is now known to be in existence." Sir James Mackintosh searched for it in vain. Since that time a copy has been found in England. James Crossley communicates the fact to the antiquarian publication, Notes and Queries.* It is a pamphlet of sixteen closely printed octavo pages. It is addressed to Mr. J (ames) R (alph), and commences with the comprehensive declaration: "I have here, according to your request, given you my present thoughts on the general state of things in the universe;" and concludes with the undeniable assertion, Truth will be truth, though it sometimes proves mortifying and distasteful."

"

Poor Richard's Almanac was commenced by Franklin in 1733, and continued for twenty-six years, to 1758. It was put forward as the production of Richard Saunders, Philomath, printed and sold by B. Franklin. Its quaint humor and homespun moralities made its successive issues great favorites with the people, who to their credit have always shown an avidity for popular publications of humor and sagacity, from Cotton Mather's grim moralities down to the felicitous Mrs. Partington, who gets the smallest modicum of wisdom out of the greatest amount of nonsense. About ten thousand copies were sold of it annually, a great number for the times. As in the case of most very popular works, the early editions were literally consumed by its ardent admirers. One of the old copies is now considered a great rarity; and a complete set was found by Mr. Sparks to be unattainable.t

Its greatest popularity was achieved when a number of Poor Richard's aphorisms were collected and prefixed as an harangue to the people, The Way to Wealth, to the almanac for 1758. In this concentrated form Poor Richard passed

No. 114, Jan. 8, 1952.

+ Most of the numbers were, however, got together after nearly four years' research among public libraries and private collections, by John Doggett, Jr., who, in 1849, commenced the republication of the Poor Richard matter in annual instalments of three years to each number, appended to new astronomical calculations for the current year. He proceeded with this work through three numbers, when it was interrupted by his death. At the sale of his effects, eighteen numbers of Poor Richard were purchased at twelve dollars each. John Doggett was from Dorchester, Mass. He dealt in New York in a virtuoso collection of paintings, engravings, autographs, &c. He commenced a New York Directory in 1842, and continued it till his death in the olty, in 1859,

into general circulation as a popular tract in newspapers and broadsheets. Franklin himself attributes the growing plenty of money in Philadelphia after its appearance, to the practice of its economical precepts. Three translations have been made of it in French, where it passes as La Science du Bonhomme Richard. It was printed in modern Greek at Didot's press in Paris in 1823.

Poor Richard's matter consists of Mr. Saunders's facetious annual introductions; a bit of homely poetry for the month; with the interspaces of the Calendar, left after the important weather prophecies sprinkled down the page, filled with sententious maxims. Some of these are coarse and homely for the digestion of ploughmen; others show the nicer edge of Franklin's wit and experience. Rhyme lends its aid to reason; and practical morality has work to do which renders her not very dainty in the use of words. Temperance and independence have sturdy advocates in Poor Richard. "It is hard," says he, "for an empty sack to stand upright." "Drink water, put the money in your pocket, and leave the dry bellyache in the punchbowl" "If you would be reveng'd of your enemy, govern yourself."

"If you ride a horse sit close and tight,

If you ride a man, sit easy and light."

แ If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing." "Fish and visiters smell in three days." "As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle silence." The poetry is in a few more lines than the maxims, generally with a home thrust at vanity or vice.

That all from Adam first begun,

Since none but Whiston doubts,
And that his son, and his son's son

Were ploughmen, clowns, and louts;
Here lies the only difference now,
Some shot off late, some soon;
Your sires i' th' morning left the plouga
And ours i' th' afternoon.

And sometimes a little playful elegance:
My love and I for kisses play'd,

She would keep stakes, I was content,
But when I won, she would be paid,
This made me ask her what she meant:

Quoth she, since you are in this wrangling vein, Here, take your kisses, give me mine again. When Paul Jones, in Paris, in 1778, was making application to the French Government for a military vessel to pursue his career at sea wearied out with the delay of the officials, and the neglect of his letters from the sea-ports, he happened to take up an old number of Franklin's Alinanac, and alighted on this sentence of Poor Richard, "If you would have your business done, go; if not, send." He took the advice, proceeded himself to the capital, and pushed his application so successfully, that in gratitude to the oracle he obtained permission to call the ship granted to him the Bon Homme Richard." Its fortunes soon made the French translation of the name as familiar to American ears as the original Poor Richarl.

Mackenzie's Life of Paul Jones, L. 184