stands up and avows himself the author of all. I can compare him only to Zanga in Dr. Young's Revenge

-"Know, then, 'twas I.

I forged the letter-I disposed the pictureI hated, I despised--and I destroy!"

I ask, my Lords, whether the revengeful temper attributed by poetic fiction only to the bloody-minded African, is not surpassed by the coolness and apathy of the wily New Englander?-- WEDDERBURN, ALEXANDER (LORD LOUGHBOROUGH), 1774, Speech before the Committee of the Privy Council, Jan. 29.

The character of the inquiry, and the dignity of the tribunal to whose investigation it was submitted, were not duly considered. Ministers, taught by experience, ought to have known the degradation which they must inevitably incur when they elevated an individual into the rank of a personal opponent. . . . Dr. Franklin, who had recently completed his sixty-seventh year, who was known and honoured in the most eminent philosophical and literary societies in Europe, sat with his grey, unadorned locks, a hearer of one of the severest invectives that ever proceeded from the tongue of man, and an observer of a boisterous and obstreperous merriment and exultation, which added nothing to the dignity of his judges. He had sufficient self-command to suppress all display of feeling; but the transactions of the day sunk deeply into his mind, and produced an unextinguishable rancour against this country, which coloured all the acts of his subsequent life, and occasioned extensive and ever memorable consequences. ADOLPHUS, JOHN, 1802, History of England During the Reign of George III, vol. 11, pp. 46, 47.

The conduct of Franklin in the affair of the letters was unworthy a man of honour and a gentleman. -MASSEY, WILLIAM, 1855, A History of England during the reign of George III, vol. II, p. 145.

As we review the whole story of the transaction of this day, in cool blood, we can hardly understand how it occurred; and there are those on the other side of the ocean, if not on our own side, who fail to perceive how it could have been justified, as it was, by so many of our calmest, wisest, and most conscientious patriots. For, certainly, the men who were intrusted with the letters were second

to none in Massachusetts for integrity and principle. Chauncy and Cooper, as we all know, were Doctors of Divinity, who could hardly have been invited to take part in an unworthy act. Doctor Winthrop very remotely connected with myself, and of whom I may therefore speak without delicacy-was the foremost man of science at Harvard University, a member, too, of the Royal Society, and a gentleman of the highest character. And Bowdoin, who stands first on the list, would have been singled out among all the patriots of that period as a man of the greatest moderation, of inflexible principle, and of the nicest sense of honor. Yet Bowdoin, in a letter to Franklin of Sept. 6, 1774, calls the sending of the letters "that most meritorious act;" and I am not aware of any other view of the affair having been expressed, at the time it occurred, by him, or by any other of our Revolutionary Fathers. --WINTHROP, ROBERT C., 1878, The Hutchinson Letters, Addresses and Speeches, vol. IV, p. 3.

It must be confessed that the question whether Franklin should have sent these letters to be seen by the leading men of Massachusetts involves points of some delicacy. The very elaborateness and vehemence of the exculpations put forth by American writers indicate a lurking feeling that the opposite side is at least plausible. I add my opinion decidedly upon Franklin's side, though I certainly see force in the contrary view. Yet before one feels fully satisfied he would wish to know from whom these letters came to Franklin's hands, the information then given him concerning them, and the authority which the giver might be supposed to have over them, in a word, all the attendant and qualifying circumstances and conversation upon which presumptions might have been properly founded by Franklin. Upon these essential matters. there is absolutely no evidence. Franklin was bound to secrecy concerning them, at whatever cost to himself. But it is evident that Franklin never for an instant entertained the slightest doubt of the entire propriety of his action, and even in his own cause he was wont to be a fairminded judge.-MORSE, JR., JOHN T., 1889, Benjamin Franklin (American Statesmen), p. 182, note.

POOR RICHARD'S ALMANAC

1733.

.

COURTEOUS READER-I might attempt in this place to gain thy favor by declaring that I write Almanacs with no other view than that of the public good, but in this I should not be sincere. The plain truth of the matter is, I am excessive poor, and my wife, good woman, is, I tell her, excessive proud: she cannot bear, she says to sit spinning in her shift of tow, while I do nothing but gaze at the stars; and has threatened more than once to burn all my books and rattling traps (as she calls my instruments) if I do not make some profitable use of them for the good of my family. The printer has offered me some considerable share of the profits, and I have thus begun to comply with my dame's desire.-SAUNDERS, DR. RICHARD, 1733, Poor Richard's Almanac.

While in this weary state of suspense, a prey to impatience, anxiety, and mortification, Jones happened one day to be looking over an old number of Franklin's Pennsylvania Almanac, when his attention was struck with the saying of Poor Richard: "If you would have your business done, go; if not, send." It immediately. It immediately occurred to him, that the delay of his own business was in no slight degree owing to his having so long remained at a distance, sending letters to court, instead of going to attend to it in person. He set out forthwith for the capital, and made such good speed in his errand, that, ere many days had elapsed, he received from the reluctant M. de Sartine, the following conclusive letter, dated at Versailles, on the 4th of February, 1779.

Feeling that his final success in obtaining a command had been owing to his having adopted the good advice which he had met with in Dr. Franklin's Almanac, and out of compliment to the sage, for whom his veneration was so unbounded, Paul Jones had asked leave, as appears by M. Sartine's letter, to give the ship of which the command was now conferred upon him, the name of the Bon Homme Richard, the Poor Richard: a name which his heroism was destined to render as enduring as his own. -MACKENZIE, ALEXANDER SLIDELL, 1841, The Life of Paul Jones, vol. 1, pp. 133, 136.

"But, pray, dear father, tell us what made him so famous," said George. "I

have seen his portrait a great many times. There is a wooden bust of him in one of our streets; and marble ones, I suppose in some other places. And towns, and ships of war, and steamboats, and banks, and academies, and children, are often named after Franklin. Why should he have grown so very famous?" "Your question is a reasonable one, George," answered his father. "I doubt whether Franklin's philosophical discoveries, important as they were, or even his vast political services, would have given him all the fame which he acquired. It appears to me that 'Poor Richard's Almanac' did more than anything else towards making him familiarly known to the public. As the writer of those proverbs which Poor Richard was supposed to utter, Franklin became the counsellor and household friend of almost every family in America. Thus it was the humblest of all his labors that has done the most for his fame."-HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL, 1842, Biographical Stories, Works, Riverside ed., vol. XII, p. 202.

Some of the best fun Franklin ever wrote, occurs in the prefaces to "Poor Richard." . . . "Poor Richard." at this day, would be reckoned an indecent production. All great humorists were more or less indecent before Charles Dickens; i. e., they used certain words which are now never pronounced by polite persons, and are never printed by respectable printers; and they referred freely to certain subjects which are familiar to every living creature, but which, it is now agreed among civilized beings, shall not be topics of conversation. In this respect, "Poor Richard" was no worse, and not much better, than other colonial periodicals, some of which contained things incredibly obscene; as much so as the broadest passages of Sterne, Smollett, Fielding, and Defoe.--PARTON, JAMES, 1864, Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 1, pp. 228, 234.

The almanac went year after year, for a quarter of a century, into the house of nearly every shopkeeper, planter, and farmer in the American provinces. Its wit and humor, its practical tone, its shrewd maxims, its worldly honesty, its morality of common sense, its useful information, all chimed well with the national character. It formulated in

homely phrase and with droll illustration what the colonists more vaguely knew, felt, and believed upon a thousand points of life and conduct. In so doing it greatly trained and invigorated the natural mental traits of the people. "Poor Richard" was the revered and popular schoolmaster of a young nation during its period of tutelage. His teachings are among the powerful forces which have gone to shaping the habits of Americans. His terse and picturesque bits of the wisdom and the virtue of this world are familiar in our mouths today; they moulded our great-grandparents and their children; they have informed our popular traditions; they still influence our actions, guide our ways of thinking, and establish our points of view, with the constant control of acquired habits which we little suspect. If we were accustomed still to read the literature of the almanac, we should be charmed with its humor. The world has not yet grown away from it, nor ever will. Addison and Steele had more polish but vastly less humor than Franklin. "Poor Richard" has found eternal life by passing into the daily speech of the people, while the "Spectator" is fast being crowded out of the hands of all save scholars in literature.-MORSE, JR., JOHN T., 1889, Benjamin Franklin (American Statesmen), p. 22.

These

"Poor Richard's Almanac" was SO much the best that it soon took the place of all others, and its wise maxims were in people's mouths nearly as often as Bible verses. Indeed, I have heard people quote Franklin's proverbs as Solomon's, though they are generally very different. homely sayings had a wonderful effect on the New England colonists: they helped to make them sharp, business-like, active, cautious, hard-working, saving. Franklin was the first well-known type and the best type of the true "Yankee."-WATKINS, MILDRED CABELL, 1894, American Literature, p, 20.

Franklin's Almanack, his crowning work in the sphere of journalism, published under the pseudonym of Richard Saunders, -better known since as Poor Richard, -is still one of the marvels of modern literature. Under one or another of many titles the contents of this publication, exclusive of its calendars, have been translated into every tongue having any

pretensions to a literature; and have had more readers, probably, than any other publication in the English or indeed in any other language, with the single exception of the Bible. It was the first issue from an American press that found a popular welcome in foreign lands, and it still enjoys the special distinction of being the only almanac ever published that owed its extraordinary popularity entirely to its literary merit. What adds to the surprise with which we contemplate the fame and fortunes of this unpretentious publication, is the fact that its reputation was established by its first number, and when its author was only twenty-six years of age. For a period of twenty-six years, and until Franklin ceased to edit it, this annual was looked forward to by a larger portion of the colonial population and with more impatience than now awaits a President's annual message to Congress.-BIGELOW, JOHN, 1897, Library of the World's Best Literature, ed. Warner, vol. x, p. 5926.

And thus for a quarter of a century or more Poor Richard preached his little linelong sermons, year after year; sermons from very old texts, many of them-waifs of common knowledge or tradition-Biblical many of them and as old as Solomon, but given a new twang by quaint or sharp wording, which set them upon new and wider flight. Let us not speak reproachfully of the stealing; 'tis a good sort of stealing, like Chaucer's in his "Canterbury Tales;" whoever can put new force and new beauty into an old truth by his method of re-stating it, is doing good work-doing indeed what most of the good sermonizers are bent upon. No matter what old metal you may use, if you can put enough of your own powder behind it 'twill reach the mark.-MITCHELL, DONALD G., 1897, American Lands and Letters, The Mayflower to Rip-Van-Winkle, p. 107.

It was in "Poor Richard," indeed, that we see Franklin in his most striking light as a philosopher of the people-a hardheaded, practical thinker, an epigrammatic moralist, and an exploiter or adapter of adages, almost any one of which might have made him famous. For Mr. Saunders had a terse way of telling plain truths, and while his sayings were not, for the most part, exactly original, nearly every one of them, even when a more

From the poverty and obscurity in which I was born, and in which I passed my earliest years, I have raised myself to a state of affluence and some degree of celebrity in the world. As constant good fortune has accompanied me even to an advanced period of life, my posterity will perhaps be desirous of learning the means which I employed, and which, thanks to Providence, so well succeeded with me. They may also deem them fit to be imitated, should any of them find themselves in similar circumstances. This good fortune, when I reflect on it, which is frequently the case, has induced me sometimes to say, that if it were left to my choice, I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second. edition the faults of the first. So would I also wish to change some incidents of it for others more favourable. Notwithstanding, if this condition was denied, I should still accept the offer of recommencing the same life. But as this repetition is not to be expected, that which resembles most living one's life over again, seems to be to recall all the circumstances of it; and, to render this remembrance more durable, to record them in writing. In thus employing myself I shall yield to the inclination so natural to old men, of talking of themselves and their own actions; and I shall indulge it without being tiresome to those who, from respect to my age, might conceive themselves obliged to listen to me, since they will be always free to read me or not. -FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN, 1771, Memoirs Written by Himself.

There is a simplicity in this book which charms 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 successful 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.". DUYCKINCK, EVERT A., AND GEORGE L., 1855-65-75, Cyclopædia of American Literature, ed. Simons, vol. 1, p. 117.

Of this fragment of "Autobiography" I have sometimes been imprudent enough to say, that it is the only piece of writing yet produced on the continent of America which is likely to be generally known two centuries hence.-PARTON, JAMES, 1864, Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 1, Preface, p. 6.

It is now eighty years since the death of Dr. Franklin, and during this time his "Autobiography" has been more extensively read in this country than any other historical work. It was, perhaps, the earliest American book that acquired and sustained a great popularity.-GREENE, SAMUEL A., 1871, The Story of a Famous Book, Atlantic Monthly, vol. 27, p. 207.

Wherever he lived he was the inevitable centre of a system of influences always important and constantly enlarging; and dying, he perpetuated it by an autobiography which to this day not only remains one of the most widely read and readable books in our language, but has had the distinction of enriching the literature of nearly every other. No man has ever lived whose life has been more universally studied by his countrymen or is more familiar to them.-BIGELOW, JOHN, 1879, Franklin, A Sketch.

A greater Autobiography than Edward Gibbon's is our own Benjamin Franklin's. Franklin had exactly the genius and temperament of an autobiographer. He loved and admired himself; but he was so bent upon analysis and measurement that he could not let even himself pass withou discrimination. The style is like Defoe,

Indeed we are pleased to find that he placed great value both on Defoe and Bunyan, whose stories are told so like his own. He watches his own life as he watched one of his own philosophical experiments. He flies his existence as he flew his kite, and tells the world about it all just as a thoughtful boy might tell his mother what he had been doing sure of her kindly interest in him. The world is like a mother to Ben Franklin always: so domestic and familiar is his thought of her. He who

has read this book has always afterward the boy-man who wrote it clear and distinct among the men he knows.-BROOKS, PHILLIPS, 1880-94, Biography, Essays and Addresses, p. 441.

But to Benjamin Franklin's "Autobiography" I feel that I owe more than to any other book, and the greatest literary treasure I own is an old edition of this work, in two tiny volumes, printed in London in 1799. I picked it up at a book sale some years ago for fifty cents. It is a very rare edition, I believe, and is not to be found in the Stevens collection of Franklin's works, now in the possession of our government. GILDER, JEANNETTE L., 1888, Books That Have Helped Me, p. 72. The style of this work is inimitable; it is as simple, direct, and idiomatic as Bunyan's; it is a style which no rhetorician can assist us to attain, and which the least touch of the learned critic would spoil. -UNDERWOOD, FRANCIS H., 1893, The Builders of American Literature, First Series, p. 46.

GENERAL

I am very sorry that you intend soon to leave our hemisphere. America has sent us many good things,-gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, indigo, and so forth; but you are the first philosopher, and indeed the first great man of letters, for whom we are beholden to her.-HUME, DAVID, 1762, Letter to Franklin, May 10.

One of the first philosophers, one of the most eminent literary characters, as well as one of the most important in the political world, that the present age can boast of. COWPER, WILLIAM, 1782, Letter to the Rev. William Unwin, May 27, Works, vol. II, p. 426.

The peculiar charm of his writings, and his great merit also in action, consisted in the clearness with which he saw his

object, and the bold and steady pursuit of it, by the surest and the shortest road. He never suffered himself, in conduct, to be turned aside by the seductions of interest or vanity, or to be scared by hesitation and fear, or to be misled by the arts of his adversaries. Neither did he, in discussion, ever go out of his way in search of ornament, or stop short from dread of the consequences. He never could be caught, in short, acting absurdly, or writing nonsensically:-at all times, and in every thing he undertook, the vigour of an understanding, at once original and practical, was distinctly perceivable. But it must not be supposed that his writings are devoid of ornament or amusement. The latter especially abounds in almost all he ever composed; only nothing is sacrificed to them. On the contrary, they come most naturally into their places; and they uniformly help on the purpose in hand, of which neither writer nor reader ever loses sight for an instant. Thus, his style has all the vigour and even conciseness of Swift, without any of his harshness. It is in no degree more flowery, yet both elegant and lively. The wit, or rather humour, which prevails in his works, varies with the subject. Sometimes he is bitter and sarcastic; oftener gay, and even droll; reminding us, in this respect, far more frequently of Addison than of Swift, as might be naturally expected from his admirable temper, or the happy turn of his imagination. There is nothing more delightful than the constancy with which those amiable feelings, those sound principles, those truly profound views of human affairs, make their appearance at every opportunity, whether the immediate subject be speculative or practical of a political, or of a general, description. We have said little respecting his language, which is pure, and English. A few, and but a few, foreign expressions may be traced, and these French, rather than American; as, for instance, influential. Indeed, we cannot reckon him more as an American than an European. JEFFREY, FRANCIS LORD, 1817, Franklin's Correspondence, Edinburgh Review, vol. 28, pp. 276, 277.

Taken all together, this collection of letters would, we think, in the absence of all other documents and representations, afford sufficient means for a competen