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inspired his early taste for biography and anecdote; Defoe's Essays on Projects stirred perhaps his first propensities to invention and practical enterprise; and Dr Mather's "Essay to do Good," his benevolent inclinations. He mentions the last two as tending to give him a turn of thinking which influenced the principal future events of his life.

We now hear no more of his preference for the sea; or it remained with him only in the innocent shape of the love of bathing and swimming; for he steadily applied to his brother's business, and became important to all his proceedings. Very humble, and humbly dealt with, was his first attempt at authorship"wretched stuff," he lived to call it," in the streetballad style;" but the mercenary brother found his account in commissioning Benjamin to hawk some of these productions about the streets of Boston, particularly a ballad called "The Light-house Tragedy" (containing an account of a then recent shipwreck) and "a Sailor's Song, on the taking of Teach or Blackbeard, a noted Pirate." The father however remonstrated, reminded both brothers that versemakers were generally beggars, and criticised Benjamin's productions until he relinquished them.

But he was not unnoticed in a more encouraging way, and for more hopeful production. Matthew Adams, esq., an intelligent merchant of Boston, welcomed him to the use of a pretty extensive library; he read Locke, and the "Port Royal Art of Thinking;" and studied and imitated the Spectator. He speaks in warm terms of his delight at making an odd volume of the latter his own, and the use he promptly made of it. "This was a publication I had never seen," he says. "I bought the volume, and read it again and again. I was enchanted with it, thought the style excellent, and wished it were in my power to imitate it. With this view, I selected some of the papers, made short summaries of the sense of each period, and put them for a few days aside. I then, without looking at the book, endeavoured to restore the essays to their due

form, and to express each thought at length, as it was in the original, employing the most appropriate words that occurred to my mind.

"I afterwards compared my Spectator with the original I perceived some faults, which I corrected; but I found that I wanted a fund of words, if I may so express myself, and a facility of recollecting and employing them, which I thought I should by that time have acquired, had I continued to make verses. The continual need of words of the same meaning, but of different lengths for the measure, or of different sounds for the rhyme, would have obliged me to seek for a variety of synonymes, and have rendered me master of them. From this belief, I took some of the tales of the Spectator, and turned them into verse; and after a time, when I had sufficiently forgotten them, I again converted them into prose.

"Sometimes also I mingled all my summaries together, and a few weeks after endeavoured to arrange them in the best order, before I attempted to form the periods and complete the essays. This I did with a view of acquiring method in the arrangement of my thoughts. On comparing afterwards my performance with the original, many faults were apparent, which I corrected; but I had sometimes the satisfaction to think, that in certain particulars of little importance I had been fortunate enough to improve the order of thought or the style; and this encouraged me to hope that I should succeed, in time, in writing decently in the English language, which was one of the great objects of my ambition."

About this time, a literary acquaintance of the name of Collins, of Boston, induced Franklin to attempt his first original composition in prose. They had been disputing verbally on the propriety of bestowing a learned education upon the female sex. Franklin maintained the affirmative of the question: but his opponent, having the greater command of words, left him mortified with the feeling of a momentary defeat. As they were not again to meet for

some time, Franklin determined to attempt a reply to Collins on paper: and a correspondence was com menced upon the subject. Thus springs the future stream of Franklin's literary character, and his singular ability for temperate and fair discussion. He here again receives the advantage of his father's superintendence of his plans. The papers both of Benjamin and his friend were accidentally seen by him; to Collins he gave the palm of superior eloquence-to Franklin, of more correct orthography and punctuation; but far from discouraging his future attempts in this way, he stimulated his plans of self-improvement, and fostered his rising ambition.

His other modes of economising time and money were often commendable. He adopted a vegetable diet; and offering to maintain himself for half the money his brother paid for his board, the overture was readily accepted. Out of money saved from this half now paid to him, he contrived to obtain what was to him a considerable fund for the purchase of books and while his brother and the other workmen took their dinner and other meals, his lighter repast of biscuit or bread and water, a handful of raisins, or a tart, was soon despatched, and afforded him leisure for reading and study, which he could obtain in no other way.

Evidently fond of disputation, and having increased some previous tendency to scepticism by the perusal of Collins and Shaftesbury, he now studied the Socratic method of conducting it, to the great occasional perplexity of his associates; but with great good sense he established a rule for himself, never to use the phrases" certainly, undoubtedly," or any others that gave an air of positiveness to his opinions; but to substitute-"I conceive; I apprehend; it appears to me so and so it is so, if I am not greatly mistaken." "This habit, I believe," he says, has been of great advantage to me, when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions, and persuade men into measures that I have been, from time to time, engaged in promoting.

And as the chief ends of conversation are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-meaning and sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat most of the purposes for which speech was given to us."

Men must be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown proposed as things forgot.

So long as this can be fairly reconciled with sincerity, this advice may be attended to; but this last line from Pope may probably suggest rather too close a connexion with the art of the courtier to be unequivocally recommended.

When about four years of Franklin's apprenticeship had expired, we find him contributing material assistance to his brother in the establishment of a newspaper the New England Courant. This was the second that appeared in the colonies; and Mr James Franklin was seriously dissuaded by many of his friends from undertaking it, on the ground of one paper being enough for America!

It being Benjamin's office to assist in the distribution of the paper, and to communicate between the press and the contributors, he soon imbibed a desire to try his hand amongst the latter, and began by placing anonymous essays, in a disguised handwriting, under the office-door. Great was his delight on finding them attributed to some of the most ingenious and learned men of the town: he returned to his undertaking with fresh vigour, and had even the rare good sense to pause when "his fund for such performances was exhausted." He then avowed his productions, and advanced in the estimation of the Bostonian wits accordingly.

But alas for the propensity of our nature to envy! James Franklin soon considered his brother's authorship in this point of view. It increased the sale of his paper; this was solid pudding: but it brought the poor author empty praise; and this, in James's opi

putes arose the father occasionally arbitrated, and generally in Benjamin's favour: the brother was passionate; our author, now by habit and system, cool, wary, and self-governable. Every service of a common apprentice he could not think it reasonable to require of him who, as a brother and an author, had claims not often united. At length James's affairs were brought to a crisis which presented him the wished-for prospect of liberty. The Massachusetts Assembly, which sat at Boston, took offence at some political remarks in the Courant, and issued a warrant for the apprehension of the printer. Benjamin Franklin was also apprehended, but dismissed with a slight reprimand. The brother was sent to prison, on the Speaker's warrant, for a month, for refusing to give up the author; during which period Benjamin exerted himself with great zeal for the interests of the paper, boldly canvassing the measures of the Assembly, and evincing the full ability to make the utmost of a persecuted cause. When James was dismissed, it was with an order of Assembly," that he James Franklin, should no longer print the newspaper called the New England Courant." The friends of the new undertaking, pecuniary and literary, now sat in conclave. The order must not be disobeyed; but the happy circumstance of Benjamin uniting the same family-name with (as it was supposed) the same general interest, suggested a method of eluding it; and James was advised to use his brother's name as printer of the paper, and to cancel his indentures, that it might upon inquiry appear more feasibly his own. The elder brother however had his share of the family acuteness, and stipulated that new secret indentures should be signed between them for the completion of Benjamin's apprenticeship. This was done; but the future champion of public liberty was on the alert for his own. Quarrels again ensued. The younger brother too honestly blames himself for "taking advantage" of his new situation, to allow a biographer to add any thing to the censure; but he did take advantage of it in their

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