ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

THE BOYHOOD AND YOUTH OF FRANKLIN.*

GENTLEMEN:

No subject for a single lecture seems to me more fairly comprehended within the province of a "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge" than the biography of those who have been eminently useful to their fellow-men. Whatever may have been their sphere of action, the qualities which made them what they were are presented in the most attractive form, when woven into a narrative of their fortunes. It is often quite curious to see the first symptoms of character as developed in boyhood; and nothing is more interesting than to trace the great man step by step. In no way can lessons of discretion, perseverance, temperance, and fortitude be so well inculcated as in the historical delineation of an honorable career. This is especially the case when the young are to be addressed. Ethical and didactic writing of every kind is apt to be read with impatience and weariness by those who most need instruction; but biography is universally fascinating.

There are few individuals whose lives unite so great and various an interest as that of Benjamin Franklin. The humble position from which he rose, in an obscure colony, to wealth, station, fame, and commanding influence, in an inde

*

A Lecture delivered in Boston, before the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, on the 17th of November, 1829, now first published.

pendent state, the struggles of his curiously checkered early life; his brilliant scientific discoveries and celebrity as a philosopher; his great business talent and practical energy; his extraordinary skill in addressing the common sense of mankind with his pen; his great influence as a statesman, at a most critical period of the history of the country; his agency in bringing about political events of high moment; and his personal intercourse with the first characters of the time, at home and abroad, with other circumstances not to be enumerated here, combine to furnish the materials of a biography possessing all the interest of a romance.

For us the narrative comes with the additional attraction that he was born in Boston, and that he derived his early and only education, scanty as it was, from our public schoolsan obligation that he remembered in his will. It is true that, at a very early period in his life, he left our city, and saw it afterwards only as a visitor. But he never ceased to regard it with warm attachment; and, in a letter written to Dr Samuel Mather, but a few years before his death, he says, "I long much to see again my native place, and to lay my bones there."

I shall confine myself, on the present occasion, to the first years of Franklin's life. It would be impossible to run over his whole career to any valuable purpose within the compass of a single lecture. If I do not greatly mistake, his boyhood and youth will be found a very instructive subject of contemplation; and this is the topic to which I now invite your attention.

In reviewing the life of Dr Franklin, till he reached the age of fifty, we have the inestimable advantage of his autobiography, one of the most valuable specimens of this kind of writing contained in our language. It will furnish me nearly all the materials for the present lecture, and I shall often use his own words. I shall for this reason, before entering upon the narrative, ask your attention to a somewhat singular circumstance connected with the composition of this memoir.

The first part of this narrative has been very frequently

republished and widely circulated. As the introduction to a small collection of Franklin's miscellaneous writings, it forms a volume from which most persons, who do not make a study of his works, derive their knowledge of his life and character. The copy which I possess is entitled, the Works of Dr Benjamin Franklin, consisting of his Life, written by himself, together with Essays, humorous, moral, and literary, chiefly in the Manner of the Spectator.* The portion of Dr Franklin's Autobiography contained in this and the similar manual editions of his works is probably the specimen of his (supposed) writing with which the generality of readers are most familiar, and consequently, in popular estimation, the best known example of his style. It is therefore a somewhat curious fact that it is not, in the form in which it now circulates, from Dr Franklin's pen.

This first portion of the memoir, which brings his life down to the twenty-fifth year, was written in England in the form of a letter to his son. A copy of it was sent to a friend in France, (M. Le Veillard,) and it appeared in that country, in a French translation, as an introduction to a small collection. of Franklin's Essays. An English translation, from this French version, was made in London for a similar collection published there shortly after Dr Franklin's death. It is this translation of a translation which continues to be reprinted in this country and in England, as the Life of Franklin, written by himself, and generally with a continuation by Dr Stuber of Philadelphia. The original memoir, as written by Dr Franklin, was first published by his grandson, Temple Franklin, in 1818; but the old retranslation continues to hold its place in popular use in this country and England.†

Charlestown, printed by John Lawson for the principal booksellers in Boston, 1798.

When this lecture was delivered in 1829, the fact stated in the text although mentioned in the Preface to Mr Temple Franklin's edition of his grandfather's writings, and in several of the popular editions, especially the first which appeared in London-had, I think, seldom been adverted to. I have before me an English edition of the Works of Dr Benjamin Franklin, with his Life, published as late as 1844, which gives the retranslation, with Stuber's continuation. The late Mr Benjamin Vaughan of Hallowell, the

The French version I have never seen; the English is very well executed: but the easy and sometimes negligent, but always delightful, simplicity of Dr Franklin's original, often wholly disappears in this double translation. In the quotations which I shall make from the memoir, in the course of this lecture, I shall furnish you with specimens of both.

We have the satisfaction of knowing, as we narrate the life of Franklin, that he himself took an interest in the history of his family. He informs his son, in the outset of the autobiography, that "he had ever had a pleasure in obtaining any little anecdotes of his ancestors." He made a journey with him, for this purpose, to the village in England, where his family had been settled as far back as it could be traced; and he expressly mentions it as an inducement for writing the memoir, that his posterity may be desirous of learning and imitating the means by which he raised himself from poverty and obscurity "to a state of affluence and some degree of celebrity in the world."

The family of Dr Franklin, when he commenced his inquiries, had been settled for three centuries at the village of Ecton, in Northamptonshire, in England, the same county in which the family of Washington was established in the early part of the sixteenth century. The immediate ancestors of these great men, who performed so distinguished a part in the American revolution, and were born themselves in the opposite extremities of the colonies, must have lived at no very great distance from each other in the mother country. The families, however, both at the original seat in England and in this country, occupied very different stations in society. That of Washington belonged to the landed aristocracy of England, and some of them rose to eminence

venerable friend of Dr Franklin, (who was induced, in part by Mr Vaughan's persuasion, to continue the autobiography,) in a letter addressed to me shortly after this lecture was delivered, spoke of the fact in question as a discovery;" which, however, it cannot be called.

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Mr Sparks, in the Preface to his standard edition of Franklin's Works, (published in 1840,) gives a full account of the matter. He even informs us that, in a new collection of Franklin's Works, published at Paris, in 1798, the autobiography is translated back again into French, from the English retranslation.

in the army and the state. Franklin's ancestors lived on a freehold farm of about thirty acres; and it was their custom, from father to son, to eke out the frugal support derived from this little domain by the business of a smith, to which the oldest son was habitually brought up.

The grandfather of Franklin, towards the close of life, removed to Banbury, in Oxfordshire. He had four sons who grew up, Thomas, John, Benjamin, and Josiah, and our Franklin was the son of the youngest; being the youngest son of the youngest son, like his predecessors in the family for five generations.

It is a circumstance much more worthy of record, that the "humble family," as Franklin calls it, early embraced the reformed religion. They continued to be Protestants during the reign of Mary; and were sometimes in danger of persecution, in consequence of their zeal against popery. Franklin has preserved an anecdote of his ancestors in this connection, which discloses a state of things almost beyond belief at the present day, and which shows plainly enough the indissoluble connection between civil and religious liberty. "The family had an English Bible; and to conceal it, and place it in safety, it was fastened open with tapes under and within the cover of a joint stool. When my great-grandfather wished to read it to his family, he placed the joint stool on his knees, and then turned over the leaves under the tapes. One of the children stood at the door to give notice if he saw the apparitor coming, who was an officer of the Spiritual Court. In that case, the stool was turned down again upon its feet, when the Bible remained concealed under it as before." What happened in this way beneath the humble roof of the Franklins took place, no doubt, at the same time in hundreds and thousands of the homes of England. It is the policy by which infatuated rulers, in church and state, have at all times promoted the reforms they seek to stifle; and turned yeomen and artisans into martyrs, champions, and heroes.

The family of the Franklins adhered to the Church of England till about the end of Charles II.'s reign. By this time, the lessons learned by the Church in the time of her