he, "reading the greatest part of the night, when the book was borrowed in the evening to be returned in the morning, lest it should be found missing." But he was not long compelled to pursue his youthful studies by stealth. Good Mr Matthew Adams, "a merchant, an ingenious, sensible man, who had a pretty collection of books," is a frequenter of the printing office. He perceives in the youngest apprentice the unmistakable signs of an ardent love of learning. "He took notice of me, invited me to see his library, and very kindly proposed to lend me such books as I chose to read." This friendly notice, and the books kindly placed within his reach, no doubt had a most important influence on the embryo philosopher and statesman. Worthy Mr Adams himself wrote "essays, which were received with marks of the public esteem at the time, and were reprinted in periodical miscellanies of later date." * Their memory has all but perished; but a single page in the autobiography has immortalized their writer as Franklin's first friend and patron.

About this time, that is, when our apprentice had perhaps reached his thirteenth or fourteenth year, he took a strong inclination to poetry, and wrote some little pieces. In this his brother James, "supposing it might turn to account," (alas for poor human nature!) encouraged him, and induced him to compose two occasional ballads. One was the Light House Tragedy, and deplored the shipwreck of Captain Worthilake and his two daughters; the other was a sailor's song, on the capture of the famous Teach, the pirate, commonly called Blackbeard. Franklin's mature judgment pronounced them "wretched stuff, in street-ballad style;" but the first, he says, sold prodigiously, the event being recent, and having made a great noise. Whatever the grown man, writing at the height of his fame, at the palace of a bishop, might have thought of them, the poor boy, at the time, had a right to be proud of his success. He composed them, set up the types from which they were printed, probably tended the press when they were struck off, and then, says he, "my

* Eliot's Biographical Dictionary.

brother sent me about town to sell them." They might well be called his works; but they are lost.

But there are dangers in success, especially to youngest apprentices. The prodigious sale of his ballads "flattered the vanity" of our boyish poet. Here the judicious and frugal parent stepped in. "My father discouraged me by criticizing my performances, and telling me verse-makers were generally beggars." Not very cheering this: "Your verses, my little man, are pretty well for you; but, after all, they are but wretched stuff; and even if they were better, the chance equal they will make a beggar of you. Throw away your pen, Benjamin, and stick to the composing-stick." Such was probably the substance of old Mr Franklin's Art of Poetry, shorter than Horace's, but, on this occasion, full as much to the point. "Thus," says his son, "I escaped being a poet, and probably a very bad one."

Not so with prose; and "as prose writing," says the autobiography, "has been of great use to me in the course of my life, and was a principal means of my advancement, I shall tell you how, in such a situation, I acquired what little ability I may be supposed to have in that way." It was in the following manner: Benjamin had become intimately acquainted with "another bookish lad about town, by name John Collins." With him he was in the habit of disputing on subjects suggested by their reading; and both being fond of argument, and very desirous of confuting each other, they began to contract a disputatious turn, which Franklin says he had already caught by reading his father's books of dispute on religion. He speaks of this as a very bad habit, making people extremely disagreeable in company, souring and spoiling the conversation, and producing disgusts and enmities. To this just condemnation of a disputatious turn, Dr Franklin adds the curious remark, that "persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and generally men of all sorts who have been bred at Edinburgh." In the course of their arguments, Collins and young Franklin fell upon the question, as to the propriety of educating the female sex in learning, and

their abilities for study. Collins (and a graceless fellow he afterwards turned out to be, as might have been expected from this beginning) maintained that it was improper, and that they were naturally unequal to it. Benjamin took the contrary side, perhaps a little, as he states with candor, for dispute's sake. Collins seemed to get the better in the argument, rather from superior eloquence and a greater flow of words than by the strength of his reasons. This did not satisfy Benjamin, and as they parted, not to meet for some time, he wrote out his argument carefully, and sent it to his opponent. Collins rejoined in the same way, and three or four letters passed between them. These came to old Mr Franklin's knowledge, and without entering into the delicate subject of female education, he took occasion to talk to Benjamin about his manner of writing. The spelling and pointing (thanks to the discipline of the printing office) were superior to the antagonist's; but in elegance of expression, in method, and perspicuity, the advantage was greatly on his side. This the clear-headed father established by several instances, and the docile son "saw the justice of his remarks," The same prudent discipline, which had nipped a bad poet in the bud, fostered the germ of excellence in one of the best of prose writers. "I grew more attentive," says he, "to my manner of writing, and determined to endeavor to improve my style."

Chance threw in his way, at this moment, the guide and model of which he stood in need, - an odd volume of the Spectator, which he had never seen before. It had, in fact, been published but a short time, the first number having appeared on the first of March, 1711, and the last on the twentieth of December, 1714. Benjamin bought the odd volume, "read it over and over, and was much delighted with it." Nothing is more characteristic of the inborn good sense and sound taste of Franklin, brought up as he was in a family where the principal reading (and not much of that) was in the polemical writings of the Puritan divines, than to seize with instinctive avidity upon this odd volume of the Spectator, not yet known even at home as a standard work,

and which some chance had cast up on the shores of this distant and austere colony, like the trunk of a palm-tree drifted from the tropics to a colder region. But Addison was read and relished. Our youthful apprentice, his eyes already somewhat opened by his father's criticism, "thought the writing excellent, and determined, if possible, to imitate it."

With this view he took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiments in each sentence, laid them by for a few days, and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, as fully as it stood in the author, and in any suitable words that occurred to him. "I then," says he, "compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them." He felt, however, that he wanted a stock of words, or readiness in their recollection and use. He remembered his old poetical exercises: after all, it might not have been so bad to have kept them up; the continual search for words required by the measure or the rhyme would perhaps have taught variety and readiness in the use of language. But it is not too late to make the experiment; and some of the tales of the Spectator were translated into verse, and after a time, when the original was pretty well forgotten, turned back into prose. So, too, for the sake of learning method and arrangement of the thoughts, the above-mentioned hints were "jumbled into confusion," and, after some weeks, reduced to order before the process of recomposition began. "By comparing my work with the original," says the autobiography, "I discovered many faults, and corrected them; but I sometimes had the pleasure to fancy that, in certain particulars of small consequence, I had been fortunate enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think that I might, in time, come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious." Dr Blair has shown, in his Lectures on Rhetoric, that there was no arrogance in undertaking an occasional correction of the style of the Spectator, thrown off as it was in the haste inseparable from a daily publication. The time allotted for these self-imposed exercises, and for

reading, was at night, before work began in the morning, or on Sundays, when, it must be remarked with regret, he says, he contrived to be in the printing house, avoiding, as much as he could, the constant attendance at public worship, which his father exacted while under his care, and which he himself continued to consider his duty, though he could not afford time to practise it. It will be remembered, in extenuation of this error on the part of the studious youth, that the public services of religion were at that time protracted to what would now be thought an unreasonable and tedious length. But Franklin, it must be confessed, in reference to religion, contracted, in his early years, some loose notions, from reading the works of sceptical writers, such as Shaftesbury and Collins; a circumstance which, in the progress of the narrative, he admits and deplores.

At the age of sixteen, he learned one of the greatest lessons of prudential morality, the inestimable importance of temperance, which, at first, he pushed to extreme. Having met with a book written by one Tryon, which recommended a vegetable diet, he determined "to go into it." At that time, it was the practice for apprentices to board with their masters. James was unmarried, but boarded, with his apprentices, in another family. Benjamin's refusal to eat flesh occasioned inconvenience, and he was frequently chid for his singularity. Tryon's book came to his aid: he learned to prepare some of the dishes there recommended; to boil potatoes and rice, and make hasty pudding; and then proposed to his brother, that, if he would allow him weekly half the money which he paid for his board, he would board himself. The offer was instantly accepted; and our young Pythagorean found that he could sustain himself on half of his allowance. This was an additional fund for books; and it had another advantage. The sober apprentice staid at the printing house, while his brother and the rest went home to dinner. The solitary meal (often no more than a biscuit, a slice of bread, a handful of raisins, or a tart from the pastry cook's) was soon despatched. This left time for study, "in which," says he, "I made the greater progress, from that