Franklin was a master of style. He had what critics call “a light touch”; and he had the rare faculty of making any subject interesting. He even wrote charmingly about stoves! How did he acquire this wonderful skill, this clear and beautiful language which dropped so easily from his pen, however dry the theme? No matter what essay, what letter, what political pamphlet, or what year of “Poor Richard” we may pick up, we are always held by Franklin’s magic personality. His “Autobiography” is considered one of the greatest works of its kind ever written.
A careful study of the third volume of Addison’s “Spectator,” and experimenting with it in various ways, seems to have been the beginning of Franklin’s literary education. It was a queer task for a young boy—particularly one of an uncultured family—to impose upon himself; but he tells us that he was encouraged, for, “I thought I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious.”
Moreover, he fed himself on the best literature; and this, too, was extraordinary for a boy in his position. Some of his early essays, published in pamphlet form, have very dry titles. “A Dissertation on Liberty, Necessity, and Pain,” and “A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of Paper Currency” are hardly alluring; but these papers are full of shrewd reasoning and common sense—qualities that are conspicuous in all his future writings. Franklin’s newspaper articles were a splendid preparation for his political work.
Franklin was very fond of paraphrasing the Bible in a humorous way, and fond of hoaxes, like the “Edict of the King of Prussia,” in which he made Frederick the Great claim a right to the Kingdom of Great Britain, because the British Isles were originally Anglo-Saxon colonies; and, having reached a flourishing condition, deserved to be levied upon. Franklin greatly enjoyed seeing the English take this seriously. It was copied widely. So was another satire of 1773, called “Rules for Reducing a Great Empire to a Small One,” descriptive of the British government.
While in France his pen was always busy. Many of his letters were practically essays. For Madame Brillon the “Ephemera,” the “Morals of Chess,” “Dialogue between Franklin and the Gout,” “Story of the Whistle,” and “Petition of the Left Hand” were written.
Franklin’s letters, so numerous and so witty, cover all periods of his life. His electrical experiments and theories were all announced in this form. His letters written home from England before the Revolution are delightful reading.
“Poor Richard” was a real creation. The character made Franklin known in England and France before he lived in those countries. “It was quite common a hundred years ago,” writes a biographer, “to charge Franklin with being a plagiarist. It is true that the sayings of ‘Poor Richard,’ and a great deal that went to make up the almanac, were taken from Rabelais, Bacon, Rochefoucault, Roy Palmer, and others. But ‘Poor Richard’ changed and re-wrote them to suit his purpose, and gave most of them a far wider circulation than they had before.”
“There is no little enemy”; “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half-shut afterwards”; “Lend money to an enemy, and thou’lt gain him; to a friend and thou’lt lose him”; “Necessity never made a good bargain”; “A word to the wise is enough”; “God helps those that help themselves”; “The sleeping fox catches no poultry”; “Drive thy business, let that not drive thee”; “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise”; “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other”—are some of Poor Richard’s proverbs that have passed into our everyday speech.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 6. No. 7. SERIAL No. 155
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.