his natural tendency to moralize strengthened by this study of Plutarch. It is indeed notable that in one respect eighteenth-century literature has marked affinity with the Greek. The writers of that age, and among them Franklin, were like the Greeks distinctly ethical. In telling a story or recording a life, their interest was in the moral to be drawn, rather than in the passions involved.

Another book which had a special influence on his style may be mentioned. An odd volume of the "Spectator" coming into his hands, he read the essays over and over and took them deliberately as a model in language. This was before the date of Johnson's well-known dictum: "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison." His method of work was "to make short hints of the sentiments in each sentence," lay these by for a few days, and then having reconstructed the essay from his notes to compare his version with the original. Sometimes he jumbled the collection of hints into confusion and thus made a study of construction as well as of style; or again he turned an essay into verse and after a while converted it back into prose. And this we believe to be the true method of acquiring a good style, more efficacious than any English course in Harvard College.

At sixteen he was reading Locke "On Human Understanding,"—very strong meat for a boy—and the Port Royal "Art of Thinking." From Xenophon's "Memorable Things of Socrates" he acquired a lesson which he never forgot and which he always esteemed of importance in his education. This was the skillful assumption of ignorance or uncertainty in dispute, the so-called "irony" of Socrates. At first he employed this ironical method to trap his opponents into making unwary statements that led to their confusion; and in this way he grew expert in obtaining victories that, as he said, neither he nor his cause deserved. Accordingly he afterwards gave up this form of sophistry and only retained the habit of expressing himself in terms of modest diffidence, always saying: He conceived or imagined such a thing to be so, and never using the words certainly, undoubtedly, and the like.

Books, however, occupied but a small part of his life at this time. After leaving school he was first made to assist his father in the tallow-chandler business; but his distaste for this trade was so great that his father, fearing the boy would run away to sea, began to look about for other employment for him. He took the lad to see "joiners, brick-layers, turners, braziers, etc., at their work," in order to discover where the boy's inclination lay. And this event of his boyhood he as an old man remembered, saying, that it had ever since been a pleasure to him to see good workmen handle their tools, and adding that it was useful to him in his business and science to have learned so much in the way of handicraft. At length Benjamin's love of books determined his occupation, and like many another famous author he was set to the printing-press. In 1717 his brother James had come back from England with a press and letters, and at the age of twelve Benjamin was bound to his brother as an apprentice.

James soon discovered Benjamin's cleverness with the pen and induced him to compose two ballads, "The Light-House Tragedy," being the story of a recent shipwreck, and "Blackbeard," a sailor's song on the capture of that notorious pirate. These ballads, which the author frankly, and no doubt truthfully, describes as "wretched stuff," were printed and hawked about the streets by the boy. "The Light-House Tragedy" at least sold prodigiously, and the boy's vanity was correspondingly flattered; but the father stepped in and discouraged such work, warning Benjamin that "verse-makers were generally beggars." So, perhaps, we were spared a mediocre poet and given a first-rate prose writer, for the stuff of poetry was not in Franklin's sober brain.

At this time the good people of Massachusetts were dependent for the news of the world on a single paper, the "Boston News-Letter," afterwards called the "Gazette" (and indeed there was no other paper in the whole country), published, as was commonly the case in those days, by the postmaster of the town. But in 1721 James Franklin, much against the advice of his friends, started a rival paper, the "New England Courant," which the young apprentice had to carry about to subscribers after helping it through the press. Benjamin, however, soon played a more important part than printer's devil. Several ingenious men were in the habit of writing little Addisonian essays for the paper, and Benjamin, hearing their conversation, was fired to try his own skill. "But being still a boy,"—so he tells the story himself,—"and suspecting that my brother would object to printing anything of mine in his paper if he knew it to be mine, I contrived to disguise my hand, and writing an anonymous paper, I put it at night under the door of the printing-house. It was found in the morning and communicated to his writing friends when they called in as usual. They read it, commented on it in my hearing, and I had the exquisite pleasure of finding it met with their approbation, and that in their different guesses at the author none were named but men of some character among us for learning and ingenuity." Naturally the lad was flattered by the success of his ruse; and he continued to send in his anonymous essays for more than a year. They have been pretty conclusively identified as the series of articles signed "Silence Dogood," and are a clever enough imitation of the "Spectator's" style of allegory and humorous satire, such as Franklin was fond of using all his life. The signature, too, Silence Dogood, was characteristic of the man who turned all religion into a code of morality, and was famous for his power of keeping a secret. Like the ancient poet Simonides, he knew the truth of the saying, Silence hath a safe reward.

Those days were not easy times for printers, nor was the freedom of the press any more respected than liberty of conscience. Trouble very soon arose between the new paper and the authorities chiefly on account of the "Courant's" free handling of the church. Already the free-thinking party which afterwards formed into the Unitarian church was showing its head, and the writers for the "Courant" were among the most outspoken. The climax was reached when one day the paper appeared with a diatribe containing such words as these: "For my own part, when I find a man full of religious cant and palaver, I presently suspect him to be a knave,"—a sentiment which the religious authorities very properly took as an insult to themselves. James was arrested and imprisoned for a month, and on his release was forbidden to print the "Courant." To escape this difficulty the old indenture of Benjamin was canceled and the paper was printed in his name; at the same time, however, a new indenture was secretly made so that James might still, if he desired, claim his legal rights in the apprentice. It was a "flimsy scheme," and held but a little while.

Bickerings had been constant between the two brothers, and Benjamin was especially resentful for the blows his master's passion too often urged him to bestow.

said the youth in the old Anglo-Saxon poem, and this same sea-longing was bred in the bones of our Boston apprentice. Now at length the boy would break away; at least he would voyage to another home, though he might give up the notion of becoming a sailor. He intimates, moreover, that the narrow bigotry of New England in religion was distasteful to him—as we may well believe it was. Yet he always retained an affectionate memory of the place of his birth; and only two years before his death he wrote pleasantly regarding the citizens of that town, "for besides their general good sense, which I value, the Boston manner, turn of