ing humor, his scientific speculations and discoveries, are not the real basis of his fame as a writer, however much they may indirectly contribute to it. It is not so much what Franklin deliberately did or thought that makes him a great author, as what he indirectly did the moment he took up a pen. He gave us himself, not merely his actions and thoughts, and mankind has always been peculiarly grateful for such self-revelations. The saying of Buffon, so often quoted, that style is the man, has never received a better exemplification of its truth than in the writings of Franklin, which are almost literally and truly Franklin himself. He has done more than give us a mere autobiography. Benvenuto Cellini did that, and is nevertheless thought of chiefly as an artist. Franklin has left us voluminous works, which, whether in their respective parts they deal with science or politics or every-day matters, and whether or not we read them thoroughly and systematically, are nevertheless as complete and perfect an exposition of an interesting character as can be paralleled in literature. Hence it is that while Franklin is still for most people a sage, just as Cellini is an artist, he is for some who have learned to know him through his self-delineating works even more the great writer than he is the great philosopher or the great statesman and public servant.

It is obvious that if all this be true, the secret of Franklin's power as a writer must in the main lie elsewhere than in the materials of which his volumes are composed. There is more political philosophy to be found in the writings of some of Franklin's compatriots than can be found in his; other men have written better letters, other men have composed greater scientific monographs, and yet in many of these cases the world has not for an instant thought it could discover a great writer. Nor can the secret of his power lie merely in his style — technically speaking. Good as Franklin's style is, it would be possible to parallel it in authors whom nobody has thought of calling really great. Perhaps we shall come as near explaining the secret by saying that Franklin's power comes from the fact that he revealed a fascinating and at the same time great character by means of a pellucid and even style, as we shall by any other explanation we can offer. Franklin would have been great and fascinating if a Boswell had portrayed him for us; in becoming his own Boswell he has enrolled himself

forever among the classical writers, not merely of America, but of the world.

Descending now from generals to particulars, we may notice that while it is true to say that Addison and other contemporary British authors did much to form Franklin's style, and that in many of the forms of composition he undertook, such as his dialogues, he was unquestionably imitative, it is equally true to affirm that he was rather the product, nay, the epitome, of his century, than a provincial Briton, and that in many most important respects he was as true an American as Abraham Lincoln himself. Franklin's shrewdness, common sense, and wit are much more American than they are British in flavor, and his evenly balanced independence, fearlessness, and dignity are racy of his native soil. His lack of the highest spirituality, on the other hand, together with his somewhat amusing optimism, his wide-reaching, practical philanthropy, and the general sanity of his character, belong more to his century than to his race or country. But in every thought and word and deed of his life he was never anything but a loyal citizen of the land from which he was so long exiled by necessity, and it is the merest hypercriticism that would contend that both he and Washington were anything else than Americans in their warp and woof.

The chief qualities of Franklin's work as a writer have all been given by implication in the preceding paragraph. Of his humor, it must suffice to say that it holds a middle range between the subtlety of Lamb's and the obviousness of Artemus Ward's. Of his lack not merely of spirituality, but even the conception of what is meant by the term, the attempt to amend the Lord's Prayer is a sufficiently familiar example. His scheme for reaching moral perfection throws a ludicrous light upon his this-worldly optimism, while his general sanity of character is witnessed to by hundreds of letters and by page after page of his only too short Autobiography. Perhaps his shrewdness, his common sense, and his wit stand out singly and in unison as well in his preface to Poor Richard's Almanac as anywhere else, but they are obviously such basal qualities in Franklin's character that they are never absent from his self-depicting writings of whatever form and type. The same may be said with regard to his evenly balanced independence, fearlessness, and dig

nity, but few students of his life and works will fail to associate these qualities more particularly with that "most consummate masterpiece of political and editorial craftsmanship," to quote Professor M. C. Tyler, The Examination of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, in the British House of Commons, Relative to the Repeal of the American Stamp Act, in 1766.

In conclusion, we may notice, with regard to verbal style, that a straightforward clearness is Franklin's most characteristic quality. He writes as we may imagine that he talked when at his best, and for the subjects he treated there could have been no more ideal style. Here and there a word or phrase may betray the fact that he wrote over a century ago, but in the main, it is distinctly true to say that his style "reads itself" as easily as that of any master of English. We may readily grant that Addison helped to form Franklin's style, if we will add immediately that, in all probability, he would have come near finding it for himself had he never chanced when a boy to fall under the fascinating influence of the Spectator. Short sentences, vigorous phrases, timely words, these Franklin could not have helped using, simply because he was "Rare Ben Franklin." He probably could not foresee that the time would so soon come when the very qualities of style that were natural to him would seem to posterity the best qualities to be cultivated; but if he had had all the Latin scholarship of Dr. Johnson and all the leisure and propensity to formal composition that an academic life affords, he would surely not have fallen into that labored pomposity and that dead flatness which vitiate so much eighteenth century prose. He wrote like the rounded, vigorous, sane man that he was, and as a result he lives for us as few do of our fellow-mortals who, in the words of Horace, are but as "dust and a shade."

W. P. TRENT

FRANKLIN'S ENTRANCE INTO PHILADELPHIA

I HAVE been the more particular in this description of my journey, and shall be so of my first entry into that city, that you may in your mind compare such unlikely beginnings with the figure I have since made there. I was in my working dress, my best clothes being to come round by sea. I was dirty from my journey; my pockets were stuff'd out with shirts and stockings, and I knew no soul nor where to look for lodging. I was fatigued with travelling, rowing, and want of rest, I was very hungry; and my whole stock of cash consisted of a Dutch dollar, and about a shilling in copper. The latter I gave the people of the boat for my passage, who at first refus'd it on account of my rowing; but I insisted on their taking it. A man being sometimes more generous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps thro' fear of being thought to have but little.

Then I walked up the street, gazing about till near the markethouse I met a boy with bread. I had made many a meal on bread, and, inquiring where he got it, I went immediately to the baker's he directed me to, in Second-street, and ask'd for bisket, intending such as we had in Boston; but they, it seems, were not made in Philadelphia. Then I asked for a three-penny loaf, and was told they had none such. So not considering or knowing the difference of money, and the greater cheapness nor the names of his bread, I bade him give me three-penny worth of any sort. He gave me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls. I was surpris'd at the quantity, but took it, and having no room in my pockets, walk'd off with a roll under each arm, and eating the other. Thus I went up Market-street as far as Fourth-street, passing by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife's father; when she, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appearance. Then I turned and went down Chestnut-street and part of Walnut-street, eating my roll all the way, and, coming round, found my elf again at Market-street wharf, near the boat I came in, to which I went for a draught of the river water; and being filled with one of my rolls, gave the other two to a woman and her child that

came down the river in the boat with us, and were waiting to go farther.

Thus refreshed, I walked again up the street, which by this time had many clean-dressed people in it, who were all walking the same way. I joined them, and thereby was led into the great meeting-house of the Quakers near the market. I sat down among them, and after looking round a while and hearing nothing said, being very drowsy thro' labor and want of rest the preceding night, I fell fast asleep, and continu'd so till the meeting broke up, when one was kind enough to rouse me. This was, therefore, the first house I was in, or slept in, in Philadelphia.

[Autobiography, published in London in 1817. The correct text was first established by John Bigelow, who obtained possession of the original manuscript, and published by J. B. Lippincott and Co., Philadelphia, in 1868. It is also included in Bigelow's Life of Benjamin Franklin, written by Himself, 1874, from which this selection and the following are reprinted, by permission of the publishers, J. B. Lippincott & Co. Vol. i, pp. 125-127.]

A SCHEME FOR PERFECTION

It was about this time I conceiv'd the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wish'd to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined. While my care was employ'd in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct. For this purpose I therefore contrived the following method.

In the various enumerations of the moral virtues I had met with in my reading, I found the catalogue more or less numerous, as