FRANKLIN.
A SKETCH
JOHN BIGELOW.
Price 25 Cents]
FRANKLIN
A SKETCH.
BY JOHN BIGELOW.
BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, & CO.
1879.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by
LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY,
in the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
FRANKLIN.
Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790), one of the mosteminent journalists, diplomatists, statesmen, and philosophersof his time, was born in the city of Boston, andin the colony of Massachusetts Bay, on the 17th ofJanuary 1706. He was the youngest of ten children, andthe youngest son for five consecutive generations. Hisfather, who was born at Ecton, in Northamptonshire,England, where the family may be traced back for somefour centuries, married young, and emigrated to Americawith three children in 1682, From his parents, who neverknew any illness save that of which they died (the fatherat eighty and the mother at eighty-five), he inherited anexcellent constitution, and a good share of those heroicmental and moral qualities by which a good constitutionis preserved. In his eighth year Benjamin, who nevercould remember when he did not know how to read, wasplaced at school, his parents intending him for the church,That purpose, however, was soon abandoned, and in histenth year he was taken from school to assist his father,who, though bred a dyer, had taken up, on his arrival inNew England, the business of tallow-chandler and soap-boiler.The lad worked at this, to him, most distastefulbusiness, until his twelfth year, when he was apprenticedto his elder brother James, then just returned from Englandwith a new printing press and fount of type, with which heproposed to establish himself in the printing business. In1720-31 James Franklin also started a newspaper, thesecond that was published in America, called The New[4]England Courant. Benjamin's tastes inclined him ratherto intellectual than to any other kind of pleasures, and hisjudgment in the selection of books was excellent. At an earlyage he had wade himself familiar with the Pilgrim's Progress,with Locke On the Understanding, and with some oddvolumes of the Spectator, then the literary novelty of theday, which he turned to good account in forming the stylewhich made him what he still remains, the most uniformlyreadable writer of English who has yet appeared on hisside of the Atlantic. His success in reproducing articleshe had read some days previously in the Spectator led himto try his hand upon an original article for his brother'spaper, which he sent to hire anonymously. It was accepted,and attracted some attention. The experiment was repeateduntil Benjamin had satisfied himself that his successwas not an accident, when he threw off his disguise.He thought that his brother treated him lesskindly after this disclosure; but that did not prevent Jamesfrom publishing his paper in Benjamin's name, when, inconsequence of some unfo