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At the suggestion of the worthy Denham, he relinquished all dependence on sir William Keith's patronage at once, and applied himself to seeking employment in his business. He was brought, at any rate, to the most propitious spot in the world, for his improvement both as a printer and in all his favourite pursuits. Franklin, in his journal, dismisses Keith's character in a strain of very impartial and manly forbearance; ascribing his desertion of him to the habit "which a foolish wish to please every body may produce; and having little to give,' he says quaintly," he gave expectations. He was, otherwise, an ingenious sensible man, and a good governor for the people, though not for the proprietaries, whose interests he disregarded. Several of our best laws were of his planning, and passed during his government."

Thus introduced to that country whose very throne he was destined to shake, the subject of our memoir obtained employment at one Palmer's, a considerable printer in Bartholomew-close. His earnings were considerable, but his habits gay; and his friend Ralph, an idler and a spendthrift, depended wholly upon him. They lodged together in Little Britain, in rooms for which they paid 3s. 6d. a week. Ralph's ambition was to become an actor; but the ruling powers of the drama of that day gave him no encouragement, and Wilkes, the manager of Drury Lane, candidly advised him to seek some other mode of subsistence. He then offered to engage with one Roberts, a bookseller in Paternoster-row, to produce a succession of essays after the manner of the Spectator; but the publisher did not approve of his specimens. Making a similarly fruitless effort for employment with the scriveners, Ralph resigned himself to dissipation.

Franklin became a compositor on the second edition of "Woolaston's Religion of Nature," which awoke a train of metaphysical reflections in his mind. This resulted in his printing, on his own account, "A short Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and

Pain," which advanced him in his employer's estimation as a young man of talent, while he expostulated with him on the looseness of his principles. The piece was dedicated to his friend Ralph, with the following motto from Dryden:

Whatever is, is right. But purblind man
Sees but a part o' the chain, the nearest link:
His eye not carry ing to that equal beam
That poises all above.

We suppose it is in allusion to the principles of this production that Franklin says, "My printing this was another erratum *."

This pamphlet procured him some literary acquaintances. A neighbouring surgeon introduced him to Mandeville, the author of "The Fable of the Bees;" and this led to his frequenting Mandeville's club at the Horns in Cheapside; he contracted with a seller of second-hand books for the use of his stock; met at Batson's coffee-house with Dr Pemberton, sir Isaac Newton's friend, and was promised an introduction to that great sage. Sir Hans Sloane welcomed him to his repository in Soho-square, and purchased of him an asbestos purse, and some other American curiosities.

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He now recounts another grand erratum of his lifethe total neglect of his engagement with Miss Read;

* In a letter from Dr Franklin to Mr B. Vaughan, dated Nov. 9, 1779, we have the following account of this pamphlet:

"It was addressed to Mr J. R. (that is, James Ralph) then a youth of about my age, and my intimate friend; afterwards a political writer and historian. "The purport of it was to prove the doctrine of fate, from the supposed attributes of God, in some such manner as this. That in erecting and governing the world, as he was infinitely wise, he knew what would be best; infinitely good, he must be disposed-and infinitely powerful, he must be able to execute it. Consequently, all is right.

"There were only an hundred copies printed, of which I gave a few to friends; and afterwards, disliking the piece, as conceiving it might have an ill tendency, I burnt the rest, except one copy, the margin of which was filled with manuscript notes by Lyons, author of the Infallibility of Human Judgment, who was at that time another of my acquaintance in London. I was not 19 years of age when this was written.

"In 1730, I wrote a piece on the other side of the question, which begun with laying for its foundation this fact; That almost all men in all ages and countries have, at times, made use of PRAYER,' Thence I reasoned, that if all things are ordained, prayer must, among the rest, be ordained. But praying exists, therefore all other things are not ordained, &c. This pamphlet was never printed, and the manuscript has been lost. The great uncertainty I found in metaphysical reasonings disgusted me; and I quitted that kind of reading and study for others more satisfactory."

he never having written to her more than one letter from London, to inform her that he was not likely soon to return. She also appears, however, to have been something of the philosopher in love, having been some time married on Franklin's return.

Ralph now openly avowed his intention of never more returning to his wife and child, and took a mistress, whom our hero chiefly maintained; but at length left London to open a village school in Berkshire. During his absence, Franklin took liberties with Mrs T***, which she and Ralph alike resented, and which produced a final separation between the friends:-another erratum, says our honest auto-biographer.

After the completion of twelve months at Palmer's, Franklin removed to the printing office of Mr Watts, in Lincoln's-inn-fields*, where he continued during the whole of his subsequent stay in the British metropolis. He found a contiguous lodging with a widow lady in Duke-street, opposite the Catholic chapel, for which he paid at his old rate of 3s. 6d. weekly, and received no new impression in favour of Christians from his occasional notices of the Romish superstitions in this family and neighbourhood. His landlady was a clergyman's daughter who, marrying a Catholic, had abjured Protestantism, and became acquainted with several distinguished families of that persuasion. She and Franklin found mutual pleasure in each other's society. He kept good hours; and she was too lame generally to leave her room; frugality was the habit of both; half an anchovy, a small slice of bread and butter each, with half a pint of ale between them, furnished commonly their supper. So well pleased was the widow with her inmate, that when Franklin talked of removing to another house, where he could obtain the same accommodation as

* When he came to England afterwards, as the agent of Massachusetts, he went into the printing office of Mr Watts in Wild-street, Lincoln's-innfields, and going up to a particular press (now in the possession of Messrs Cox and Baylis, of Great Queen-street) thus addressed the two workmen: "Come, my friends, we will drink together; it is now forty years since I worked like you, at this press, as a journeyman printer." He sent for a gallon of porter, and they drank "success to printing."

with her for 2s. per week, she became generous in his favour, and abated her charge for his room to that sum. He never paid her more during the rest of his stay with her, which was the whole time he continued in London. In the attic was a maiden Catholic lady, by choice and habit a nun. She had been sent early in life to the Continent to take the veil; but the climate disagreeing with her health, she returned home; devoted her small estate to charitable purposes, with the exception of about 127. a year; practised confession daily; and lived entirely on water-gruel. Her presence was thought a blessing to the house; and several of its tenants in succession had charged her no rent. Her room contained a mattress, table, crucifix, and stool, as its only furniture. She admitted the occasional visits of Franklin and her landlady; was cheerful, he says, and healthful: and while her superstition moved his compassion, he felt confirmed in his frugality by her example, and exhibits it in his jour nal as another proof of the possibility of supporting life, health, and cheerfulness, on very small means.

During the first weeks of his engagement with Mr Watts, he worked as a pressman, drinking only water, while his companions had their five pints of porter each per day; and his strength was superior to their's. He ridiculed the verbal logic of strong beer being necessary for strong work; contending that the strength yielded by malt-liquor could only be in proportion to the quantity of flour or actual grain dissolved in the liquor, and that a penny-worth of bread must have more of this than a pot of porter. The Water-American, as he was called, had some converts to his system; his example, in this case, being clearly better than his philosophy*.

For while the mucilaginous qualities of porter may form one criterion of the nourishment it yields, it does not follow that mere nourishment is or ought to be the only consideration in a labouring man's use of malt-liquor or any other aliment. It is well known that flesh-meats yield chyle in greater abundance than any production of the vegetable kingdom; but Franklin would not have considered this any argument for living wholly upon meat. The fact is, that the stimulating quality of all fermented liquors (when moderately taken) is an essential part of the refreshment, and therefore of the strength they yield.

"We curse not wine-the vile excess we blame."

Franklin was born to be a revolutionist, in many good senses of the word. He now proposed and carried several alterations in the so-called chapel-laws of the printing office; resisted what he thought the impositions, while he conciliated the respect, of his fellow-workmen; and always had cash and credit in the neighbourhood at command, to which the sottish part of his brethren were occasionally, and sometimes largely, indebted. He thus depicts this part of his prosperous life :-" On my entrance, I worked at first as a pressman, conceiving that I had need of bodily exercise, to which I had been accustomed in America, where the printers work alternately as compositors and at the press. I drank nothing but water. The other workmen, to the number of about fifty, were great drinkers of beer. I carried occasionally a large form of letters in each hand, up and down stairs, while the rest employed both hands to carry one. They were surprised to see, by this and many other examples, that the American Aquatic, as they used to call me, was stronger than those that drank porter. The beer-boy had sufficient employment during the whole day in serving that house alone. My fellow pressman drank every day a pint of beer before breakfast, a pint with bread and cheese for breakfast, one between breakfast and dinner, one at dinner, one again about six o'clock in the afternoon, and another after he had finished his day's work. This custom appeared to me abominable; but he had need, he said, of all this beer, in order to acquire strength to work.

"I endeavoured to convince him, that the bodily strength furnished by the beer could only be in proportion to the solid part of the barley dissolved in the water of which the beer was composed; that there was a larger portion of flour in a penny loaf, and that, consequently, if he ate this loaf, and drank a pint of water with it, he would derive more strength from it than from a pint of beer. This reasoning however did not prevent him from drinking his accustomed quantity of beer, and paying every Saturday night a

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