History of American Literature. Reuben Post Halleck
temperate, industrious, saving, of curbing desire, and of avoiding vice. The very foundations of character rest on regularity, on good habits so inflexibly formed that it is painful to break them. Franklin's success in laying these foundations was phenomenal. His Poor Richard's Almanac, begun in 1733, was one of his chief agencies in reaching the common people. They read, reread, and acted on such proverbs as the following, which he published in this Almanac from year to year:—
[Footnote: The figures in parenthesis indicate the year of publication.]
"He has changed his one ey'd horse for a blind one" (1733).
"Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead" (1735).
"Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it" (1736).
"Fly pleasures and they'll follow you" (1738).
"Have you somewhat to do to-morrow; do it to-day" (1742).
"Tart words make no friends: a spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar" (1744).
In 1757 Franklin gathered together what seemed to him the most striking of these proverbs and published them as a preface to the Almanac for 1758. This preface, the most widely read of all his writings, has since been known as The Way to Wealth. It had been translated into nearly all European languages before the end of the nineteenth century. It is still reprinted in whole or part almost every year by savings banks and societies in France and England, as well as in the United States. "Dost thou love life?" asks Poor Richard in The Way to Wealth. "Then," he continues, "do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of." Franklin modestly disclaimed much originality in the selection of these proverbs, but it is true that he made many of them more definite, incisive, and apt to lodge in the memory. He has influenced, and he still continues to influence, the industry and thrift of untold numbers. In one of our large cities, a branch library, frequented by the humble and unlearned, reports that in one year his Autobiography was called for four hundred times, and a life of him, containing many of Poor Richard's sayings, was asked for more than one thousand times.
He is the first American writer to show a keen sense of humor. There may be traces of humor in The Simple Cobbler of Agawam (p. 41) and in Cotton Mather (p. 46), but Franklin has a rich vein. He used this with fine effect when he was colonial agent in England. He determined to make England see herself from the American point of view, and so he published anonymously in a newspaper An Edict of the King of Prussia. This Edict proclaimed that it was a matter of common knowledge that Britain had been settled by Hengist and Horsa and other German colonists, and that, in consequence of this fact, the King of Prussia had the right to regulate the commerce, manufactures, taxes, and laws of the English. Franklin gave in this Edict the same reasons and embodied the same restrictions, which seemed so sensible to George III. and the Tories. Franklin was the guest of an English Lord, when a man burst into the room with the newspaper containing the Edict, saying, "Here's news for ye! Here's the King of Prussia claiming a right to this kingdom!"
In writing English prose, Franklin was fortunate in receiving instruction from Bunyan and Addison. The pleasure of reading Franklin's Autobiography is increased by his simple, easy, natural way of relating events. Simplicity, practicality, suggestiveness, common sense, were his leading attributes. His sense of humor kept him from being tiresome and made him realize that the half may be greater than the whole. The two people most useful to the age in which they lived were George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.
JOHN WOOLMAN, 1720–1772
A GREAT ALTRUIST.—This Quaker supplements Franklin in teaching that the great aim in life should be to grow more capable of seeing those spiritual realities which were before invisible. Life's most beautiful realities can never be seen with the physical eye. The Journal of John Woolman will help one to increase his range of vision for what is best worth seeing. It will broaden the reader's sympathies and develop a keener sense of responsibility for lessening the misery of the world and for protecting even the sparrow from falling. It will cultivate precisely that side of human nature which stands most in need of development. To emphasize these points, Charles Lamb said, "Get the writings of John Woolman by heart," and Whittier wrote of Woolman's Journal, which he edited and made easily accessible, "I have been awed and solemnized by the presence of a serene and beautiful spirit redeemed of the Lord from all selfishness, and I have been made thankful for the ability to recognize and the disposition to love him."
John Woolman was born of Quaker parentage in Northampton, New Jersey. He never received much education. Early in life he became a shopkeeper's clerk and then a tailor. This lack of early training and broad experience affects his writings, which are not remarkable for ease of expression or for imaginative reach; but their moral beauty and intensity more than counterbalance such deficiencies.
A part of his time he spent traveling as an itinerant preacher. He tried to get Quakers to give up their slaves, and he refused to write wills that bequeathed slaves. He pleaded for compassion for overworked oxen and horses. He journeyed among the Indians, and endeavored to improve their condition. It cut him to the quick to see traders try to intoxicate them so as to get their skins and furs for almost nothing. He took passage for England in the steerage, and learned the troubles of the sailors. From this voyage he never returned, but died in York in 1772.
In the year of his death, he made in his Journal the following entry, which is typical of his gentle, loving spirit:
"So great is the hurry in the spirit of this world, that in aiming to do business quickly and to gain wealth, the creation at this day doth loudly groan."
When a former president of Harvard issued a list of books for actual reading, he put Franklin's Autobiography first and John Woolman's Journal second. Franklin looked steadily at this world, Woolman at the next. Each record is supplementary to the other.
EARLY AMERICAN FICTION
THE FIRST ATTEMPTS.—MRS. SARAH MORTON published in Boston in 1789 a novel entitled The Power of Sympathy. This is probably the first American novel to appear in print. The reason for such a late appearance of native fiction may be ascribed to the religious character of the early colonists and to the ascendency of the clergy, who would not have tolerated novel reading by members of their flocks. Jonathan Edwards complained that some of his congregation were reading forbidden books, and he gave from the pulpit the names of the guilty parties. These books were probably English novels. Sir Leslie Stephen thinks that Richardson's Pamela (1740) may have been one of the books under the ban. There is little doubt that a Puritan church member would have been disciplined if he had been known to be a reader of some of Fielding's works, like Joseph Andrews (1742). The Puritan clergy, even at a later period, would not sanction the reading of novels unless they were of the dry, vapid type, like the earliest Sunday school books. Jonathan Edwards wrote the story of one of his youthful experiences, but it was "the story of a spiritual experience so little involved with the earth, that one might fancy it the story of a soul that had missed being born."
Timothy Dwight (p. 92), who became president of Yale in 1795, said that there is a great gulf fixed between novels and the Bible. Even later than 1800 there was a widespread feeling that the reading of novels imperiled the salvation of the soul. To-day we know that certain novels are as dangerous to the soul as leprosy to the body, but we have become more discriminating. We have learned that the right type of fiction, read in moderation, cultivates the imagination, broadens the sympathetic powers, and opens up a new, interesting, and easily accessible land of enjoyment.
A quarter of a century before the Declaration of Independence, the great eighteenth-century English writers of fiction had given a new creation to the literature of England. Samuel Richardson (1689–1761) had published Pamela in 1740 and Clarissa Harlowe in 1748. Henry Fielding (1707–1754) had given his immortal Tom Jones to the world in 1749.
Mrs. Morton's Power of Sympathy, a novel written with a moral purpose, is a poorly constructed story of characters whom we fortunately do not meet outside of books. One of these characters,