but it was possessed by Franklin to a great degree. His perceptions of his surroundings-material, intellectual, personal, social, political-had power to affect his mind and action. He took real account of his circumstances.-HALE, EDWARD EVERETT, JR., 1898, American Prose, ed. Carpenter, p. 13.

Almost every event of his life has been distorted until, from the great and accomplished man he really was, he has been magnified into an impossible prodigy. Almost everything he wrote about in science has been put down as a discovery. His wonderful ability in expressing himself has assisted in this; for if ten men wrote on a subject and Franklin was one of them, his statement is the one most likely to be preserved, because the others, being inferior in language, are soon forgotten and lost. Every scrap of paper he wrote upon is now considered a precious relic and a great deal of it is printed, so that statements which were but memoranda or merely his way of formulating other men's knowledge for his own convenience or for the sake of writing a pleasant letter to a friend, are given undue importance. Indeed, when we read one of these letters or memoranda it is so clearly and beautifully expressed and put in such a captivating form that, as the editor craftily forbears to comment on it, we instinctively conclude that it must have been a gift of new knowledge to mankind. FISHER, SYDNEY GEORGE, 1899, The True Benjamin Franklin, Preface, p. 7. To judge Franklin from the literary standpoint is neither easy nor quite fair. It is not to be denied that as a philosopher, as a statesman, and as a friend, he

owed much of his success to his ability as a writer. His letters charmed all, and made his correspondence eagerly sought. His political arguments were the joy of his party and the dread of his opponents. His scientific discoveries were explained in language at once so simple and so clear that plow-boy and exquisite could follow his thought or his experiment to its conclusion. Yet he was never a literary man in the true and common meaning of the term. Omitting his uncompleted autobiography and his scientific writings, there is hardly a line of his pen which was not privately or anonymously written, to exert a transient influence, fill an empty column, or please a friend. The larger part of his work was not only done in haste, but never revised or even proof-read. Yet this self-educated boy and busy, practical man gave to American literature the most popular autobiography ever written, a series of political and social satires that can bear comparison with those of the greatest satirists, a private correspondence as readable as Walpole's or Chesterfield's; and the collection of Poor Richard's epigrams has been oftener printed and translated than any other production of an American pen.-FORD, PAUL LEICESTER, 1899, The Many-Sided Franklin.

Franklin was the best letter-writer of his day in America. In comparison with Washington's uniform epistolary style, Franklin's is striking for its flexibilitydignified in weighty matters, in familiar letters, playful as a kitten, frequently witty and fanciful, pleasing always by clearness, naturalness and ease.-BRONSON, WALTER C., 1900, A Short History of American Literature, p. 56.

'History of Britain' well spoken of: I am told it is carried on in separate divisions, as the civil, the military, the religious history: I wish much to have one branch well done, and that is the history of manners of common life." DR. ROBERTSON.-"Henry should have applied his attention to that alone, which is enough for any man; and he might have found a great deal scattered in various books, had he read solely with that view. Henry erred in not selling his first volume at a moderate price to the booskellers, that they might have pushed him on till he had got reputation." - BOSWELL, JAMES, 1791-93, Life of Johnson, ed. Hill, vol. III, p. 379.

The work of Dr. Henry is an ornament and an honour to his country. DIBDIN, THOMAS FROGNALL, 1809, The Bibliomania; or Book Madness.

Those parts of Henry's history which profess to trace the progress of government are still more jejune than the rest of his volumes.-HALLAM, HENRY, 1818, View of the State of Europe During the Middle Ages, Preface.

Much of this sort of information [respecting the early constitutional history. of England], and of every other historical information, may be found in the "History" of Dr. Henry; but the same facts, when collected and printed in a modern dress, properly arranged, and to be read without difficulty, as they are in the work of Dr. Henry, no longer excite the same reflection nor obtain the same possession of the memory which they do when seen in something like their native garb, in their proper place, and in all the simplicity, singularity, and quaintness which belong to them.-SMYTH, WILLIAM, 1840, Lectures on Modern History.

Considerable merit in the execution, and complete originality in the plan, of his history.-COCKBURN, HENRY THOMAS LORD, 1854? Memorials of his Times, ch. I.

To this great work Henry devoted the anxious labour of nearly thirty years; and he has certainly accumulated a vast store of useful information. But to write philosophically and entertainingly upon so many heterogeneous subjects exceeds man's might. Even when the scope is far less ambitious, the charm of style possessed by a Hume, a Robertson, a Macaulay, a Prescott, or a Bancroft, can alone interest the desultory reader in historical details. For all practical purposes, Henry's history has been superseded by the noble work published by Charles Knight.-ALLIBONE, S. AUSTIN, 1854-58, A Critical Dictionary of English Literature, vol. I, p. 825.

A work valuable for the numerous facts it contains illustrative of manners and the state of society, which are not to be found in any of our previous general historians, but chiefly meritorious as having been our first English history compiled upon that plan.-CRAIK, GEORGE L., 1861, A Compendious History of English Literature and of the English Language, vol. II, p. 359.

For this history, Henry received the sum of 32001. from the booksellers, and from the Crown a pension of 100l. a year

a reward not due to his style or even to the accuracy of the research, but to the growing interest among all classes in the domestic life of our ancestors and in the condition of the people. Henry was the first to direct attention to these themes. His idea has been carried out with a large amount of corrected and additional information in the popular history of England by Charles Knight.- ANGUS, JOSEPH, 1865, The Handbook of English Literature, p. 573.

As a popular and comprehensive history it has much merit, but it lacks original research; while its style and method detracts from its literary value.-HENDERSON, T. F., 1891, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XXVI, p. 127.

PERSONAL

Livingston appears to have had but little vanity, either as a private or public man. His real learning and the quaint style of the day, sometimes give his writings an air of formality, which might be mistaken for pedantry; but on a close examination, his character bears few, if any traces of affectation. His conversation was entirely free of egotism. As governor, he despised, and altogether threw off the state, which his predecessors under the crown had assumed, and thus early adapted himself to the rapidly changing tastes of the people. Nor does this appear to have sprung so much from necessity as inclination. He was plain and indifferent, almost to slovenliness, in his dress. In his family, Livingston was a fond husband, and a generous father, ready at all times to make every sacrifice which the welfare of his children demanded; while at the same time it is not to be denied that a temper, originally irritable, and rendered more so by the difficulties and responsibility of his situation, was sometimes less restrained in his domestic circle, than where it was checked by the presence of strangers. An extreme sensitiveness to noise; an occasional unwillingness to converse when not excited by society; and a sensibility more quickly manifested with regard to trifling vexations than serious evils, sometimes threw a gloom over the fireside of Liberty Hall. He was consider

ably above the middle stature, and in early life, so very thin as to receive from some female wit of New-York, perhaps in allusion to his satirical disposition, the nickname of the "whipping-post." In later years he acquired a more dignified corpulency. Speaking of himself, in the language of one of his opponents in the American Whig (1768), he says, "The Whig is a long-nosed, long-chinned, uglylooking fellow."

Of his scholarship, it may be said that it was distinguished in days when scholarship was more common. Greek he abandoned early in life, but of the Latin he retained a familiar knowledge; the French and Dutch he read with great facility, writing them both with considerable ease, though without elegance. With the literature of his own language, he was intimately acquainted. In polemical divinity, a study now fallen

into considerable disrepute, he was also well read. His religious taste and readings tinge most of his literary productions, which often borrow point and eloquence from the rich treasure-house of scriptural allusions and quotations. His skill in literature was not confined to the closet or his own gratification; we have seen it rendering more effective his exertions directed to Holland; and in his own country, he was active in supplying the want of instruction in the different States, to do which he was more than once requested; while at the same time as trustee ex-officio of Princeton and Rutgers Colleges, he exercised a supervision over the literary interests of New Jersey. - SEDGWICK, THEODORE, 1833, A Memoir of the Life of William Livingston, pp. 443, 445,446,447. In person he was, in middle life, tall and spare, later slightly corpulent; in dress, careless, almost slovenly, but his biographer informs us that he was a capital fisherman and wrote a bad hand, two unerring marks of a gentleman. He was an excellent Latin scholar, read and wrote French and Dutch with ease, and was thoroughly acquainted with English literature. Among the men of this historic period, no one affords a more interesting study than this staunch, original and devoted friend of the liberties and rights of man.-STEVENS, JOHN AUSTIN, 1878, William Livingston, Magazine of American History, vol. 2, pp. 487, 488.

At the head of the New Jersey delegation stood her famous war governor, William Livingston, who had reached his sixtyfifth year.

He had been an eminent member of the New York bar as early as 1752, and was one of the most caustic and forcible essayists in the country; he was also one of the few poets of his time. It was next to impossible for him to make a speech that was not seasoned with dry humor and stinging satire. He was probably the best classical scholar in the assemblage. He had through a long career of active public and political service acquitted himself with honor.-LAMB, MARTHA J., 1885, The Framers of the Constitution, Magazine of American History, vol. 13, p.338.

PHILOSOPHIC SOLITUDE

1747

This poem is obviously the effort of a rhyming apprentice, still in bondage to