Franklin and Fulke Greville

Abstract

Benjamin Franklin was always, to quote Carl Van Doren, “an avid, powerful reader of many books. There were always books in his inner life, books in his business, books in his friendships.” His effective initiative in the organization and development of the Junto's subscription library, later the Philadelphia Library, is one conspicuous illustration of this life-long habit of his mind and heart; but every reader of the Autobiography knows that, besides providing books for others, Franklin used them in his own writing, early and late. Witness the memorable passages in which he recalls his self-imposed “exercises” in “improving my language”—not to mention Alexander Pope's—by “imitating” The Spectator or the Essay on Criticism, and digesting Locke, Shaftesbury, and others. In this note I wish to call particular attention to a hitherto unnoticed by-product of Franklin's “bookish inclination,” a recollection from a notable Elizabethan poet.