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"Ben Franklin"
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography: Page 65
of 154
you never could have waited for your advancement, or found your situation in
the mean time comfortable; which is a strong lesson to show the poverty of
glory and the importance of regulating our minds. If this correspondent had
known the nature of your reputation as well as I do, he would have said, Your
former writings and measures would secure attention to your Biography, and Art
of Virtue; and your Biography and Art of Virtue, in return, would secure
attention to them. This is an advantage attendant upon a various character,
and which brings all that belongs to it into greater play; and it is the more
useful, as perhaps more persons are at a loss for the means of improving their
minds and characters, than they are for the time or the inclination to do it.
But there is one concluding reflection, sir, that will shew the use of your
life as a mere piece of biography. This style of writing seems a little gone
out of vogue, and yet it is a very useful one; and your specimen of it may be
particularly serviceable, as it will make a subject of comparison with the
lives of various public cutthroats and intriguers, and with absurd monastic
self-tormentors or vain literary triflers. If it encourages more writings of
the same kind with your own, and induces more men to spend lives fit to be
written, it will be worth all Plutarch's Lives put together. But being tired
of figuring to myself a character of which every feature suits only one man in
the world, without giving him the praise of it, I shall end my letter, my dear
Dr. Franklin, with a personal application to your proper self. I am earnestly
desirous, then, my dear sir, that you should let the world into the traits of
your genuine character, as civil broils nay otherwise tend to disguise or
traduce it. Considering your great age, the caution of your character, and
your peculiar style of thinking, it is not likely that any one besides
yourself can be sufficiently master of the facts of your life, or the
intentions of your mind. Besides all this, the immense revolution of the
present period, will necessarily turn our attention towards the author of it,
and when virtuous principles have been pretended in it, it will be highly
important to shew that such have really influenced; and, as your own character
will be the principal one to receive a scrutiny, it is proper (even for its
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