BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 



suitable words that should occur to me. Then I compared 

 my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, 

 and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, 

 or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought 

 I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on 

 making verses; since the continual search for words of the 

 same import, but of different length to suit the measure, or of 

 different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a 

 constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have 

 tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master 

 of it. Therefore I took some of the tales in the Spectator and 

 turned them into verse ; and after a time, when I had pretty 

 well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. I also 

 sometimes jumbled my collection of hints into confusion, and, 

 after some weeks, endeavoured to reduce them into the best 

 order before I began to form the full sentences and complete 

 the subject. This was to teach me method in the arrangement 

 of the thoughts. By comparing my work with the original 1 

 discovered many faults and corrected them ; but I sometimes 

 had the pleasure to fancy that in certain particulars of small 

 consequence I had been fortunate enough to improve the 

 method or the language; and this encouraged me to think 

 that I might in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of 

 which I was extremely ambitious.' 



Even at this early age nothing could exceed the per- 

 severance and self-denial which he displayed in pursuing hif 

 favourite object of cultivating his mental faculties to the 

 utmost of his power. When only sixteen, he chanced to 

 meet with a book in recommendation of a vegetable diet, 

 one of the arguments at least in favour of which made an 

 immediate impression upon him, — namelv. its greater cheai> 



