48 
boyhood had ever read any of Shakespeare’s plays. The original 
settlers of Massachusetts abhorred playwrights, and looked with 
distrust upon everything connected with the theatrical stage. Even 
in his boyhood Franklin had such a keen appreciation of what 
is great and grand, and such a lively concern for all things human, 
that it would be of interest now to know that he, too, had paid 
silent homage at the shrine of the ‘‘ sweet swan of Avon.’’ In Zhe 
New-England Courant of July 2, 1722, there is a bare allusion to 
‘¢ Shakespear’s Works,’’ which is probably the first time that the 
name of the great dramatist is mentioned in New England litera- 
ture. It occurs in a list of books made by an anonymous corre- 
spondent, as belonging to himself, which would come handy ‘in 
writing on Subjects Natural, Moral, and Divine, and in cultivating 
those which seem the most Barren.’? The whole communication 
reads not unlike the effusions of the young printer, and may have 
been written by him. : 
The circumstances under which Franklin left home are too well 
known to be repeated here. Youthful indiscretions can never be 
defended successfully, but they may be forgotten, or passed over in 
silence. 
From his native town Franklin went to Philadelphia, with no 
recommendations and an utter stranger; but fortunately before 
leaving home he had learned to set type. The knowledge of this 
art gave the friendless boy a self-reliance that proved to be of prac- 
tical help, and laid the foundation of his future fame. During a 
long life he never forgot the fact that he was a printer first, and 
Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States of America to the 
Court of France afterward ; and still later President of the State of 
Pennsylvania. In his last will and testament he sets forth these 
distinctive titles in the order given here; and in his own epitaph, 
which he wrote as a young man, he styles himself simply ‘‘ Printer.’’ 
This epitaph is a celebrated bit of literature, quaint and full of 
figurative expression, and has often been re-printed. It bears a 
remote resemblance to some lines at the end of a Funeral Elegy en 
John Foster, a graduate of Harvard College and the pioneer printer 
of Boston, who died on September 9, 1681. The Elegy was written 
by Joseph Capen, then a recent graduate of the same institution, 
and was first published as a broadside. Perhaps the lines suggested 
to Franklin his own epitaph. Asa bright boy with an inquisitive 
turn of mind, he was familiar with the main incidents in the life of 
