Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[56] Fortunately two authors, at least, among them possessed impulsiveness, vivacity, and humor as well as solid statesmanship; and made, at times, a purely literary use of these qualities. Those two were John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. As the former had a wife of similar quality, their very letters form some readable literary memorial of that period, even though, after the practice of their time, her epistles were signed with such high-sounding names as “Portia.”

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Benjamin Franklin.

In Franklin, on the other hand, we come upon a man who could not be said to turn to literature, but by his very nature made it a part of his various endowments; and who might justly be called the first great writer in America; the first to produce, in his Autobiography, a book now recognized by the world as classic. He was born in Boston on January 17, 1706, and died on April 17, 1790. He was apprenticed to his brother, a printer, but ran away to Philadelphia at the age of seventeen. He went to London and practiced his trade there for a time, returned to Philadelphia in a year and a half, printed and published newspapers and almanacs there, distinguished himself as