about the autobiography of benjamin franklin
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About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator.I had never before seen any of them.I bought it,read it over and over,and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent,and wished ,if possible,to imitate it. With that view I took some of the papers,and,making shout hints of the sentiments in each sentence,laid them by a few days,and then,without looking at he hook,tried to complete the papers again,by expressing each hinted sentiment at length,and as fully as it had been expressed before,in any suitable words that should occur to me.Then I compared 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 verse;since the continual search for words of the same import,but dof different length,to suit the measure,or of different sound for the rhythm,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 wll forgotten the prose,turned them back again.I also sometimes jumbled my collection of hints into confusion,and after some weeks endeavored 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 arragement of the thoughts.By comparing my work with the orginal,I discovered many faults and corrected them;but I sometimes had the pleasure to fancy that, in 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 comt to be tolerate English writer,of which I was extremely ambitious.
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