t his knowledge of the
classics was always superficial, and he seems to have entertained
something like a spite against them.

In 1732 Franklin began the publication of an almanac under the name of
Richard Saunders, which he continued for twenty-five years, and which
gained immense popularity as Poor Richard's Almanac. It was the
flourishing time of such publications. Since the year 1639, when
Stephen Daye printed his first almanac at Cambridge, these annual
messages had increased in number until after theology they became
perhaps the most genuine feature of colonial literature. And from the
first they displayed the sort of shrewdness and humor which have always
been characteristic of the American mind. So, too, the bulk of Poor
Richard's production was humor, sometimes blunt and coarse, and
sometimes instinct with the finest irony. Perhaps the best of Poor
Richard's jokes is that played at the expense of Titan Leeds, his rival
in Philadelphia. In the first issue Mr. Saunders announces the imminent
death of his friend Titan Leeds: "He dies, by my calculation, made at
his request, on October 17, 1733, 3 ho., 29 m., P.M., at the very
instant of the [symbol for conjunction] of [symbol for sun] and [symbol
for Mercury].[1] By his own calculation, he will survive till the 26th
of the same month. This small difference between us we have disputed
whenever we have met these nine years past; but at length he is
inclined to agree with my judgment. Which of us is most exact a little
time will now determine. As, therefore, these Provinces may not longer
expect to see any of his performances after this year, I think myself
free to take up the task." Naturally Mr. Titan Leeds objected with
strenuous voice to this summary manner of being shuffled out of the
world; and Franklin's yearly protest that Leeds is really dead, and his
appeal to the degenerating wit of Leeds's almanac to prove his
assertion, is one of the most successful and malicious jokes ever
perpetrated. We ought to add, however, that this venomous jest is
borrowed bodily from Dean Swift's treatment of the poor almanac-maker,
Partridge. Indeed it might be said of Franklin, as Moliere said of
himself, that he took his own wherever he found it.

[1] [conjunction symbol] signifies _conjunction_; [sun symbol]
_the sun_; [Mercury symbol] _Mercury_.

But what gave the almanac its permanent fame was the cleverness of the
maxims scattered through its pages. These w