An institution

Even if Poor Richard--in this spirit of common sense so abundantly endowed in his creator--borrowed freely from the wisdom of the ages, he swiftly emerged as an institution unto himself. Van Doren remarks that "the essence of Poor Richard, his humorous, homely character, was Franklin's own creation." Occasionally injecting a saucy commentary, his nagging wife, Bridget, also played a one-of-a-kind role in Poor Richard's folksy realm.

In his essay "The Almanac," included in Barbour's collection, Bruce Granger probes Poor Richard's success. He notes that Franklin considered the Almanack a "proper Vehicle for conveying Instruction among the common people, who bought scarce any other books," as revealed in the Autobiography. Accordingly, Franklin strove to make the Almanack both entertaining and useful.

"He approached this task with seeming earnest," says Granger, "thereby escaping the prosaic dullness that characterized most colonial almanacs." Franklin's memoir proudly noted that his almanac sold ten thousand copies a year--roughly one per every hundred citizens, according to many colonial observers.

His success clearly derived from his homely characters but also his crafty adaptations of verses unearthed from his voluminous library. "As a proverb stylist who often recast what he borrowed, Franklin was guided by such neoclassic ideals as perspicuity, elegance, and cadence," comments Granger. For example, Franklin took a line like "fresh fish and new-come guests smell, but that they are three days old" and refined it to read, "Fish and Visitors stink in three days." On occasion, says Granger, "yielding to a coarseness that was nature to him," Franklin altered his sayings "in the direction of the obscene or bawdy." Thus, "A good friend is my nearest relation" became "Relation without friendship... [is] not worth a farto."

According to Van Doren, such coarseness, vastly appealing to Franklin's contemporaries, was prevalent in Poor Richard's early "gamy years" but became largely overshadowed by his more didactic passages on hard work and thrift, many of which appeared later. "The earlier Poor Richard was by no means always on the side of calculating prudence," says Van Doren.

Granger tell us that beginning in 1739, "Richard the honest philomath tends to be obscured by the emergence of Richard the moralizing philosopher." In his preface for that year, Richard foreshadows some coming innovations: "Besides the usual Things expected in an Almanack, I hope the profess'd Teachers of Mankind will excuse my scattering here and there some instructive Hints in Matters of Morality and Religion."

He is quick, however, to assure readers, with typical facetiousness, that his annual guide will not surrender its charm and levity (a promise Franklin made sure he kept): "Be not disturbed, O grave and sober Reader, if among the many serious Sentences in my Book, thou findest me trifling now and then, and talking idly.... Squeamish stomachs cannot eat without Pickles; which 'tis true are good for nothing else, but they provoke an Appetite"

In the years that followed, Franklin's didacticism focused increasingly on matters of personal economy. His verses urged hard work and prudent savings not only as a means of attaining security but as the path to virtue. Likewise, they condemned sloth, credit payments, and frivolous spending. Van Doren argues that such preachings, rooted in the Protestant work ethic, shaped a young nation's sensibilities and ultimately prevailed as the Almanack's legacy. That legacy was sealed, he says, by the 1758 publication of "The Way to Wealth," a witty compilation of these aphorisms that proved immensely popular.

Probing the underpinnings of this thematic shift, Van Doren declares that Franklin the moralist "could see that the times called for Poor Richard's counsel.... Few men of privilege had come from Europe to America. They had not needed to emigrate. Few of the European poor had come. They had not been able to. The colonists were 'middling people' and they must work and save if they were to survive and prosper."

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