Their influence
made for union, in Franklin's sense of that word, and their
literary models, like their paper, type, and even ink, were found
in London. The "New England Courant," established in Boston in
1721 by James Franklin, is full of imitations of the "Tatler,"
"Spectator," and "Guardian." What is more, the "Courant" boasted
of its office collection of books, including Shakespeare, Milton,
the "Spectator," and Swift's "Tale of a Tub."* This was in 1722.
If we remember that no allusion to Shakespeare has been
discovered in the colonial literature of the seventeenth century,
and scarcely an allusion to the Puritan poet Milton, and that the
Harvard College Library in 1723 had nothing of Addison, Steele,
Bolingbroke, Dryden, Pope, and Swift, and had only recently
obtained copies of Milton and Shakespeare, we can appreciate the
value of James Franklin's apprenticeship in London. Perhaps we
can even forgive him for that attack upon the Mathers which threw
the conduct of the "Courant," for a brief period, into the hands
of his brother Benjamin, whose turn at a London apprenticeship
was soon to come.
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