Nought o word spak he more than was nede.
He was no formal literary critic such as Boileau, Lessing, or Coleridge, and no acknowledged arbiter of taste, such as Dr. Johnson. Yet Franklin, in voluminous practice, enjoying tremendous international vogue, proved that his theories bore the acid test of effectiveness. Indirectly he challenged his readers to honor principles of rhetoric which could so trenchantly serve the demands of his catholic pen, and make him one of the most widely read of all Americans.
Franklin was a printer chiefly because of two proclivities which were basic in his personality from childhood to old age--a bent toward practical mechanics ("handiness") and a fondness for reading (bookishness). Further, he was a journalist and publisher chiefly because he was a printer.
A thorough printer is both an artisan and an artist; he has both the manual dexterity of a good workman and the aesthetic appreciation of the amateur of beauty. Franklin always took pride in his ability to handle the printer's tools, from the time when, at the age of twelve, he became "a useful hand"[i-162] in the print shop of his brother James, until the very end of his life. One of the pleasantest anecdotes of the old printer is that which tells of his visit to the famous Didot printing establishment in Paris, when he stepped up to a press, and motioning the printer aside, himself took possession of the machine and printed off several sheets. Then the American ambassador smiled at the gaping printers and said, "Do not be astonished, Sirs, it is my former business."[i-163]
Even in his boyhood, it was a pleasure to Franklin "to see good workmen handle their tools," and he tells in his autobiography how much this feeling for tools meant to him throughout his life.[i-164] His flair for invention, though founded on this same "handiness," was not always directed toward the production of tools; but in the two fields of "philosophical" experimentation and the printing trade, his dexterity and cleverness in making needful instruments and devices were invaluable.
Partly because of the fact that printers' supplies must be imported from England, and partly because of his natural tool-mindedness, Franklin manufactured more of his own supplies than any other American commercial printer before or since. He cast type, made paper molds, mixed inks, made contributions to press building, did engraving, forwarded experiments in stereotyping, and worked at logotypy. Long after he had retired from the printing business. Franklin continued to influence developments in that field. It is a common saying among printers that one never forgets the smell of printer's ink. Franklin kept touch with his former business through various partnerships, through correspondence with printer friends, through the establishment of a private press in his home at Passy during his ambassadorship to France, and through his personal supervision of the education of his grandson in "the art preservative of arts." "I am too old to follow printing again myself," he wrote to a friend, "but, loving the business, I have brought up my grandson Benjamin to it, and have built and furnished a printing-house for him, which he now manages under my eye."[i-165]