[Footnote i-115: Quoted in J. B. Bury's _The Idea of Progress_, 104. See also Lois Whitney's _Primitivism and the Idea of Progress_, especially chap. V.] [Footnote i-116: Bury, _op. cit._, 96.] [Footnote i-117: _Writings_, VIII, 451.] [Footnote i-118: For example see _ibid._, IX, 74, 557.] [Footnote i-119: See _Writings_, VIII, 454.] [Footnote i-120: See R. M. Gummere, "Socrates at the Printing Press. Benjamin Franklin and the Classics," _Classical Weekly_, XXVI, 57-9 (Dec. 5, 1932).] [Footnote i-121: Several of the following arguments are included in C. E. Jorgenson's "Sidelights on Benjamin Franklin's Principles of Rhetoric," _Revue Anglo-Américaine_, Feb., 1934, 208-22.] [Footnote i-122: Hume wrote to Franklin: "You are the first philosopher, and indeed the first great man of letters for whom we are beholden to her [America]" (_Writings_, IV, 154). Cowper exclaimed that Franklin was "one of the most important [men] in the literary world, that the present age can boast of" (Parton, _op. cit._, II, 439); for other engaging estimates of Franklin as a man of letters consult C. W. Moulton, _Library of Literary Criticism ..._, IV, 79-106.] [Footnote i-123: Franklin found in an appendix to Greenwood's _English Grammar_ and in the _Memorabilia_ specimens of the Socratic method which influenced him to adopt the manner of "the humble inquirer and doubter," to write and harangue with a "modest diffidence." On several occasions he approvingly quotes Pope's rule: "to speak, tho' sure, with seeming Diffidence." Jefferson recognized Franklin's use of this kind of Machiavellian diffidence, noting, "It was one of the rules which, above all others, made Dr. Franklin the most amiable of men in society, never to contradict anybody," and that "if he was urged to announce an opinion, he did it rather by asking questions, as if for information, or by suggesting doubts." In the _Autobiography_ Franklin sees the Socratic method as a necessary ally to "doing good," observing that many who mean to be helpful "lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes for which speech was given to us."] [Footnote i-124: Bunyan's dignified simplicity, his "sound and honest Gospel strains," may have been one of Franklin's incentives to write lucidly and compellingly. For Bunyan's literary ideals, see the prefaces to his works, especially that to _Grace Abounding_. The best study of Defoe and Swift as literary theorists is W. Gückel and E. Günther, _D. Defoes und J. Swifts Belesenheit und literarische Kritik_ (Leipzig, 1925).] [Footnote i-125: E. C. Cook, _Literary Influences in Colonial Newspapers, 1704-1750_, 15. This scholarly work shows the great influence in America of neoclassical authors.] [Footnote i-126: For a generous catalog of the devices borrowed see _ibid._, 15 f.] [Footnote i-127: _Spectator_, No. 167.]