[1] His father, Richard Bache, was a zealous revolutionist who had emigrated from Settle, in Yorkshire, and settled in America as a merchant. He married Sarah Franklin, and succeeded her distinguished father as Postmaster-General of the United States. Died at Settle, Penn., in 1811. Sarah Franklin Bache was long remembered for her patriotic services during the revolutionary war. Their son, Benjamin Franklin Bache, accompanied his grandfather to Paris, gained a knowledge of printing at Didot’s, and returned to America in 1785. Five years later, he started the _General Advertizer_, subsequently called the _Aurora_, which paper exercised considerable influence in opposition to the administration of Washington and Adams. Born 1769, died 1798, of the fever which was then devastating the city. [2] “The _Censor_, a work by Peter Porcupine, administers his monthly correction to our disorganizers. The author is said to be an Englishman who has kept a school in this city.”--Letter from C. Goodrich to Oliver Wolcott, printed in “Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and Adams,” by O. W. [3] Certain mysterious flour-contractors are heard of in Randolph’s “Vindication,” and Porcupine used the term afterwards to signify persons who could take French money. [4] Thornton’s language--this is an allusion to a prize dissertation on written and printed language, by one Wm. Thornton, M.D. It was published in Philadelphia in 1793, and introduced some new symbols. Cobbett’s objection to it was, that it was an attempt to make an _American_ language, as an improvement on English. For the curious in such matters, the title of the Essay is “Cadmus; or, a Treatise on the Elements of Written Language,” &c. Noah Webster, long before the great Dictionary made him famous, had written “Dissertations on the English Language” (1789), which included an Essay on Spelling Reform, a capital advantage of which reform would be the “making a difference between English and American orthography.” (_Vide_ Allibone; also Duyckinck’s “Cyclo. Amer. Lit.”) [5] This is the short autobiography from which some of the preceding information as to Cobbett’s early life has been derived:--“The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine.” [Philadelphia, 1796.] [6] A Federalist evening paper, edited by John Fenno. This newspaper was not so distinctively political as the _Aurora_; it dealt much more with mercantile affairs. [7] The reader will be entertained, no doubt, by a specimen or two:-- “An outcast e’en in hell, and order’d thence, The skulking Peter hides,” &c.