found, and his ambition was still to be a rhymester. "I
now took a fancy to write poetry, and made some little
pieces," he relates in his autobiography; and his printer-
brother, "thinking it might turn to account, encouraged
me, and put me on composing occasional ballads. One
was called 'The Lighthouse Tragedy,' and contained an
account of the drowning of Captain Worthilake, with
his two daughters; the other was a sailor's song, on the
taking of Teach (or Blackbeard) the pirate. They were
wretched stuff, in the Grub-street-ballad style; and when
they were printed he sent me about the town to sell
them." Recently what is supposed to be the original of
his poem on Teach has been unearthed, and a stanza de-
serves quotation, as an example of his earliest writing
now extant:

"Will you hear of a bloody Battle,
Lately fought upon the Seas,
It will make your Ears to rattle,
And your Admiration cease;
Have you heard of Teach the Rover,
And his Knavery on the Main;
How of Gold he was a Lover,
How he lov'd all ill got Gain."

Whatever their merit, Franklin scored a success in his
first essay in letters. The ballads sold well, one, in fact,
"wonderfully," which "flattered my vanity; but my
father discouraged me by ridiculing my performances,
and telling me verse-makers were generally beggars.
So I escaped being a poet, most probably a very bad
one."

Laughed out of poetry, the lad turned to prose, and
here again his father's criticism influenced him. Having

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