[spoilers] Hermione Norris/Ros

[A Cousin]

(25-09-2010 11:08 AM)JHyde Wrote:  I'm totally fascinated by this. It could also be what Jung terms crytonesia, accidental plagiarism, but for now I'm going to contact a friend who knows more about Franklin than I do.

Whoever wrote it, it's still a magnificent piece of writing. I can't have been the first to stumble upon this though.

You're not. It is a direct quote but on purpose.

The inclusion of a poem by Pope, much less anybody else, in Poor Richards Almanac, is not unusual. The Alamanac was a satirical amalgamation from many different sources only ostensibly written by Franklin's alter ego "Poor Richard." Pope was the most famous poet in the English speaking world. Ode on Solitude was his most famous poem. Franklin and everyone who could read (not many at that time) would have known that "Poor Richard" didn't really write it. If they didn't, well, that was kind of the point of The Alamanac to amuse and to satire sometimes in a politically incendiary way. I might add that there were no copyright laws at the time that I am aware of.

What I don't know is whether Franklin included it because he agreed or disagreed with Pope in general. Four years earlier, Pope had written The Dunciad which pissed a lot of people off at the time. It was a literary satire of the decay, stupidity and tastelessness of the British population of the time. At that point in his life, Franklin was a staunch British Loyalist. He would certainly had been aware of The Dunciad.