among the common people, who bought scarcely any other books.  I therefore filled all the little spaces that occurred between the remarkable days in the calendar with proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality as the means of procuring wealth and thereby securing virtue, it being more difficult for a man in want to act always honestly, as, to use here one of these proverbs, “it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.”  These proverbs, which contained the wisdom of many ages and nations, I assembled and formed into a connected discourse prefixed to the Almanack of 1757, as the harangue of a wise old man to the people attending an auction.  The bringing all these scattered counsels thus into a focus enabled them to make a greater impression.  The piece being universally approved, was copied in all the newspapers of the American Continent, reprinted in Britain on a large sheet of paper to be stuck up in houses; two translations were made of it in France, and great numbers bought by the clergy to distribute gratis among their poor parishioners and tenants.  In Pennsylvania, as it discouraged useless expense in foreign superfluities, some thought it had its share of influence in producing that growing plenty of money which was observable for several years after its publication.’—­Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin, Part II, Works Edit. 1833, vol. ii. pp. 146-148.

Reprinted innumerable times while Franklin was alive, this paper has, since his death, passed through seventy editions in English, fifty-six In French, eleven in German, and nine in Italian.  It has been translated into nearly every language in Europe:  into French, German, and Italian, as we have seen; into Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Polish, Bohemian, Dutch, Welsh, and modern Greek; it has also been translated into Chinese.[6] In the edition of Franklin’s Works, printed in London in 1806, it appears under the title of The Way to Wealth, as clearly shown in the Preface to an old Pennsylvanian Almanack, entitled Poor Richard Improved, and under this title it was usually printed when detached from the Almanack.

As Franklin himself owns, the maxims have little pretension to originality.  It is evident that he had laid under contribution such collections as Clerk’s Adagio Latino-Anglica, Herbert’s Jacula Prudentum, James Howell’s collection of proverbs, David Fergtison’s Scotch Proverbs (with the successively increasing editions between 1641 and 1706), Ray’s famous Collection of English Proverbs, William Penn’s Maxims, and the like.  A few are probably original, and many have been re-minted and owe their form to him.