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어렸을 때 매우 감명깊게 읽은 책. 아마 중학생 때였지싶다. 그땐 위인전을 전혀 좋게 생각하지않았었는데도 이건 어찌어찌하여 읽게 됐는데 정말 많이 배웠고 정말 좋아했다. 온갖 바람직한 생각으로 꽉차 있던, 솜뭉치같이 뭐든 빨아들일 만큼 뇌의 흡수력이 강하고 민감했던 그 나이였으니 영향이 클 수 밖에 없었던 것같다. 훌륭한 일을 한 사람들은 단순히 천재라기보다는 보통사람과는 확실히 다른 "아주 특별한" 노력과 훈련이 뒷받침이 되었기 때문에 도달가능한 것임을 절실히 느낄 수 있었다.
책을 읽고서 어찌나 감동을 받고 깨달음이 컸던지 벤자민프랭클린의 독서법, 글쓰기 연습방법 등, 그가 글을 잘 쓰기 위해서 각고의 훈련을 통해 시도한 구체적인 방법들을 고대로 똑같이 해보려고 노력도 해봤고, 그가 읽었던 책들을 다 똑같이 읽어보려고 도서목록을 만들어두었다가 하나씩 지워가며 읽기도 했다. 이런 마인드를 가능하게 하는 것이 바로 '전기(傳記)'의 힘이 아닌가싶다.
내 형제 중 하나는, 그런 야심찬 계획들을 세우며 잔뜩 들떴으나 그가 읽은 책들을 구하는 데에 고생고생을 하며 첫목록부터 좌절에 부딪혀서 "Bunyan이란 작가를 아냐"고 묻고다니는 나를 보고는 반농담반진담으로, "XX야, 그 사람이 어느 쩍 시절 사람이냐. 더구나 그때쩍 사람이 읽었을 책이면 얼마나 오래되었겠니. 그 고리짝 시절 책들이 너무 옛날책들이라 구하기도 힘든 것도 있겠고 읽기도 힘들고 지루하지않을까. 그러니까 그 사람이 읽은 걸 다 읽으려고 하진 말고 몇 개만 읽어도 좋을 거야."라고 했던 기억이 이상하게도 생생하게 나서 미소가 지어진다. 요즘 여기 벤자민프랭클린 얘기가 나온 김에 다시 읽어보니 감회가 새롭다. --우산
다음은 벤자민프랭클린의 자서전 중 우산이 아주 좋아하는 부분들이다. ¶
A question was once, somehow or other, started between Collins and me, of the propriety of educating the female sex in learning, and their abilities for study. He was of opinion that it was improper, and that they were naturally unequal to it. I took the contrary side, perhaps a little for dispute's sake. He was naturally more eloquent, had a ready plenty of words; and sometimes, as I thought, bore me down more by his fluency than by the strength of his reasons. As we parted without settling the point, and were not to see one another again for some time, I sat down to put my arguments in writing, which I copied fair and sent to him. He answered, and I replied. Three or four letters of a side had passed, when my father happened to find my papers and read them. Without entering into the discussion, he took occasion to talk to me about the manner of my writing; observed that, though I had the advantage of my antagonist in correct spelling and pointing (which I ow'd to the printing-house), I fell far short in elegance of expression, in method and in perspicuity, of which he convinced me by several instances. I saw the justice of his remark, and thence grew more attentive to the manner in writing, and determined to endeavor at improvement.
About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. It was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, try'd to compleat the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious. My time for these exercises and for reading was at night, after work or before it began in the morning, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the printing-house alone, evading as much as I could the common attendance on public worship which my father used to exact on me when I was under his care, and which indeed I still thought a duty, though I could not, as it seemed to me, afford time to practise it.
While I was intent on improving my language, I met with an English grammar (I think it was Greenwood's), at the end of which there were two little sketches of the arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic method; and soon after I procur'd Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein there are many instances of the same method. I was charm'd with it, adopted it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter. And being then, from reading Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine, I found this method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore I took a delight in it, practis'd it continually, and grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions, the consequences of which they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved. I continu'd this method some few years, but gradually left it, retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence; never using, when I advanced any thing that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such reasons; or ,I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken. This habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions, and persuade men into measures that I have been from time to time engag'd in promoting; and, as the chief ends of conversation are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not 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, to wit, giving or receiving information or pleasure. For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention. If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fix'd in your present opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error. And by such a manner, you can seldom hope to recommend yourself in pleasing your hearers, or to persuade those whose concurrence you desire. Pope says, judiciously:
And things unknown propos'd as things forgot;"
For want of modesty is want of sense."
That want of modesty is want of sense."
He had some ingenious men among his friends, who amus'd themselves by writing little pieces for this paper, which gain'd it credit and made it more in demand, and these gentlemen often visited us. Hearing their conversations, and their accounts of the approbation their papers were received with, I was excited to try my hand among them; but, being still a boy, and suspecting that my brother would object to printing anything of mine in his paper if he knew it to be mine, I contrived to disguise my hand, and, writing an anonymous paper, I put it in at night under the door of the printing-house. It was found in the morning, and communicated to his writing friends when they call'd in as usual. They read it, commented on it in my hearing, and I had the exquisite pleasure of finding it met with their approbation, and that, in their different guesses at the author, none were named but men of some character among us for learning and ingenuity. I suppose now that I was rather lucky in my judges, and that perhaps they were not really so very good ones as I then esteem'd them.|}}