Benjamin Franklin; Self-Revealed, Volume 2 (of 2)

But conceive not Sirs [says the left hand further], that my complaints are instigated merely by vanity. No; my uneasiness is occasioned by an object much more serious. It is the practice in our family, that the whole business of providing for its subsistence falls upon my sister and myself. If any indisposition should attack my sister, – and I mention it in confidence upon this occasion, that she is subject to the gout, the rheumatism, and cramp, without making mention of other accidents, – what would be the fate of our poor family? Must not the regret of our parents be excessive, at having placed so great a difference between sisters who are so perfectly equal? Alas! we must perish from distress; for it would not be in my power even to scrawl a suppliant petition for relief, having been obliged to employ the hand of another in transcribing the request which I have now the honour to prefer to you.

One of the essays of Franklin is an essay which he termed a "bagatelle," but which is of a different cast from most of his papers bearing that designation. This is the essay on the Morals of Chess. As a mere literary production, it possesses remarkable merit, but it is more valuable still for the singular union of wisdom and benevolence found in all of the writer's precepts relating to the conduct of life. It is only upon the contracted face of an ordinary chess-board that the sagacious reflections and salutary counsels of this paper are based, but many of them are quite extensive enough in their application to be suitable for the morals of the wider chess-board on which men and women themselves are the pawns, and the universal currents of human nature and human existence the players. By playing at chess, Franklin thought, we may learn foresight, circumspection, caution and hopefulness. When playing it, if the agreement is that the rules of the game shall be strictly observed, they should be strictly observed by both parties. If the agreement is that they shall not be strictly observed, one party should claim no indulgence for himself that he is not willing to grant to his adversary. No false move should ever be made by a player to extricate himself from a difficulty or to gain an advantage. There can be no pleasure in playing with a person once detected in such an unfair practice. If your adversary is long in playing, you should not hurry him, or express any uneasiness at his delay, nor sing, nor whistle, nor look at your watch, nor take up a book to read, nor tap with your feet on the floor, or with your fingers on the table, nor do anything that may disturb his attention. For all these things displease, and they do not show your skill in playing but your craftiness or your rudeness.

You should not endeavor to amuse and deceive your adversary by pretending to have made bad moves in order to render him confident and careless and inattentive to your schemes. This is fraud and deceit, not skill. If you gain the victory, you should not give way to exultation or insult, nor show too much pleasure. On the contrary, you should endeavor to console your adversary, and soothe his wounded pride by every sort of civil expression that may be used with truth, such as, "You understand the game better than I, but you are a little inattentive," or "You play too fast," or "You had the best of the game, but something happened to divert your thoughts, and that turned it in my favour." If you are simply a spectator, you should observe the most perfect silence; for, if you give advice, you offend both parties, him, against whom you give it, because it may cause the loss of his game, him, in whose favour you give it, because though it be good, and he follows it, he loses the pleasure he might have had, if you had permitted him to think until it had occurred to himself.

And thus this essay, so full of wholesome, kind advice from a counsellor, who loved men none the less because he knew all their failings and foibles as well as virtues, continues a little longer, until the reader, already won over to its perfect rectitude of sentiment and purpose, entirely forgets how obvious are all the truisms of its stating that he has so often offended. The measure of self-abnegation, suggested by the conclusion of the essay, is, we fear, rather too exacting for the tug of chess-board selfishness upon the weaker side of human nature. If it is agreed that the rules of the game are not to be rigorously enforced, then, says Franklin, moderate your desire of victory over your adversary, and be pleased with one over yourself. Do not snatch eagerly at every advantage offered by his unskilfulness or inattention, but point out to him kindly that by such a move he places or leaves a piece in danger and unsupported; or that by another he will put his king in a perilous situation &c. "By this generous civility (so opposite to the unfairness above forbidden) you may, indeed, happen to lose the game to your opponent," the close of the essay declares, "but you will win what is better, his esteem, his respect, and his affection, together with the silent approbation and goodwill of impartial spectators."

We shall not linger upon the letters of Franklin. The substance of them has already been worked into this book too freely for that. It is sufficient to say that they are among the very best in the English language. It would be idle to compare them with those of Gray, Horace Walpole, Cowper, Byron or Fitzgerald, the acknowledged masters of that form of composition. Franklin was not a conscious man of letters at all, and is not to be judged by such academic standards. If he was, we might say that Cowper aerated with a little of Walpole most nearly, though, after all, but remotely, suggests a true conception of what Franklin was as a letter-writer. Few men were ever saner than Cowper was during his really lucid intervals; but then Cowper was not a man of business, a statesman or a philosopher, and the elixir of Walpole's gaiety differs from that of Franklin's as a stimulant of the wine-shop differs from fresh air and sunshine. The official and semi-official letters of Franklin contain some of the most solid and sagacious of his reflections and observations on political topics. His familiar letters to his kinsfolk and friends often run out into thoughts upon the management of our individual lives and our relations to the visible and invisible universe which are likely to be a part of the currency of human wisdom as long as human society lasts. And almost all of his known letters have value enough to make us feel, when still another of the thousands written by him happens to be reclaimed from loss, as Reuben in his parable might have felt, if he had recovered his precious axe.

Among the cleverest of his letters was his familiar one to his daughter on the Order of the Cincinnati. If his advice had been asked, he said, he perhaps would not have objected to their wearing their ribbon and badge themselves, if they derived pleasure from such trivial things, but he certainly should have objected to the idea of making the honor hereditary. And this was the amusing and original way in which he presented his views on the subject:

For Honour, worthily obtain'd (as for Example that of our Officers), is in its Nature a personal Thing, and incommunicable to any but those who had some Share in obtaining it. Thus among the Chinese, the most ancient, and from long Experience the wisest of Nations, honour does not descend, but ascends. If a man from his Learning, his Wisdom, or his Valour, is promoted by the Emperor to the Rank of Mandarin, his Parents are immediately entitled to all the same Ceremonies of Respect from the People, that are establish'd as due to the Mandarin himself; on the supposition that it must have been owing to the Education, Instruction, and good Example afforded him by his Parents, that he was rendered capable of serving the Publick.

This ascending Honour is therefore useful to the State, as it encourages Parents to give their Children a good and virtuous Education. But the descending Honour, to Posterity who could have no Share in obtaining it, is not only groundless and absurd, but often hurtful to that Posterity, since it is apt to make them proud, disdaining to be employ'd in useful Arts, and thence falling into Poverty, and all the Meannesses, Servility, and Wretchedness attending it; which is the present case with much of what is called the Noblesse in Europe. Or if to keep up the Dignity of the Family, Estates are entailed entire on the Eldest male heir, another Pest to Industry and Improvement of the Country is introduc'd, which will be followed by all the odious mixture of pride and Beggary, and idleness, that have half depopulated [and decultivated] Spain; occasioning continual Extinction of Families by the Discouragements of Marriage [and neglect in the improvement of estates].

I wish, therefore, that the Cincinnati, if they must go on with their Project, would direct the Badges of their Order to be worn by their Parents, instead of handing them down to their Children. It would be a good Precedent, and might have good Effects. It would also be a kind of Obedience to the Fourth Commandment, in which God enjoins us to honour our Father and Mother, but has nowhere directed us to honour our Children. And certainly no mode of honouring those immediate Authors of our Being can be more effectual, than that of doing praiseworthy Actions, which reflect Honour on those who gave us our Education; or more becoming, than that of manifesting, by some public Expression or Token, that it is to their Instruction and Example we ascribe the Merit of those Actions.

But the Absurdity of descending Honours is not a mere Matter of philosophical Opinion; it is capable of mathematical Demonstration. A Man's Son, for instance, is but half of his Family, the other half belonging to the Family of his Wife. His Son, too, marrying into another Family, his Share in the Grandson is but a fourth; in the Great Grandson, by the same Process, it is but an Eighth; in the next Generation a Sixteenth; the next a Thirty-second; the next a Sixty-fourth; the next an Hundred and Twenty-eighth; the next a Two hundred and Fifty-sixth; and the next a Five hundred and twelfth; thus in nine Generations, which will not require more than 300 years (no very great Antiquity for a Family), our present Chevalier of the Order of Cincinnatus's Share in the then existing Knight, will be but a 512th part; which, allowing the present certain Fidelity of American Wives to be insur'd down through all those Nine Generations, is so small a Consideration, that methinks no reasonable Man would hazard for the sake of it the disagreeable Consequences of the Jealousy, Envy, and Ill will of his Countrymen.

Let us go back with our Calculation from this young Noble, the 512th part of the present Knight, thro' his nine Generations, till we return to the year of the Institution. He must have had a Father and Mother, they are two. Each of them had a Father and Mother, they are four. Those of the next preceding Generation will be eight, the next Sixteen, the next thirty-two, the next sixty-four, the next one hundred and Twenty-eight, the next Two hundred and fifty-six, and the ninth in this Retrocession Five hundred and twelve, who must be now existing, and all contribute their Proportion of this future Chevalier de Cincinnatus. These, with the rest, make together as follows:

One Thousand and Twenty-two Men and Women, contributors to the formation of one Knight. And if we are to have a Thousand of these future Knights, there must be now and hereafter existing One Million and Twenty-two Thousand Fathers and Mothers, who are to contribute to their Production, unless a Part of the Number are employ'd in making more Knights than One. Let us strike off then the 22,000, on the Supposition of this double Employ, and then consider whether, after a reasonable Estimation of the Number of Rogues, and Fools, and Royalists and Scoundrels and Prostitutes, that are mix'd with, and help to make up necessarily their Million of Predecessors, Posterity will have much reason to boast of the noble Blood of the then existing Set of Chevaliers de Cincinnatus. [The future genealogists, too, of these Chevaliers, in proving the lineal descent of their honour through so many generations (even supposing honour capable in its nature of descending), will only prove the small share of this honour, which can be justly claimed by any one of them; since the above simple process in arithmetic makes it quite plain and clear that, in proportion as the antiquity of the family shall augment, the right to the honour of the ancestor will diminish; and a few generations more would reduce it to something so small as to be very near an absolute nullity.] I hope, therefore, that the Order will drop this part of their project, and content themselves, as the Knights of the Garter, Bath, Thistle, St. Louis, and other Orders of Europe do, with a Life Enjoyment of their little Badge and Ribband, and let the Distinction die with those who have merited it. This I imagine will give no offence. For my own part, I shall think it a Convenience, when I go into a Company where there may be Faces unknown to me, if I discover, by this Badge, the Persons who merit some particular Expression of my Respect; and it will save modest Virtue the Trouble of calling for our Regard, by awkward roundabout Intimations of having been heretofore employ'd in the Continental Service.

The Gentleman, who made the Voyage to France to provide the Ribands and Medals, has executed his Commission. To me they seem tolerably done; but all such Things are criticis'd. Some find Fault with the Latin, as wanting classic Elegance and Correctness; and, since our Nine Universities were not able to furnish better Latin, it was pity, they say, that the Mottos had not been in English. Others object to the Title, as not properly assumable by any but Gen. Washington, [and a few others] who serv'd without Pay. Others object to the Bald Eagle as looking too much like a Dindon, or Turkey. For my own Part, I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the Representative of our Country; he is a Bird of bad moral Character; he does not get his living honestly; you may have seen him perch'd on some dead Tree, near the River where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing-Hawk; and, when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the support of his Mate and young ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him, and takes it from him. With all this Injustice he is never in good Case; but, like those among Men who live by Sharping and Robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy. Besides, he is a rank Coward; the little King Bird, not bigger than a Sparrow, attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District. He is therefore by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America, who have driven all the King-birds from our Country; though exactly fit for that Order of Knights, which the French call Chevaliers d'Industrie.

I am, on this account, not displeas'd that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turk'y. For in Truth, the Turk'y is in comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America. Eagles have been found in all Countries, but the Turk'y was peculiar to ours; the first of the Species seen in Europe being brought to France by the Jesuits from Canada, and serv'd up at the Wedding Table of Charles the Ninth. He is, [though a little vain and silly, it is true, but not the worse emblem for that,] a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards, who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.

Nor need we dwell longer either upon Franklin as a poet. Considered seriously as such, he was undoubtedly one of the kind, that, as Horace says, neither Gods nor men can endure. But he should not be seriously regarded as a poet at all. We should bring no severer judgment, to his couplets than was brought to them by the plowmen and frontiersmen, who kept Poor Richard's Almanac suspended over their mantelpieces; and his anacreontics should be read, as they were sung, after the edge of criticism has been dulled by a bottle or so. It is only fair to Poor Richard, however, to say that no one had a poorer opinion of his gifts as a poet than himself. "I know as thee," he says in one of his prefaces, "that I am no Poet born: and it is a Trade I never learnt, nor indeed could learn. If I make Verses, 'tis in Spight of Nature and my Stars, I write." In another preface, after honoring his friend Taylor, of Ephemerides fame, with a considerable number of lines, he exclaims: "Souse down into Prose again, my Muse; for Poetry's no more thy Element, than Air is that of the Flying-Fish." And we need go no further than one of Franklin's lively letters to Polly, at which we have already glanced, to satisfy ourselves that he placed quite as low an estimate on his verses as Poor Richard did on his. Speaking of the Muse, which he mentioned in his letter as having visited him that morning, he observes in his light-hearted way:

This Muse appear'd to be no Housewife. I suppose few of them are. She was drest (if the Expression is allowable) in an Undress, a kind of slatternly Negligée, neither neat nor clean, nor well made; and she has given the same sort of Dress to my Piece. On reviewing it, I would have reform'd the lines and made them all of a Length, as I am told Lines ought to be; but I find I can't lengthen the short ones without stretching them on the Rack, and I think it would be equally cruel to cut off any Part of the long ones. Besides the Superfluity of these makes up for the Deficiency of those; and so, from a Principle of Justice, I leave them at full Length, that I may give you, at least in one Sense of the Word, good Measure.

Of all the productions of Franklin, the Autobiography and Poor Richard's Almanac, are those upon which his literary fame will chiefly rest. Of the former, we have already said too much to say much more about it. It is the only thing written by Franklin that can properly be called a book, and even it is marked by the brevity which he regarded as one of the essentials of good writing. If he did not write other books, it was not, so far as we can see, because, as has been charged, he lacked constructive capacity, but rather because, when he resorted to the pen, he did it not for literary celebrity, but for practical purposes of the hour, best subserved by brief essays or papers. It is true that in writing the early chapters of the Autobiography, which brought his life down to the year 1730, he was not exactly writing for the moment, but, still, the motive by which he was actuated was a purely practical one. "They were written to my Son," he said in a letter to Matthew Carey, "and intended only as Information to my Family." Even in the later chapters, which brought his life down to his fiftieth year, he still had a similar incentive to literary effort, highly congenial with the general bent of his character, that is to say, the opportunity that they afforded him to point to his business success as an example of what might be accomplished by frugality and industry. "What is to follow," he wrote to the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, "will be of more important Transactions: But it seems to me that what is done will be of more general Use to young Readers; as exemplifying strongly the Effects of prudent and imprudent Conduct in the Commencement of a Life of Business." Two days later, he wrote to Benjamin Vaughan from Philadelphia that he was diligently employed in writing the Autobiography, to which his persuasions had not a little contributed.

To shorten the work [he said], as well as for other reasons, I omit all facts and transactions, that may not have a tendency to benefit the young reader, by showing him from my example, and my success in emerging from poverty, and acquiring some degree of wealth, power, and reputation, the advantages of certain modes of conduct which I observed, and of avoiding the errors which were prejudicial to me.

To the limited nature of the inducements to the composition of the Autobiography, disclosed by these letters, it was due that the interest of Franklin in the subsequent continuation of the work was too languid for the completion of the whole plan of the Autobiography, as intimated in the Hints which he gives of its intended scope, notwithstanding the urgent appeals which his friends never ceased to make to him to complete it.

If one of the effects of the fearless self-arraignment of the Autobiography has been to lower the standing of Franklin in some respects with posterity, we should remember the unselfish motive, which induced him to turn his youthful errors to the profit of others, and also the fact that he had his own misgivings about the bearing upon his reputation of such outspoken self-exposure, and submitted the propriety of publishing the Autobiography unreservedly to the judgment of friends who were certainly competent judges in every regard of what the moral sense of their time would approve.

I am not without my Doubts concerning the Memoirs, whether it would be proper to publish them, or not, at least during my Life time [he wrote to the Duc de la Rochefoucauld], and I am persuaded there are many Things that would, in Case of Publication, be best omitted; I therefore request it most earnestly of you, my dear Friend, that you would examine them carefully & critically, with M. Le Veillard, and give me your candid & friendly Advice thereupon, as soon as you can conveniently.

Later, he wrote to Benjamin Vaughan from Philadelphia that he had, of late, been so interrupted by extreme pain, which obliged him to have recourse to opium, that, between the effects of both, he had but little time, in which he could write anything, but that his grandson was copying what was done, which would be sent to Vaughan for his opinion by the next vessel; for he found it a difficult task to speak decently and properly of one's own conduct, and felt the want of a judicious friend to encourage him in scratching out. The next time that Franklin wrote to Vaughan it was when opium alone could render existence tolerable to him, but in the interim, he had happily discovered that he could dictate even when he could not write.

What is already done [he said] I now send you, with an earnest request that you and my good friend Dr. Price [later in the letter he calls him "my dear Dr. Price"] would be so good as to take the trouble of reading it, critically examining it, and giving me your candid opinion whether I had best publish or suppress it; and if the first, then what parts had better be expunged or altered. I shall rely upon your opinions, for I am now grown so old and feeble in mind, as well as body, that I can not place any confidence in my own judgment.

Of the same tenor was a still later letter to M. Le Veillard, in which Franklin expressed the hope that Le Veillard would, with the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, read the Memoirs over carefully, examine them critically and send him his friendly, candid opinion of the parts that he would advise him to correct or expunge, in case he should think that the work was generally proper to be published, but, if he judged otherwise, that he would inform him of that fact, too, as soon as possible, and prevent him from incurring further trouble in the endeavor to finish the work. The world has reason to be thankful that the fate of the Autobiography should thus have been left to the decision of men who, even if they had not lived in the eighteenth century, would have been robust enough, in point of intelligence and morals, to believe that the youthful errata laid bare in that book were more than atoned for by the manly and generous aims that inspired it.

Of the Autobiography it is enough now to say that it is one of the few books which have arrested and permanently riveted the attention of the whole civilized world. Commenting in it on the copy of Pilgrim's Progress, "in Dutch, finely printed on good paper, with copper cuts," which the drunken Dutchman, whom he drew up by the shock-pate from the waters of New York Bay, on his first journey to Philadelphia, handed to him to dry, Franklin says: "I have since found that it has been translated into most of the languages of Europe, and suppose it has been more generally read than any other book, except perhaps the Bible." The Autobiography is hardly less popular. It, too, has been translated into most of the languages of Europe, and has been printed and reprinted until it is one of the most widely-read books in existence. Such it is likely to remain always, not simply because it was written by a very famous man, who possessed, to an extraordinary degree, the power of impressing his thoughts and fancies on the hearts and imagination of the human race, but because it tells a story of self-conquest and self-promotion full of warning, guidance and hope for every human being, who wishes to make the best of his own opportunities and powers. As a mere composition, dressed though it is like the poetic Muse described by Franklin in his letter to Polly "in a kind of slatternly Negligée," it is one of the masterpieces of literature. Its very careless loquacity is but suggestive of a mind overflowing with its own profusion of experience and reflection. There is no better test of the extent, to which a writer has proved himself equal to the highest possibilities of his art, than to ask how readily his conceptions can be pictured; for the mind of a great writer is but a gallery hung with such pictures as the painter reduces to material form and color. Tried by this test, the universal popularity of the Autobiography can be readily understood. The Book of Genesis, the plays of Shakespeare, Pilgrim's Progress, the novels of Sir Walter Scott, are not more easily illustrated than are the incidents depicted to the life in its early chapters. Some of them wear a hard and coarse aspect as if they had been struck off from ruder plates than any belonging to the present state of the art of engraving, but this is only another proof of the fidelity of Franklin to his eighteenth century background. We might as well quarrel with the squalor and sluttishess of Hogarth's scenes.