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

52

The lines under the portrait of Franklin by Cochin do not hesitate to exalt him above the most powerful forces of Nature and the authority of the Gods:

"C'est l'honneur et l'appui du nouvel hémisphère,Les flots de l'Océan s'abaissent à sa voix;Il réprime ou dirige à son gré le tonnerre.Qui désarme les dieux peut-il craindre les rois?"

53

"With Franklin grasp the lightning's fiery wing," is a line in Thomas Campbell's Pleasures of Hope. In his Age of Bronze, Byron asks in one place why the Atlantic should "gird a tyrant's grave"

"While Franklin's quiet memory climbs to heaven,Calming the lightning which he thence hath riven."

And in another place in the same poem he speaks of

"Stoic Franklin's energetic shade,Robed in the lightnings which his hand allayed."

Crabbe in his tribute to "Divine Philosophy" in the Library exclaims,

"'Tis hers the lightning from the clouds to call,And teach the fiery mischief where to fall."

54

The inductive process by which Franklin arrived at the identity of lightning and electricity was set forth in one of his letters to John Lining, of Charleston, dated March 18, 1755. The minutes kept by him of his experiments and observations, contained, he said, the following entry:

"November 7, 1749. Electrical fluid agrees with lightning in these particulars. 1. Giving light. 2. Colour of the light. 3. Crooked direction. 4. Swift motion. 5. Being conducted by metals. 6. Crack or noise in exploding. 7. Subsisting in water or ice. 8. Rending bodies it passes through. 9. Destroying animals. 10. Melting metals. 11. Firing inflammable substances. 12. Sulphureous smell. The electric fluid is attracted by points. We do not know whether this property is in lightning. But since they agree in all particulars wherein we can already compare them, is it not probable they agree likewise in this? Let the Experiment be made."

55

The standing of Franklin as an inventor would be better established if he had not been so resolute in his unwillingness to take out patents upon his inventions. Besides the various inventions mentioned by us in the text, he was the father of other valuable mechanical conceptions. The first hint of the art of engraving upon earthenware appears to have originated with him. Moved by his constant desire to inculcate moral truths, he suggested about 1753 to a correspondent the idea of engraving from copper plates on square chimney tiles "moral prints"; "which," to use his words, "being about our Chimneys, and constantly in the Eyes of Children when by the Fireside, might give Parents an Opportunity, in explaining them, to impress moral Sentiments."

He also appears to have anticipated the Argand burner. A description has come down to us of a lamp devised by him which, with only three small wicks, had a lustre equal to six candles. It was fitted with a pipe that supplied fresh and cool air to its lights. If Franklin did not invent, he was the first to communicate to his friend, Mr. Viny, the wheel manufacturer at Tenderden, Kent, the art of flexing timber used in making wheels for vehicles. But of few things did Franklin take a gloomier view than the fate of the inventor as his observations in a letter to John Lining, dated March 18, 1755, demonstrate. "One would not," he said, "of all faculties or qualities of the mind, wish, for a friend, or a child, that he should have that of invention. For his attempts to benefit mankind in that way, however well imagined, if they do not succeed, expose him, though very unjustly, to general ridicule and contempt; and, if they do succeed, to envy, robbery, and abuse."

56

What Sir Walter Scott said of Jonathan Swift is as true of Franklin: "Swift executed his various and numerous works as a carpenter forms wedges, mallets, or other implements of his art, not with the purpose of distinguishing himself, by the workmanship bestowed on the tools themselves, but solely in order to render them fit for accomplishing a certain purpose, beyond which they were of no value in his eyes."

57

There is the following reference to Nanny in a letter from Franklin to Deborah, dated June 10, 1770, "Poor Nanny was drawn in to marry a worthless Fellow, who got all her Money, and then ran away and left her. So she is return'd to her old Service with Mrs. Stevenson, poorer than ever, but seems pretty patient, only looks dejected."

58

These conclusions about physical exercise had been previously expounded by Franklin to his son in a letter, dated Aug. 19, 1772, in which he expressed his concern at hearing that William was not well. In that connection they do not seem quite so pedantic. The writer thought that, when tested by the amount of corporeal warmth produced, there was, roughly speaking, more exercise in riding one mile on horseback than five in a coach, more in walking one mile on foot than five on horseback, and more in walking one mile up and down stairs than five on a level floor. He also had a good word to say for the use of the dumb-bell as a "compendious" form of exercise; stating that by the use of dumb-bells he had in forty swings quickened his pulse from sixty to one hundred beats in a minute, counted by a second watch. Warmth, he supposed, generally increased with a rapid pulse. Upon one occasion in France, when John Adams told him that he fancied that he did not exercise so much as he was wont, he replied: "Yes, I walk a league every day in my chamber. I walk quick, and for an hour, so that I go a league; I make a point of religion of it."

59

In the judgment of Matthew Arnold, Franklin was "a man who was the very incarnation of sanity and clear sense, a man the most considerable, it seems to me, whom America has yet produced."

60

In his Jeu d'esprit, commonly known as The Choice of a Mistress, Franklin gave various reasons why an elderly mistress should be preferred to a younger one; and, in a letter to him on Aug. 12, 1777, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, after expressing the hope that he continued to enjoy his usual health and the flow of spirits, which contributed to make the jaunt to Canada so agreeable to his fellow-travellers, adds: "Mr. John Carroll, and Chase are both well; the latter is now at Congress, and has been so fully and constantly employed that I believe he has not had leisure to refute your reasons in favor of the old ladies."