American Thumb-prints

“New England Man.—Have you a horse here, my friend?

“Virginian.—Sir, I hope you do not suppose that I came hither on foot from Virginia. I have him in Mr. White’s stable, the prettiest Chickasaw that ever trod upon four pasterns.

“New England Man.—And I have a bay mare that I bought for ninety dollars in hard cash. Now I, my friend, will lay my bay mare against your Chickasaw that Dr. Franklin is not a plagiarist.

“Virginian.—Done! Go it! Waiter! You, waiter!

“The waiter obeyed the summons, and, at the order of the Virginian, brought down a portmanteau containing both Franklin’s ‘Miscellanies’ and Taylor’s ‘Discourses.’

“The New England man then read from the former the celebrated parable against persecution.... And after he had finished he exclaimed that the ‘writer appeared inspired.’

“But the Virginian maintained that it all came to Franklin from Bishop Taylor’s book, printed more than a century ago. And the New England man read from Taylor.... When he had done reading, a laugh ensued; and the Virginian, leaping from his seat, called to Atticus, the waiter, to put the bay mare in the next stall to the Chickasaw and to give her half a gallon of oats more, upon the strength of her having a new master!

“The New England man exhibited strong symptoms of chagrin, but wagered ‘a brand-new saddle’ that this celebrated epitaph of Franklin’s undergoing a new edition was original. The epitaph was then read:

‘The Body

of

Benjamin Franklin, Printer

(Like the cover of an old book,

Its contents torn out,

And stript of its lettering and gilding),

Lies here, food for worms

Yet the work itself shall not be lost,

For it will (as he believ’d) appear once more,

In a new

And more beautiful Edition,

Corrected and Amended

By

The Author.’

“The Virginian then said that Franklin robbed a little boy of it. ‘The very words, sir, are taken from a Latin epitaph written on a bookseller, by an Eton scholar.

‘Vitæ volumine peracto
Hic Finis Jacobi Tonson[10 - This Jacob Tonson will be recalled as the chief bookseller (publisher) in London for some years prior to his death, 2 April, 1736.]
Perpoliti Sociorum Principis:
Qui velut Obstretrix Musarum
In Lucem Edidit
Felices Ingenii Partus.
Lugete Scriptorum Chorus,
Et Frangite Calamos!
Ille vester Margine Erasus deletur,
Sed hæc postrema Inscriptio
Huic Primæ Mortis Paginæ
Imprimatur,
Ne Prælo Sepulchri commissus
Ipse Editor careat Titulo:
Hic Jacet Bibliopola
Folio vitæ delapso
Expectans novam Editionem
Auctoriem et Emendatiorem.’

“And then, says Mr. Davis, the bet was awarded the Virginian. He referred to the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for February, 1736, where the Latin inscription accredited to the Eton scholar, with a translation by a Mr. P–, was to be found.

“After this second decision the Virginian declared that he would lay his boots against the New Englander’s that Franklin’s pretended discovery of calming troubled waters by pouring upon them oil might be found in the third book of Bede’s ‘History of the Church;’ or that his facetious essay on the air-bath is produced, word for word, from Aubrey’s ‘Miscellanies.’ But the New Englander, who had lost horse, saddle, and bridle, declined to run the risk on Dr. Franklin of going home without his boots.”

There are other instances of the philosopher’s palpable taking. To one, Franklin’s editor, Mr. Bigelow, adverts when he notes in Franklin’s letter of November 5, 1789, to Alexander Smith: “I find by your letter that every man has patience enough to hear calmly and coolly the injuries done to other people.” The marvellous precision and terseness of Swift—that keen, incisive melancholy wit of his from which great writers have taken ideas and phrases as gold-seekers have picked nuggets from California earth—Swift had more finely said what Franklin stumbled after when he wrote that he “never knew a man who could not bear the misfortunes of another like a Christian.”

Franklin had originality. His many devices are evidence. But careful study of that which brought him much public attention—bagatelles by which he attached himself to popular affection—show all-round appropriation. He loved to stand in public light—to hear applause of himself. He loved to quiz his listeners, to bamboozle his readers. If his buying and applauding public believed Poor Richard’s proverbs sprang from his active mind instead of having been industriously gathered from old English and other folk proverbs and dyed with his practical humor—“the wisdom of many ages and nations,” as Franklin afterwards put it—that was their blunder by which he would gain gold as well as glory. Even “Richard Saunders” was not original with Franklin. It was the pen-name of a compiler of English almanacs. The young printer busily working his press doubtless chuckled at his deceptions—in spite of his filched maxim about honesty being the best policy.

And it went with him all through life. His love of public applause, his desire to accumulate and his gleaming, quizzical humor led him on. His wonderful ease at adopting others’ products and making them his own one may admire if he turn his eyes from the moral significance, the downright turpitude of not acknowledging the source. Franklin’s practice would certainly not stand the test of universal application which his great contemporary, Kant, demanded of all acts.

There has been of late endeavor to rehabilitate Franklin’s industrious common sense and praise its circumstance. So late as last year our American ambassador to St. James addressed students of the Workingmen’s College in London upon the energy, self-help, and sense of reality of this early American, and found the leading features of his character to be honesty (!) and respect for facts.

It is, after all, a certain grace inherent in Franklin, a human feeling, a genial simplicity and candor, a directness of utterance and natural unfolding of his matter which are his perennial value in a literary way, and which warrant the estimate of an English critic who calls him the most readable writer yet known on the western side of the Atlantic.

THE END

notes

1

I include “women” because Lucy Stone once told me she draughted some of the Kansas laws for married women while sitting in the nursery with her baby on her knee. Other women worked with her, she said. Their labor was in the fifties of the nineteenth century—at the height of the movement to ameliorate the legal condition of married women.

2

Other societies also have vitality. The sortie of a handful of students one November night following election, a dinner each year celebrates. Grangers supposedly inimical to the interests of the University had won at the polls. The moon shone through a white, frosty air; the earth was hard and resonant. What the skulkers accomplished and the merry and hortative sequent to their furtive feast were told at the time by the beloved professor of Latin, the “professoris alicujus.”

    “T. C.’S” HORRIBILES.

Jam noctis media hora. In cœlo nubila spissa
Stellas abstulerant. Umbrarum tempus erat quo
Horrenda ignavis monstra apparent. Pueri tum
Parvi matribus intus adhærent. Non gratiorem
Noctem fur unquam invenit. Sed qui veniunt post
Hanc ædem veterem? Celebrantne aliqua horrida sacra
Mercurio furum patrono? Discipuline?