Part 12

“‘You will wonder, perhaps, how this paper comes written on your table. You must know that no separate spirits are under any confinement till after the final settlement of all accounts. In the meantime we wander where we please, visit our old friends, observe their actions, enter sometimes into their imaginations, and give them hints waking or sleeping that may be of advantage to them. Finding you asleep, I enter’d your left nostril, ascended into your brain, found out where the ends of those nerves were fastened that move your right hand and fingers, by the help of which I am now writing unknown to you; but when you open your eyes you will see that the hand written is mine, tho’ wrote with yours.

“‘The people of this infidel age, perhaps, will hardly believe this story. But you may give them these three signs by which they shall be convinced of the truth of it.--About the middle of June next, J. J----n,[7] Philomat, shall be openly reconciled to the Church of Rome, and give all his goods and chattels to the chappel, being perverted by a certain country schoolmaster. On the 7th of September following my old Friend W. B----t shall be sober 9 hours, to the astonishment of all his neighbours:--And about the same time W. B. and A. B. will publish another Almanack in my name, in spight of truth and common sense.

“‘As I can see much clearer into futurity, since I got free from the dark prison of flesh, in which I was continually molested and almost blinded with fogs arising from tiff, and the smoke of burnt drams; I shall in kindness to you, frequently give you information of things to come, for the improvement of your Almanack: being, Dear Dick, Your Affectionate Friend,

“‘T. LEEDS.’

“For my own part, I am convinced that the above letter is genuine. If the reader doubts of it, let him carefully observe the three signs; and if they do not actually come to pass, believe as he pleases. I am his humble Friend,

“R. SAUNDERS.”

In this wise ended Poor Richard’s jest. Franklin’s style throughout is so simple and direct that one is at first inclined to scout the suggestion that the joke is not entirely original. It is impossible, however, to suppose that Franklin, with his broad reading, did not know Squire Bickerstaff’s. The development of the humor is wholly imitated. But Franklin made the method his own so thoroughly that his wit has those keener, subtler, more agile qualities which have distinguished American from the slower and sedater humor of the English. In the Bickerstaff jocularity evidences of the death of Partridge are enumerated in material surroundings of a not too prosperous London quack. Franklin, on the other hand, ironically and graphically reasons upon supposititious traits and qualities of character and breeding.

In England, Swift’s squib having given the death-blow to astrology, “Merlinus Liberatus, by John Partridge,” was published years after, but shorn of its specious and misleading pretences. Franklin’s jesting was more self-seeking.

Not one of Franklin’s biographers or editors has referred to the Bickerstaff joke. Upon the contrary, in an “Introduction to Fac-simile of Poor Richard’s Almanack for 1733,” published by The Duodecimos in 1894, it is asserted that Franklin “in a strain of delightful satire upon the already venerable pretensions of almanac-makers to foretell the future, ... disposes of this difficulty by a method so novel, so ingenious, and withal of an illuminating power so far-reaching as to set the whole colony talking about it.”

It need hardly be added that none of Swift’s biographers--all being English--have hinted at Franklin’s pleasantry.

The inextinguishable laughter--the true Homeric ἄσβεστος γέλως--which is the atmosphere of both incidents, fits them to rank with the imaginary durance of Sancho Panza upon his island, or with Tartarin in Tarascon, or, to go to the first humor of literature, with the advance and retreat of Thersites in the council of Zeus-nourished kings. And in Britain and America all our heroes were real.

* * * * *

Upon other occasions than the Saunders-Leeds jesting Franklin loved playful feint; he had “Bagatelles” for his delight. It was a quizzical side of the character which made him the first of our notable American humorists. To amuse himself with an oriental apologue which he called “The Parable of Persecution,” he had the story bound with a Bible. From this book he would read the legend aloud, amazing his auditors that so beautiful a scriptural passage had escaped their knowledge.

The form in which Franklin cast the tale is this:

“And it came to pass after these things, that Abraham sat in the door of his tent, about the going down of the sun.

“And behold a man, bowed with age, came from the way of the wilderness, leaning on a staff.

“And Abraham arose and met him, and said unto him, ‘Turn in, I pray thee, and wash thy feet, and tarry all night, and thou shalt arise early on the morrow, and go thy way,’

“But the man said, ‘Nay, for I will abide under this tree.’

“And Abraham pressed him greatly: so he turned and they went into the tent, and Abraham baked unleavened bread, and they did eat.

“And when Abraham saw that the man blessed not God, he said unto him, ‘Wherefore dost thou not worship the most high God, Creator of heaven and earth?’

“And the man answered and said, ‘I do not worship the God thou speakest of, neither do I call upon his name; for I have made to myself a god, which abideth alway in mine house, and provideth me with all things.’

“And Abraham’s zeal was kindled against the man, and he arose and fell upon him, and drove him forth with blows into the wilderness.

“And at midnight God called unto Abraham, saying, ‘Abraham, where is the stranger?’

“And Abraham answered and said, ‘Lord, he would not worship thee, neither would he call upon thy name; therefore have I driven him out from before my face into the wilderness.’

“And God said, ‘Have I borne with him these hundred and ninety and eight years, and nourished him, and clothed him, notwithstanding his rebellion against me; and couldst not thou, that art thyself a sinner, bear with him one night?’

“And Abraham said, ‘Let not the anger of the Lord wax hot against his servant; lo, I have sinned; lo, I have sinned; forgive me, I pray thee.’

“And Abraham arose, and went forth into the wilderness, and sought diligently for the man, and found him, and returned with him to the tent; and when he had treated him kindly, he sent him away on the morrow with gifts.

“And God spake again unto Abraham, saying, ‘For this thy sin shall thy seed be afflicted four hundred years in a strange land.

“‘But for thy repentance will I deliver them; and they shall come forth with power, and with gladness of heart, and with much substance.’”

Franklin’s fine literary sense and feeling would doubtless have told him that the tale was oriental, even if Jeremy Taylor, whose “Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesying” it brings to a finish, had not introduced it with the words, “I end with a story which I find in the Jews’ book.[8]

“When Abraham sat at his tent-door, according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man stooping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travail, coming toward him, who was a hundred years of age; he received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, caused him to sit down; but, observing that the old man eat and prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven. The old man told him that he worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other god. At which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and asked him where the stranger was. He replied, ‘I thrust him away because he did not worship thee.’ God answered him, ‘I have suffered him these hundred years, although he dishonoured me; and couldst not thou endure him one night, when he gave thee no trouble?’ Upon this saith the story, Abraham fetched him back again, and gave him hospitable entertainment and wise instruction. Go thou and do likewise, and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham.”

Franklin’s pleasantries with this parable led Lord Kames to ask it of him. The fertile Scotchman at once incorporated it in his “Sketches of the History of Man,” and published it in 1774, accrediting it to Franklin. “The charge of plagiarism has, on this account,” says Bishop Heber, in his life of Jeremy Taylor, “been raised against Franklin; though he cannot be proved to have given it to Lord Kames as his own composition. With all Franklin’s abilities and amiable qualities,” continues the clear-eyed bishop, “there was a degree of quackery in his character which ... has made the imputation of such a theft more readily received against him than it would have been against most other men of equal eminence.”

* * * * *

In more finely sensitive writers who have treated Franklin there is a feeling that he “borrowed.” The words of the missionary bishop show the sentiment was common in England a century and a quarter ago. In our country the conviction was expressed with more spirit in a colloquy[9] between a New England man and a Virginian, preserved in John Davis’s manuscript, “Travels in America during 1798-99, 1800, 1801, 1802.”

“I obtained,” wrote Davis of his visit to Washington, “accommodations at the Washington Tavern, which stands opposite the Treasury. At this tavern I took my meals at the public table, where there was every day to be found a number of clerks, employed at the different offices under government, together with about half-a-dozen Virginians and a few New England men. There was a perpetual conflict between these Southern and Northern men, and one night I was present at a vehement dispute, which terminated in the loss of a horse, a saddle, and bridle. The dispute was about Dr. Franklin; the man from New England, enthusiastic in what related to Franklin, asserted that the Doctor, being self-taught, was original in everything that he had ever published.

“The Virginian maintained that he was a downright plagiarist.

“_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] 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

FOOTNOTES:

[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? Non possunt! Tuti in lectis omnes requiescunt! Estne sodalicium studiosorum relevans se Magnis a curis? Sed cur huc conveniunt tam Furtivi? In manibus quidnam est vel sub tegumentis? O pudor! Et pullos et turkey non bene raptos! Vina etiam subrepta professoris alicujus (Horresco referens) e cella! Dedecus! Est nil Tutum a furibus? En pullos nunc faucibus illis Sorbent! Nunc sunt in terra, tum in ictu oculi non Apparebunt omne in æternum! Miseros pullos, Infelices O pueros! Illi male capti A pueris, sed hi capientur mox male (O! O!!) A Plutone atro! Forsan lapsis quinque diebus, cum sapiens vir Omnes hos juvenes ad cenam magnificenter Invitavit. Tempore sane adsunt. Bene laeti Judex accipiunt et filia pulchra sodales Hos furtivos. Ad mensam veniunt. Juvenes cur Tam agitantur? Quid portentum conspiciunt nunc? Protrudunt oculi quasi ranarum! Nihil est in Mensa præter turkeys! Unus quoque catino! Solum hoc, præterea nil!

[3] The translation is that of C. D. Yonge.

[4] The ancient classic and early English writers afforded many instances of their people’s culinaria, and only when their content became familiar did I find that the Rev. Richard Warner had, in the last part of the eighteenth century, gone over the ground and chosen like examples--perhaps because they were the best. This quotation, and another one or two following, are solely found in our libraries in his admirable book here cited. Master Warner, writing nearer the old sources, had the advantage of original manuscripts and collections.

[5]

“Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive, Thou, teaching thrift, thyselfe could’st never thrive.”

[6] The printers, William and Andrew Bradford.

[7] John Jerman.

[8] “The Jews’ book” is, according to various researches, believed to be “The Rod of Judah,” a rabbinical work presented to the Senate of Hamburg in the seventeenth century, and carrying the legend in its Latin dedication. But the tale really dates back to the “Bostan,” or “Tree Garden,” of the Persian poet Saadi, who says, in another work, that he was a prisoner to the Crusaders, and labored in company with fellow-captives who were Jews in the trenches before Tripoli.

[9] Used through the courtesy of the editor of “The William and Mary College Quarterly.”

[10] This Jacob Tonson will be recalled as the chief bookseller (publisher) in London for some years prior to his death, 2 April, 1736.

[Transcriber’s Note:

Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]