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.]