The spirit of consistent Puritanism-that which arraigned Milton for his Doctrine of Divorce, and would have denounced his posthumous De Doctrina Christiana as a sheaf of heresies -has never produced a poet, save Bunyan in prose. But it was a spirit essential, in countercheck of its opposite, to the civilisation of the world; and, in the long run, better fruit has grown from the hearts of oak that manned the northern colonies than from the gay Virginian cavaliers. Out of the lion came honey, and the force of character that from the first made the people strong at last made them free. It was in a comparatively barren soil, and under the conditions of an iron creed, that the "stern men with empires in their brains" with hard hands and heads for this world's work, and a steady gaze on an ideal-men unenlightened, but also undistracted, by "speculations" either of Concord or Wall Street, content to do honest work for honest wages, who never feared the face of their fellows, but lived ever in the fear of their Faith,—it was there and thus that they planted deep the seed of a tree whose branches were to overshadow a continent. THE REVOLUTION-FRANKLIN. 61 CHAPTER III. THE REVOLUTION PERIOD. THE time was approaching when the common interests, fears, and hopes of an external strife were to do for Anglo-America what the Persian wars did temporarily for the Hellenes, and the struggle of the Plantagenets with the Capets more permanently effected for Saxon and Norman England; it was to weld the scattered States into a Nation. With this unity, however imperfect-no longer with Virginia or New Jersey or Connecticut-we have henceforth to deal. We pass from the one period to the other by the bridge of a great memory, that of the first American known over Europe, who, as a writer, a man of science, and a statesman, has achieved three reputations, each by itself enough to have made him famous. A slightly junior contemporary of Edwards, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (born at Boston 1706; died at Philadelphia 1790), the exponent xar' è§oxýv of the other, that is the secular, side of the colonial life, was destined to see the close of the first, and play a prominent part in opening the second era of his country's history. As long as Utilitarian philosophy endures, his will be a name to conjure with. His Autobiography—on the stirring details of which we cannot dwell—is as romantic as the life of an unromantic person can be. The incidents of the young candle-moulder; the printer's apprentice; the writer and ballad-monger-dutifully and duly discouraged by the wise paternal criticism, "verse-makers are generally beggars," -the runaway, eating rolls on the Philadelphian street, encountering his future fiancée, and sleeping on the benches of a Quaker meeting-house; his struggling life in London with Ralph of Dunciad notoriety— "Silence, ye wolves, while Ralph to Cynthia howls, And makes night hideous; answer him, ye owls!" Franklin's amorous rivalry with the poetaster; his return, correcting the erratum" of his infidelities by marriage with his old Pennsylvanian friend; his success as a printer, economist, and diplomatist; his triumphs in natural and political philosophy, clenched in Turgot's line (adapted from Manilius), "Eripuit cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis;" his deputation to England and examination before the House of Commons, resulting in the admiring wonder of Chatham, and the repeal of the Stamp Act; his signature of the Declaration of Independence; his ministry in France, and avatar with Voltaire, who said, "Je n'ai pû résister au désir de parler un moment la langue de Franklin;" the acclamations of shouting multitudes on his return home; Mirabeau's announcement of the patriarch's death,-"The genius which has freed America and poured a flood of light over Europe has returned to the bosom of the Divinity"-these, or most of these, incidents are elementary facts of schoolboy history. They are the records of the main stages of the greatest success achieved in modern times, by the sheer force of common sense, integrity, and industry indomitable. Franklin's experiments and discoveries form a notable chapter in the special history of physical science; but half of his fame, even in this field, is due to the precision and clearness of the manner in which they are announced. "The most profound observations," says Lord Jeffrey, "are suggested by him as if they were the most obvious and natural way of accounting for phenomena." The same literary merit characterises the financial pamphlets and BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 63 treatises that first brought him into celebrity. Both are marked by the same spirit, the love of the useful, which was his passion through life. Franklin follows Bacon, to an extreme, opposed to that of the Platonists, in decrying abstractions. Archytas is said to have apologised for inventing the arch: Franklin is ashamed to have wasted time over pure mathematics in his " Magical Squares." Though endowed with as little as possible, for a great man, of "the faculty divine," there are passages in his writings that connect them with the developement of imaginative writing in his country. To carry out his aim, which is everywhere to bring down philosophy, like the lightning, from heaven to earth, "illustrans commoda vitæ," he has to popularise his ethics-those of Confucius and the Seven Sages, modified by the experience and the circumstances of a later age-and frequently to throw them into dramatic form. The most famous of popular annuals, Poor Richard's Almanack, in which for twenty-five years its readers-rising to the number of 10,000—were taught "the way to be healthy and wealthy and wise," abounds in terse apothegms and smart sayings, incisive paragraphs of prose and rhyme, rendered attractive by a vein of quaint humour, and the homely illustrations always acceptable to the countrymen of the writer. Let us take the following from shoals of instances, half quoted half invented for the occasion : "One to-day is worth two to-morrows." "Handle your tools without mittens; the cat in gloves catches no mice." "Little strokes fell large oaks." "Fly pleasures and they will follow you." "Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him." Trusting too much to others' care is the ruin of many; for in this world men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it. If you would have a faithful servant and one that you like, serve yourself." "A fat kitten makes a lean will." "Who dainties love shall beggars prove." "What maintains one vice will bring up two children." "Silks and satins put out the fire." "Fools make feasts and wise men eat them." "A small leak will sink a great ship." "A ploughman on his legs is better than a gentleman on his knees." "Pride break fasted with plenty, dined with poverty, and supped with infamy." "It is as truly folly for the poor to ape the rich as for the frog to swell in order to equal the ox." "Vessels large may venture more, But little boats should keep near shore." "If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some, for he that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing."1 "Creditors have good memories; they are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times." "Those have a short Lent who owe money to be paid at Easter." These and many more quotations father Abraham pours forth in a brief discourse, at the close of which, says poor Richard "I found the good man had thoroughly studied my almanacks. The frequent mention he made of me must have tired anybody else, but I was wonderfully delighted with it, though conscious that the wisdom he ascribed to me was rather the gleanings I had made of the sense of all ages and nations. However, I resolved to be the better for the echo of it; and though I had first determined to buy stuff for a new coat, I went away resolved to wear my old one a little longer. Reader, if thou wilt do the same thy profit will be as great as mine." These maxims all convey advice eminently excellent to the citizens of the most munificent and extravagant nation of the civilised world; but it is as far away from St. Francis as from Theocritus, from Jonathan Edwards as from Shelley. Franklin had definitely broken with the theologians, whose webs were spun too thin to bind the bulk of his massive manhood on the other hand, he had in boyhood bade goodbye to the rhyming crew, and his opinion of their spendthrift race is clenched in one of several stanzas on various sorts of paper "What are the poets, take them as they fall, Good, bad, rich, poor, much read, not read at all? Of a somewhat later date, the following more consecutive 1 Compare the advices of Sir Walter Raleigh and Lord Burleigh to their sons; also, of course, "Polonius." |