Part 11
In the next issue "Poor Richard" announces that his circumstances are now much easier. His wife has a pot of her own and is no longer obliged to borrow one of a neighbor; and, best of all, they have something to put in it, which has made her temper more pacific. Then he begins to tease Titan Leeds. He recalls his prediction of his death, but is not quite sure whether it occurred; for he has been prevented by domestic affairs from being at the bedside and closing the eyes of his old friend. The stars have foretold the death with their usual exactitude; but sometimes Providence interferes in these matters, which makes the astrologer's art a little uncertain. But on the whole he thinks Titan must be dead, "for there appears in his name, as I am assured, an Almanack for the year 1734 in which I am treated in a very gross and unhandsome manner; in which I am called a false predicter, an ignorant, a conceited scribbler, a fool, and a lyar;" and he goes on to show that his good friend Titan would never have treated him in this way.
The next year he is still making sport of Titan, the deceased Titan, and the ghost of Titan, "who pretends to be still living, and to write Almanacks in spight of me;" and he proves again by means of the funniest arguments that he must be dead. Another year he devotes several pages of nonsense to disproving the charge that "Poor Richard" is not a real person. He ridicules astrology and weather forecasting by pretending to be very serious over it. At any rate, he says, "we always hit the day of the month, and that I suppose is esteemed one of the most useful things in an Almanack." He and his good old wife are getting on now better than ever; and the almanac for 1738 is prepared by Mistress Saunders herself, who rails at her husband and makes queer work with eclipses and forecasting. Then in the number for 1740 Titan writes a letter to "Poor Richard" from the other world.
Besides the formal essays or prefaces which appeared in each number, there were numerous verses, paragraphs of admirable satire on the events of the day or the weaknesses of human nature, and those prudential maxims which in the end became the most famous of all. As we look through a collection of these almanacs for an hour or so we seem to have lived among the colonists, who were not then Americans, but merry Englishmen, heavy eaters and drinkers, full of broad jokes, whimsical, humorous ways, and forever gossiping with hearty good nature over the ludicrous accidents of life, the love-affairs, the married infelicities, and the cuckolds. It is the freshness, the sap, and the rollicking happiness of old English life.
"Old Batchelor would have a wife that's wise, Fair, rich and young a maiden for his bed; Not proud, nor churlish, but of faultless size, A country housewife in the city bred. He's a nice fool and long in vain hath staid; He should bespeak her, there's none ready made."
"Never spare the parson's wine, nor the baker's pudding."
"Ne'er take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in."
"My love and I for kisses play'd, She would keep stakes, I was content, But when I won, she would be paid, This made me ask her what she meant: Quoth she, since you are in the wrangling vein Here take your kisses, give me mine again."
"Who has deceived thee so oft as thyself?"
"There is no little enemy."
"_Of the Eclipses this year._
"During the first visible eclipse Saturn is retrograde: For which reason the crabs will go sidelong and the ropemakers backward. The belly will wag before, and the ---- will sit down first.... When a New Yorker thinks to say THIS he shall say DISS, and the People in New England and Cape May will not be able to say Cow for their Lives, but will be forc'd to say KEOW by a certain involuntary Twist in the Root of their Tongues...."
"Many dishes many diseases."
"Let thy maid servant be faithful, strong and homely."
"Here I sit naked, like some fairy elf; My seat a pumpkin; I grudge no man's pelf, Though I've no bread nor cheese upon my shelf, I'll tell thee gratis, when it safe is To purge, to bleed, or cut thy cattle or--thyself."
"Necessity never made a good bargain."
"A little house well filled, a little field well till'd and a little wife well will'd are great riches."
"_Of the Diseases this year._
"This Year the Stone-blind shall see but very little; the Deaf shall hear but poorly; and the Dumb shan't speak very plain. And it's much, if my Dame Bridget talks at all this Year. Whole Flocks, Herds and Droves of Sheep, Swine and Oxen, Cocks and Hens, Ducks and Drakes, Geese and Ganders shall go to Pot; but the Mortality will not be altogether so great among Cats, Dogs and Horses...."
"_Of the Fruits of the Earth._
"I find that this will be a plentiful Year of all manner of good Things, to those who have enough; but the Orange Trees in Greenland will go near to fare the worse for the Cold. As for Oats, they'll be a great Help to Horses...."
"Lend money to an enemy, and thou'lt gain him; to a friend, and thou'lt lose him."
"Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards."
"It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright."
For twenty years and more "Poor Richard" kept up this continuous stream of fun, breaking forth afresh every autumn,--sound, wholesome, dealing with the real things and the elemental joys of life, and expressed in that inimitable language of which Franklin was master. In this way was built up the greater part of his wonderful reputation, which in some of its manifestations surprises us so much. Such a reputation is usually of long growth; one or two conspicuous acts will not achieve it. But the man who every year for nearly a generation delighted every human being in the country, from the ploughman and hunter to the royal governors, was laying in store for himself a sure foundation of influence.
The success of "Poor Richard" was immediate. The first number of it went through several editions, and after that the annual sales amounted to about ten thousand copies. For the last number which Franklin prepared for the year 1758, before he turned over the enterprise to his partner, he wrote a most happy preface. It was always his habit, when a controversy or service he was engaged in was finished, to summarize the whole affair in a way that strengthened his own position and left an indelible impression which all the efforts of his enemies could not efface. Accordingly, for this last preface he invented a homely, catching tale that enabled him to summarize all the best sayings of "Poor Richard" for the last twenty-five years.
"I stopt my Horse lately where a great Number of people were collected at a Vendue of Merchant Goods. The Hour of Sale not being come, they were conversing on the Badness of the Times, and one of the Company call'd to a plain clean old Man, with white Locks, 'Pray, Father Abraham, what think you of the Times? Won't these heavy Taxes quite ruin the Country? How shall we be ever able to pay them? What would you advise us to?'--Father Abraham stood up, and reply'd, 'If you'd have my Advice, I'll give it you in short, for a Word to the Wise is enough, and many Words won't fill a Bushel, as Poor Richard says.' They join'd in desiring him to speak his Mind, and gathering round him, he proceeded as follows:
"'Friends,' says he, 'and neighbours, the Taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the Government were the only Ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our Idleness, three times as much by our Pride, and four times as much by our Folly, and from these Taxes the Commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an Abatement. However let us hearken to good Advice, and something may be done for us; God helps them that help themselves, as Poor Richard says in his Almanack of 1733.
"'It would be thought a hard Government that should tax its People one tenth Part of their Time, to be employed in its Service. But Idleness taxes many of us much more, if we reckon all that is spent in absolute Sloth, or doing of nothing, with that which is spent in idle Employments or Amusements, that amount to nothing. Sloth, by bringing on Diseases absolutely shortens Life. Sloth, like Rust, consumes faster than Labour wears, while the used Key is always bright, as Poor Richard says. But dost thou love Life, then do not squander Time, for that's the Stuff Life is made of, as poor Richard says.--How much more than is necessary do we spend in Sleep! forgetting that The Sleeping Fox catches no Poultry, and that there will be sleeping enough in the Grave, as Poor Richard says. If Time be of all Things the most precious, wasting of Time must be, as Poor Richard says, the greatest Prodigality, since, as he elsewhere tells us, Lost Time is never found again; and what we call Time-enough, always proves little enough. Let us then be up and doing, and doing to the Purpose; so by Diligence shall we do more with less Perplexity. Sloth makes all Things difficult, but Industry all Things easy, as Poor Richard says; and He that riseth late, must trot all Day, and shall scarce overtake his Business at night. While Laziness travels so slowly, that Poverty soon overtakes him, as we read in Poor Richard, who adds, Drive thy Business, let that not drive thee; and Early to Bed, and early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
* * * * *
"'So much for Industry, my Friends, and Attention to one's own Business; but to these we must add Frugality, if we would make our Industry more certainly successful. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, Keep his nose all his life to the Grindstone, and die not worth a Groat at last.
* * * * *
"'And now to conclude, Experience keeps a dear School, but Fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that; for it is true, we may give Advice, but we cannot give Conduct, as Poor Richard says: However, remember this, They that won't be counselled, can't be helped, as Poor Richard says: and farther, That if you will not hear Reason, she'll surely wrap your Knuckles.'
"Thus the old Gentleman ended his Harangue. The People heard it, and approved the Doctrine, and immediately practised the contrary, just as if it had been a common Sermon; for the Vendue opened and they began to buy extravagantly, notwithstanding all his Cautions and their own Fear of Taxes."
* * * * *
This speech of the wise old man at the auction, while perhaps not so interesting to us now as are some other parts of "Poor Richard," was a great hit in its day; in fact, the greatest Franklin ever made. Before it appeared "Poor Richard's" reputation was confined principally to America, and without this final speech might have continued within those limits. But the "clean old Man, with white locks" spread the fame of "Poor Dick" over the whole civilized world. His speech was reprinted on broadsides in England to be fastened to the sides of houses, translated into French, and bought by the clergy and gentry for distribution to parishioners and tenants. Mr. Paul Leicester Ford, in his excellent little volume, "The Sayings of Poor Richard," has summarized its success. Seventy editions of it have been printed in English, fifty-six in French, eleven in German, and nine in Italian. It has also been translated into Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Welsh, Polish, Gaelic, Russian, Bohemian, Dutch, Catalan, Chinese, and Modern Greek, reprinted at least four hundred times, and still lives.
It was quite common a hundred years ago to charge Franklin with being an arrant plagiarist. It is true that the sayings of "Poor Richard" and a great deal that went to make up the almanac were taken from Rabelais, Bacon, Rochefoucauld, Ray Palmer, and any other sources where they could be found or suggested. But "Poor Richard" changed and rewrote them to suit his purpose, and gave most of them a far wider circulation than they had before.
More serious charges have, however, been made, and they are summarized in Davis's "Travels in America,"[15] which was published in 1803. I have already noticed one of these,--the charge that his letter on air-baths was taken from Aubrey's "Miscellanies,"--which, on examination, I cannot find to be sustained. Davis also charges that Franklin's famous epitaph on himself was taken from a Latin one by an Eton school-boy, published with an English translation in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for February, 1736. Franklin's epitaph is already familiar to most of us:
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. But the work shall not be lost For it will (as he believed) appear once more In a new and more elegant edition Revised and corrected by The Author.
The Eton boy's was somewhat like it:
Vitæ Volumine peracto Hic Finis Jacobi Tonson Perpoliti Sociorum Principis; Qui Velut Obstetrix Musarum In Lucem Edivit Foelices 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 Auctiorem et Emendatiorem.
One of these productions might certainly have been suggested by the other. But Franklin's grandson, William Temple Franklin, who professed to have the original in his possession, in his grandfather's handwriting, said that it was dated 1728, and it is printed with that date in one of the editions of Franklin's works. If this date is correct, it would be too early for the epitaph to have been copied from the one in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for February, 1736. It might be said that possibly the Eton boy knew of Franklin's epitaph; but I cannot find that it was printed or in any way made public before 1736. There is no reason why both should not be original, for everybody wrote epitaphs in that century.
Franklin has been credited by one of his biographers with the invention of the comic epitaph, and Smollett's famous inscription on Commodore Trunnion's tomb in "Peregrine Pickle" is described as a mere imitation of Franklin's epitaph on himself. But there is no evidence that Smollett had seen Franklin's production before "Peregrine Pickle" was published in 1750, and it was not necessary that he should. There were plenty of similar productions long before that time. Franklin's own _Gazette_, January 6 to January 15, 1735/6, gives a very witty inscription on a dead greyhound, which is described as cut on the walls of Lord Cobham's gardens at Stow. In writing comic epitaphs Franklin was merely following the fashion of his time, and he was hardly as good at it as Smollett.
He has himself told us the source of one of his best short essays, "The Ephemera," a beautiful little allegory which he wrote to please Madame Brillon in Paris. In a letter to William Carmichael, of June 17, 1780, he describes the circumstances under which it was written, and says that "the thought was partly taken from a little piece of some unknown writer, which I met with fifty years since in a newspaper."[16] It was in this way that he worked over old material for "Poor Richard." Everything he had read seemed capable of supplying suggestions, and it must be said that he usually improved on the work of other men.
He was very fond of paraphrasing the Bible as a humorous task and also to show what he conceived to be the meaning of certain passages. He altered the wording of the Book of Job so as to make it a satire on English politics. He did it cleverly, and it was amusing; but it was a very cheap sort of humor.
His most famous joke of this kind was his "Parable against Persecution." He had learned it by heart, and when he was in England, and the discussion turned on religious liberty, he would open the Bible and read his parable as the last chapter in Genesis. The imitation of the language of Scripture was perfect, and the parable itself was so interesting and striking that every one was delighted with it. His guests would wonder and say that they had never known there was such a
## chapter in Genesis.
The parable was published and universally admired, but when it appeared in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ some one very quickly discovered that it had been taken from Jeremy Taylor's Polemical Discourses, and there was a great discussion over it. Franklin afterwards said, in a letter to Mr. Vaughan, that he had taken it from Taylor; and John Adams said that he never pretended that it was original.[17] It is interesting to see how cleverly he improved on Taylor's language:
TAYLOR.
"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 travel, coming towards him, who was an hundred years old. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, and caused him to sit down; but observing that the old man ate 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, and 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.
"¶ 1 And it came to pass after these things, that Abraham sat in the door of his tent, about the going down of the sun. ¶ 2 And behold a man, bent with age, coming from the way of the wilderness leaning on his staff. ¶ 3 And Abraham rose 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 in the morning and go on thy way. ¶ 4 But the man said, Nay, for I will abide under this tree. ¶ 5 And Abraham pressed him greatly: so he turned and they went into the tent, and Abraham baked unleavened bread, and they did eat. ¶ 6 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? ¶ 7 And the man answered, and said, I do not worship thy God, neither do I call upon his name; for I have made to myself a god, which abideth in my house and provideth me with all things. ¶ 8 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. ¶ 9 And at midnight God called unto Abraham saying, Abraham, where is the stranger? ¶ 10 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. ¶ 11 And God said, have I borne with him these hundred and ninety and eight years, and nourished him, and Cloathed him, notwithstanding his rebellion against me; and couldest not thou, who art thyself a sinner, bear with him one night? ¶ 12 And Abraham said, Let not the anger of the Lord wax hot against his servant; lo, I have sinned; forgive me I pray thee. ¶ 13 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 entreated him kindly, he sent him away on the morrow with gifts. ¶ 14 And God spake unto Abraham, saying, For this thy sin shall thy seed be afflicted four hundred years in a strange land. ¶ 15 But for thy repentance will I deliver them; and they shall come forth with power and gladness of heart, and with much substance."
The parable was, indeed, older than Taylor for Taylor said he had found it in "The Jews' Book," and at length it was discovered in a Latin dedication of a rabbinical work, called "The Rod of Judah," published at Amsterdam in 1651, which ascribed the parable to the Persian poet Saadi. None of them, however, had thought of introducing it into the Old Testament, nor had they told it so well as Franklin, who gave it a new currency, and it was reprinted as a half-penny tract and also in Lord Kames's "Sketches of the History of Man."
While on this question of plagiarism it may be said that Franklin's admirable style was in part modelled on that of the famous Massachusetts divine, Cotton Mather, whom he had known and whose books he had read in his boyhood. The similarity is, indeed, quite striking, and for vigorous English he could hardly have had a better model. But he improved so much on Mather that his style is entirely his own. It is the most effective literary style ever used by an American. Nearly one hundred and fifty years have passed since his Autobiography was written, yet it is still read with delight by all classes of people, has been called for at some public libraries four hundred times a year, and shows as much promise of immortality as the poems of Longfellow or the romances of Hawthorne.
Besides his almanac and newspaper, Franklin extended his business by publishing books, consisting mostly of religious tracts and controversies. He also imported books from England, and sold them along with the lamp-black, soap, and groceries contained in that strange little store and printing-office on Market Street. He sent one of his journeymen to Charleston to establish a branch printing-office, of which Franklin was to pay one-third of the expense and receive one-third of the profits. After continuing in this manner some five years, the Legislature of the province in 1736 elected him clerk of that body, which enabled him to retain the printing of the notes, laws, paper money, and other public jobs, which he tells us were very profitable.