Benjamin Franklin; Self-Revealed.
Volume I.
by Wiliam Cabell Bruce.
Introduction
In reading the life of Benjamin Franklin, the most lasting impressions left upon the mind are those of versatility and abundance. His varied genius lent itself without effort to the minutest details of such commonplace things as the heating and ventilation of rooms, the correction of smoky chimneys and naval architecture and economy. His severely practical turn of mind was disclosed even in the devices with which he is pictured in his old age as relieving the irksomeness of physical effort--the rolling press with which he copied his letters, the fan which he worked with his foot in warm weather as he sat reading, the artificial hand with which he reached the books on the upper shelves of his library. But, sober as Franklin"s genius on this side was, it proved itself equal to some of the most exacting demands of physical science; and above all to the sublime task, which created such a world-wide stir, of reducing the wild and mysterious lightning of the heavens to captivity, and bringing it down in fluttering helplessness to the earth. It was a rare mind indeed which could give happy expression to homely maxims of plodding thrift, and yet entertain n.o.ble visions of universal philanthropy. The stretch between Franklin"s weighty observations on Population, for instance, and the bright, graceful bagatelles, with which his pen occasionally trifled, was not a short one; but it was compa.s.sed by his intellect without the slightest evidence of halting facility. It is no exaggeration to say that this intellect was an organ lacking in no element of power except that which can be supplied by a profound spiritual insight and a kindling imagination alone. _The Many-Sided Franklin_, the t.i.tle of the essay by Paul Leicester Ford, is a felicitous touch of description. The life, the mind, the character of the man were all manifold, composite, marked by s.p.a.cious breadth and freedom.
It is astonishing into how many different provinces his career can be divided. Franklin, the Man of Business, Franklin, the Philosopher, Franklin, the Writer, Franklin, the Statesman, Franklin, the Diplomatist, have all been the subjects of separate literary treatment. As a man of business, he achieved enough, when the limitations of his time and environment are considered, to make him a notable precursor of the strong race of self-created men, bred by the later material expansion of America.
As a scientist, his brilliant electrical discoveries gave him for a while, as contemporary literature so strikingly evinces, a position of extraordinary pre-eminence. As a writer, he can claim the distinction of having composed two productions, _The Autobiography_ and _The Way to Wealth_, which are read the world over. Of his reputation as a statesman it is enough to remark that his signature is attached to the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance between the United States and France, the Treaty of Peace between Great Britain and the United States, and the Federal Const.i.tution. Of his labors as a diplomatist it may be said that, if it is true that, without the continuous a.s.sistance of France, our independence would not have been secured, it is perhaps equally true that, without his wisdom, tact and European prestige, we should never have retained this a.s.sistance, so often imperilled by the jealousy and vanity of his colleagues as well as by the usual accidents of international intercourse. His life was like a full five-act play--prophetic prologue and stately epilogue, and swelling scene imposed upon swelling scene, until the tallow chandler"s son, rising from the humblest levels of human fortune to the highest by uninterrupted gradations of invincible success, finally becomes the recipient of such a degree of impressive homage as has rarely been paid to anyone by the admiration and curiosity of mankind.
To such a diversified career as this the element of mere longevity was, of course, indispensable. Renown so solid and enduring as that of Franklin and acquired in so many different fields was not a thing to be achieved by a few fortunate strokes. He did not awake one morning, as did Byron, to find himself famous; though his fame in the province of electrical science travelled fast when it once got under way. Such a full-orbed renown could be produced only by the long gestation of many years of physical vigor and untiring activity. With the meagre opportunities afforded by colonial conditions for the acc.u.mulation of wealth, there had to be an extended period of unflagging attention to Poor Richard"s saying: "Many a little makes a mickle." To this period belong some things that the self-revelation of the _Autobiography_, unselfish as it is, cannot dignify, or even redeem from moral squalor, and other things which even the frankness itself of the _Autobiography_ is not frank enough to disclose. Then there is the unique story, imprinted upon the face of Philadelphia to this day, of his fruitful exertions as Town Oracle and City Builder. Then there is the episode of scientific inquiry, all too brief, when the prosperous printer and tradesman, appraising wealth at its true value, turns away from his printing press and stock of merchandise to give himself up with enthusiastic ardor to the study of electrical phenomena. Then there is the long term of public employment, beginning with the Clerkship of the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly and not ending until, after many years of ill.u.s.trious public service as legislator, administrator, diplomatic agent and foreign minister, Franklin complains in a letter to Dr. and Mrs. John Bard that the public, not content with eating his flesh, seems resolved to pick his bones.
The amount of work that he did, the ma.s.s of results that he accomplished, during the long tract of time covered by his life, is simply prodigious.
Primarily, Franklin was a man of action. The reputation that he coveted most was, as he declared, in a letter to Samuel Mather, that of a doer of good. Utility was the standard set by him for all his activities, and even his system of ethics did not escape the hard, griping pressure of this standard. What he aimed at from first to last, whether in the domain of science, literature or government, was practical results, and men, as they are known to experienced and shrewd, though kindly, observers of men, were the agencies with which he sought to accomplish such results. He never lost sight of the sound working principle, which the mere academician or closet philosopher is so p.r.o.ne to forget, that the game cannot be played except with the chess-men upon the board. But happily for the world few men of action have ever bequeathed to posterity such abundant written records of their lives. When Franklin desired to promote any project or to carry any point, he invariably, or all but invariably, invoked the aid of his pen to attain his end. To write for money, or for the mere pleasure of writing, or even for literary fame was totally alien to the purposes for which he wrote. A pen was to him merely another practical instrument for forwarding some private aim of his or some definite public or political object, to which his sympathies and powers were committed, or else but an aid to social amus.e.m.e.nt. As the result of this secondary kind of literary activity, he left behind him a body of writings of one kind or another which enables us to measure far more accurately than we should otherwise have been able to do the amount of thought and performance crowded into those eventful years of l.u.s.ty and prolific existence. In the Library of Congress, in the Library of the American Philosophical Society, in the Library of the University of Pennsylvania, in numerous other collections in both hemispheres are found the outflowings of a brain to which exuberance of production was as natural as rank vegetation to a fat soil. Nor should it be forgotten that many of his papers have perished, which, if still extant, would furnish additional proofs of the fertility of his genius and swell the sum of pleasure and instruction which we derive from his works.
With the sigh that we breathe over the lost productions of antiquity might well be mingled another over the papers and letters which were confided by Franklin, on the eve of his mission to France, to the care of Joseph Galloway, only to fall a prey to ruthless spoliation and dispersion. To look forward to a long winter evening enlivened by the missing letters that he wrote to his close friends, Jonathan Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph"s, "the good Bishop," as he called him, Sir Edward Newenham, of the Irish Parliament, and Jan Ingenhousz, physician to Maria Theresa, would alone, to one familiar with his correspondence, be as inviting a prospect as could be held out to any reader with a relish for the intimate letters of a wise, witty and humorous letter-writer.
The length of time during which the subtle and powerful mind of Franklin was at work is, we repeat, a fact that must be duly taken into account in exploring the foundations of his celebrity. "By living twelve years beyond David"s period," he said in one of his letters to George Whatley, "I seem to have intruded myself into the company of posterity, when I ought to have been abed and asleep." He was born in Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts, on January 6 (old style), 1706, and died in the City of Philadelphia on April 17, 1790.
At the time of his birth, Anne was in the fourth year of her reign as Queen of England, and Louis XIV. was King of France. Only eighty-five years had elapsed since the landing at Plymouth. More than three years were to elapse before the battle of Malplaquet, more than five years before the publication of the first _Spectator_, twenty years before the publication of _Gulliver"s Travels_. Franklin"s name was an honored one not only in his native land but beyond seas before any of the other great men who signed the Declaration of Independence had emerged from provincial obscurity. His birth preceded that of Washington by twenty-six years, that of John Adams by thirty years, that of Jefferson by thirty-seven years. Coming into the world only fifteen years after the outbreak of the witchcraft delusion at Salem, he lived to be a member of the Federal Convention and to pa.s.s down to us as modern in spirit and purpose as the American House of Representatives or the American Patent Office. He, at least, is a standing refutation of the claim that all the energetic tasks of human life are performed by young men. He was seventy years of age when he arrived in France to enter upon the laborious diplomatic career which so signally increased the l.u.s.tre of his fame and so gloriously prospered our national fortunes; and he was seventy-nine years of age when his mission ended. But even then, weighed down though he was by the strong hand of time and vexed by diseases which left him little peace, there was no danger that he would be cla.s.sed by anyone with the old townsmen of whom Lord Bacon speaks "that will be still sitting at their Street doore though thereby they offer Age to Scorne." After his return from France, he lived long enough to be thrice elected President of the State of Pennsylvania and to be a useful member of the Convention that framed the Federal Const.i.tution; and only twenty-four days before his death he wrote the speech of Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim on the pet.i.tion of the Erika, or Purists for the abolition of piracy and slavery which is one of the happiest effusions of his satirical genius.
_Multos da annos_ is a prayer, we may readily believe, that is often granted by the G.o.ds with a scornful smile. In the case of Franklin, even without such a protracted term of life as was his portion, he would still have enjoyed a distinguished place in the memory of men, but not that broad, branching, full-crowned fame which makes him one of the most conspicuous landmarks of the eighteenth century.
And fully in keeping with the extent of this fame was the extent of his relationship to the social and intellectual world of his time. The main background of his life, of course, was American--Lake Champlain, the St.
Lawrence, the Charles, the Connecticut, the Hudson, the Delaware and the Ohio rivers; the long western reaches of the Atlantic; the dark curtain of firs and hemlocks and primeval ma.s.ses of rock which separated the two powers that ceaselessly struggled for the mastery of the continent, and rarely lifted except to reveal some appalling tragedy, chargeable to the French and their dread ally, the Red Indian; Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Fort Duquesne--all the internal features and surroundings in a word of the long, narrow strip of English territory between Boston and Philadelphia with which he was so familiar, and over which his influence was a.s.serted in so many ways. With the exception of his brief sojourn in London in his youth, his whole life was pa.s.sed in the Colonies until he was fifty-one years of age. Before he sailed for England in 1757, upon his first foreign mission, the circ.u.mstances of his career had been such as to make him generally known to the people of the Colonies. His _Almanac_, his _Gazette_, his pithy sayings, his humorous stories, his visits to Boston, attended by the formation of so many wayside friendships, his postal expeditions, the printing presses set up by him at many different points, his private fortune, his public services, his electrical experiments were all breath for the trump of his fame. He knew Colonial America as few Colonial Americans knew it. He was born and reared in Boston, and, after his removal to Philadelphia, he revisited his native city at regular intervals. "The Boston manner, turn of phrase, and even tone of voice, and accent in p.r.o.nunciation, all please, and seem to refresh and revive me," he said in his old age in a letter to the Rev. John Lathrop. Philadelphia, the most populous and opulent of the colonial towns, was his lifelong place of residence. In the _Autobiography_ he refers to it as "A city I love, having lived many years in it very happily." He appears to have been quite frequently in New York. His postal duties took him as far south as Williamsburg, and the Albany Congress drew him as far north of New York as Albany. He was in the camp of Braddock at Frederick, Maryland, just before that rash and ill-starred general set out upon his long, dolorous march through the wilderness where disaster and death awaited him. Facts like these signify but little now when transit from one distant point to another in the United States is effected with such amazing rapidity, but they signified much under the crude conditions of colonial life. Once at least did Franklin have his shoulder dislocated by an accident on the atrocious roads of Colonial New England. Once he was thrown into the water from an upset canoe near Staten Island. His masterly answers, when examined before the House of Commons, showed how searchingly conversant he was with everything that related to America. For some of our most penetrating glances into colonial life we are indebted to his writings; particularly instructive being his observations upon population in the Colonies, the economic condition and political temper of their people and the characteristics and habits of the Indians. It was a broad experience which touched at one extreme the giddy and artificial life of Paris, on the eve of the French Revolution, and at the other the drunken Indian orgies at the conclusion of the treaty at Carlisle which Franklin has depicted in the _Autobiography_ with a brush worthy of Rembrandt in these words: "Their dark-colour"d bodies, half naked, seen only by the gloomy light of the bonfire, running after and beating one another with firebrands, accompanied by their horrid yellings, form"d a scene the most resembling our ideas of h.e.l.l that could well be imagin"d."
But the peculiar distinction of Franklin is that his life stands out vividly upon an European as well as an American background. It is interesting to contrast the scene at Carlisle with the opera in honor of the Comte du Nord, at which he was present, during the French mission. "The House," he says in his _Journal of the Negotiation for Peace with Great Britain_, "being richly finish"d with abundance of Carving and Gilding, well Illuminated with Wax Tapers, and the Company all superbly drest, many of the Men in Cloth of Tissue, and the Ladies sparkling with Diamonds, form"d altogether the most splendid Spectacle my Eyes ever beheld." Until the august figure of Washington filled the eye of mankind, Franklin was the only American who had ever won a solid and splendid European reputation.
The opportunity had not yet arisen for the lively French imagination to declare that he had s.n.a.t.c.hed the sceptre from tyrants, but the first half of Turgot"s tremendous epigram had been realized; for the lightning he had s.n.a.t.c.hed, or rather filched, from the sky. It may well be doubted whether any one private individual with such limited pecuniary resources ever did as much for the moral and intellectual welfare of any one community as Franklin did for pre-revolutionary Philadelphia; but it was impossible that such aspirations and powers as his should be confined within the pale of colonial provincialism. His widespread fame, his tolerant disposition, his early residence in England, his later residence there for long periods, his excursions into Scotland and Ireland and Continental countries, the society of men of the world in London and other great cities combined to endow him with a character truly cosmopolitan which was to be still further liberalized by French influence. During his life, he crossed the Atlantic no less than eight times. After 1757 the greater part of his life was spent abroad. Of the eighty-four years, of which his existence was made up, some twenty-six were pa.s.sed in England and France. He was as much at home on The Strand as on Market Street in Philadelphia. The friendships that he formed in England and France were almost as close as those that he had formed in Pennsylvania with his cronies, Hugh Roberts and John Bartram. He became so thoroughly domesticated in England during his periods of sojourn in that country that he thought of remaining there for the rest of his life, and yet, if the Brillons had only been willing to confer the hand of their daughter upon his grandson, William Temple Franklin, he would contentedly have died in France. If there ever was an American, if there ever was a citizen of the world, if there ever was a true child of the eighteenth century, it was he. His humanitarian sympathies, his catholic temper, his generous, un.o.bstructed outlook enabled him without difficulty to adjust himself with ease to the genius of every people with whom he was brought into familiar contact. In America he was such a thorough American in every respect that Carlyle is said to have termed him on one occasion, "The Father of all the Yankees." In England he was English enough to feel the full glow of her greatness and to see her true interests far more clearly than she saw them herself. He had too many Anglo-Saxon traits to become wholly a Frenchman when he lived in France, but he became French enough to truly love France and her people and to be truly beloved by them. In the opinion of Sainte-Beuve he is the most French of all Americans.
CHAPTER I
Franklin"s Moral Standing and System
Until a comparatively recent period totally false conceptions in some respects of Franklin"s character were not uncommon. To many he was merely the father of a penurious, cheese-paring philosophy, and to no little extent the idea prevailed that his own nature and conduct corresponded with its precepts. There could be no greater error. Of the whole science of prudential economy a master indeed he was. His observations upon human life, in its pecuniary relations, and upon the methods, by which affluence and ease are to be wrested from the reluctant grasp of poverty, are always sagacious in the highest degree. Poor Richard is quite as consummate a master of the science of rising in the world as Aristotle is of the Science of Politics or Mill of the Science of Political Economy. Given health and strength, a man, who faithfully complied with his shrewd injunctions and yet did not prosper, would be as much a freak of nature as a man who thrust his hand into the fire and yet received no physical hurt. The ready and universal a.s.sent given to their full truth and force by human experience is attested by the fact that _The Way to Wealth_, or _The Speech of Father Abraham_, "the plain, clean old Man with white Locks" in which Franklin, when writing one of the prefaces of _Poor Richard"s Almanac_, condensed the wit and wisdom, original and second hand, of that incomparable manual of _The Art of Material Success_, has, through innumerable editions and reprints, and translations into every written tongue from the French to the Russian and Chinese, become almost as well known to the entire civilized globe as the unbroken strain of the martial airs of England. So well calculated, it was thought, was it to promote sound principles of diligence and frugality that it was, we are told by Franklin, reprinted in England, to be set up in the form of a broadside in houses, and, when translated into French, was bought by the clergy and gentry of France for distribution among their poor parishioners and tenants. But so far from being the slave of a parsimonious spirit was Franklin that it would be difficult to single out any self-made man who ever formed a saner estimate of the value of money than he did or lived up to it more fearlessly. In seeking money, he was actuated, as his early retirement from business proved, only by the high-minded motive to self-enrichment which is so pointedly expressed in the lines of Burns:
"Not for to hide it in a hedge, Nor for a train attendant, But for the glorious privilege Of being independent."
No sooner did he acc.u.mulate a sufficient fortune to provide for the reasonable wants of his family and himself than he proceeded to make this fortune the handmaid of some of the higher things of life--wholesome reading, scientific research, public usefulness, schemes of beneficence. In 1748, when he was in the full flush of business success and but forty-two years of age, he deliberately, for the sake of such things, retired from all active connection with business pursuits. In a letter to Abiah Franklin, his mother, shortly after he found himself free forever from the cares of his shop, he speaks of himself in these words: "I enjoy, thro"
Mercy, a tolerable Share of Health. I read a great deal, ride a little, do a little Business for myself, more for others, retire when I can, and go into Company when I please; so the Years roll round, and the last will come; when I would rather have it said, _He lived Usefully_, than _He died Rich_." About the same time, he wrote to William Strahan, a business correspondent, that the very notion of _dying worth_ a great sum was to him absurd, and just the same as if a man should run in debt for one thousand superfluities, to the end that, when he should be stripped of all, and imprisoned by his creditors, it might be said, he _broke worth_ a great sum. On more than one occasion, when there was a call upon his public zeal, his response was generous to the point of imprudence. The bond that he gave to indemnify against loss the owners of the wagons and horses procured by his energy and address for Braddock"s expedition led to claims against him to the amount of nearly twenty thousand pounds, which would have ruined him, if the British Government had not rescued him after long delay from his dreadful situation. Without hesitation he entered during his first mission to England into a personal engagement that an act taxing the estate of the Proprietaries of Pennsylvania in common with the estates of the People of Pennsylvania would not result in any injustice to the Proprietaries. On a later occasion, in order to prevent war between Great Britain and her Colonies, he was willing to bind himself, to the whole extent of his private fortune, to make pecuniary reparation for the destruction of the tea cast into Boston harbor, if the Province of Ma.s.sachusetts did not do so. One of his last acts before leaving America for his mission to France was to place the sum of three or four thousand pounds, which was a large part of this fortune, and all the ready money at his command, at the disposal of Congress. His salary as President of Pennsylvania was all given or bequeathed by him to public objects. The small sums, to which he became ent.i.tled as one of the next of kin of his father and his cousin, Mrs. Fisher, of Wellingborough, England, he relinquished to members of the family connection who needed them more than he did. Once, though a commercial panic was prevailing, he pledged his credit to the extent of five thousand pounds for the purpose of supporting that of a London friend. His correspondence nowhere indicates any degree of pecuniary caution in excess of the proper demands of good sense. On the contrary, it furnishes repeated testimony to his prompt.i.tude in honoring the solicitations of private distress or subscribing to public purposes.
Conspicuously unselfish was he when the appeal was to his public spirit or to his interest in the general welfare of mankind. Among his innumerable benefactions was a gift of one thousand pounds to Franklin College, Pennsylvania. When he invented his open stove for the better warming of rooms, he gave the model to his friend, Robert Grace, who found, Franklin tells us in the _Autobiography_, the casting of the plates for the stove at his furnace near Philadelphia a profitable thing. So far from begrudging this profit to his friend, he wrote his interesting _Account of the New-invented Pennsylvanian Fireplaces_ to promote the public demand for the invention. A London ironmonger made some small changes in the stove, which were worse than of no value to it, and reaped, Franklin was told, a little fortune by it. "And this," he says in the _Autobiography_, "is not the only instance of patents taken out for my inventions by others, tho" not always with the same success, which I never contested, as having no desire of profiting by patents myself, and hating disputes." When he was actually engaged in the business of printing, a similar motive, so far as public spirit went, led him to offer to print a treatise by Cadwallader Colden on the _Cause of Gravitation_ at his own expense and risk. If he could be the means of communicating anything valuable to the world, he wrote to Colden, he did not always think of gaining nor even of saving by his business.
That the character of Franklin should ever have been deemed so meanly covetous is due to _Poor Richard"s Almanac_ and the _Autobiography_. The former, with its hard, bare homilies upon the Gospel of Getting on in Life and its unceasing accent upon the duty of scrimping and saving, circulated so long and so widely throughout the Colonies that the real Franklin came to be confused in many minds with the fict.i.tious Poor Richard. Being intended mainly for the instruction and amus.e.m.e.nt of the common people, whose chief hope of bettering their condition lay in rigid self-denial, it is naturally keyed to unison with the ruder and austerer principles of human thrift. As to the _Autobiography_, with its host of readers, the only Franklin known to the great majority of persons, who have any familiarity with Franklin at all, is its Franklin, and this Franklin is the one who had to "make the night joint-laborer with the day," breakfast on bread and milk eaten out of a two-penny earthen porringer with a pewter spoon, and closely heed all the sage counsels of _Poor Richard"s Almanac_ before he could even become the possessor of a china bowl and a silver spoon. It is in the _Autobiography_ that the story of Franklin"s struggle, first for the naked means of subsistence, and then for pecuniary competency, is told; and the harsh self-restraint, the keen eye to every opportunity for self-promotion, and the grossly mechanical theory of morals disclosed by it readily give color to the notion that Franklin was nothing more than a sordid materialist. It should be remembered that it is from the _Autobiography_ that we obtain the greatest part of our knowledge of the exertions through which he acquired his fortune, and that the successive ascending stages, by which he climbed the steep slopes that lead up from poverty and obscurity, are indelibly set forth in this lifelike book with a pen as coa.r.s.e but at the same time as vivid and powerful as the pencil with which Hogarth depicts the descending stages of the Rake"s Progress. And along with these facts it should also be remembered that the didactic purpose by which the _Autobiography_ was largely inspired should be duly allowed for before we draw too disparaging inferences about Franklin from anything that he says in that book with respect to his career.
It is a curious fact that almost every reproach attaching to the reputation of Franklin is attributable to the candor of the _Autobiography_. It is true that in the political contests between the Proprietary and Popular Parties in Colonial Pennsylvania he was often visited with virulent abuse by the retainers of the Proprietaries. This was merely the dirty froth brought to the surface by every boiling pot. It is also true that, after the transmission of the Hutchinson letters to New England, he was the object of much savage censure at the hands of British Tories. But this censure, for the most part, was as empty as the ravings of the particular bigot who indorsed on the first page of a volume of letters in the Public Record Office, in London, a statement that the thirteen letters of Doctor Franklin in the volume were perhaps then "only precious or Important so far as they prove and discover the Duplicity, Ingrat.i.tude, and Guilt of this Arch Traitor whom they unveil and really unmask Displaying him as an accomplish"d Proficient in the blacker Arts of Dissimulation and Guile."
Not less hollow was the invective with which the distempered mind of Arthur Lee a.s.sailed the character of Franklin when they were together in France.
Nor can it be denied that in such Rabelaisian _jeux d"esprit_ as Polly Baker"s Speech, the Letter on the Choice of a Mistress, and the Essay on Perfumes, dedicated to the Royal Academy of Brussels, in the _navete_ which marked Franklin"s relations to his natural son, William Franklin, and to his natural son"s natural son, William Temple Franklin, and in the ease with which he adopted in his old age the tone, if not the practices, of French gallantry, we cannot but recognize a nature too deficient in the refinements of early social training, too physically ripe for sensual enjoyment and too unfettered in its intellectual movements to be keenly mindful of some of the nicer obligations of scrupulous conduct. In moral dignity, Franklin was not George Washington, though there was no one held in higher honor by him. "If it were a Sceptre, he has merited it, and would become it," he said in bequeathing a fine crab-tree walking stick to Washington, whom he termed "My friend, and the friend of mankind." If for no other reason, Franklin was not Washington because he lacked the family traditions and early social advantages of Washington, and perhaps Washington might have been more like Franklin, if he had had some of Franklin"s humor. While the resemblance is limited, Franklin does resemble in some respects Jefferson who was too scientific in spirit and too liberal in his opinions not to be a little of a skeptic and a heretic himself. But nothing can be more certain than the fact that Franklin was esteemed by his contemporaries not only a great but a good man. We pa.s.s by the French extravagance which made him out a paragon of all the virtues as well as the _plus grand philosophe du siecle_; for the French were but mad idolaters where he was concerned. It is sufficient for our purposes to limit ourselves to his English and American panegyrists. Referring to Franklin"s humble birth, Benjamin Vaughan, a dull but good man, wrote to him that he proved "how little necessary all origin is to happiness, virtue, or greatness." In another place, Vaughan speaks of the "affection, grat.i.tude and veneration" he bears to Franklin. To the sober Quaker, Abel James, the author of the _Autobiography_ was the "kind, humane, and benevolent Ben.
Franklin" whose work almost insensibly led the youth "into the resolution of endeavoring to become as good and eminent" as himself. In urging Franklin to complete the story of his life, he added: "I know of no character living, nor many of them put together, who has so much in his power as thyself to promote a greater spirit of industry and early attention to business, frugality, and temperance with the American youth."
As Franklin"s letters bring to our knowledge friend after friend of his, among the wisest and best men of his day, on both sides of the Atlantic, we begin to ask ourselves whether anyone ever did have such a genius for exciting the sentiment of true, honest friendship in virtuous and useful men. His correspondence with Catherine Ray, Polly Stevenson, and Georgiana Shipley, though several of his letters to the first of the three are blemished by the freedom of the times and vulgar pleasantry, demonstrates that his capacity for awakening this sentiment was not confined to his own s.e.x. Inclined as he was in his earlier and later years, to use Madame Brillon"s phrase, to permit his wisdom to be broken upon the rocks of femininity, unbecoming his advanced age and high position as was the salacious strain which ran through his letters to this beautiful and brilliant woman, as we shall see hereafter, nothing could ill.u.s.trate better than his relations to Polly Stevenson how essentially incorrupt his heart was when his a.s.sociation was with any member of the other s.e.x who really had modesty to lose. Such was the pure affection entertained for him by this fine woman that, after the death of her celebrated husband, Dr.
William Hewson, she removed from London to Philadelphia with her children to be near the friend, little less than a father, who had lavished upon her all that was best in both his mind and heart. There is much in the life of Franklin to make us believe that his standards of s.e.xual morality were entirely too lax, but there is everything in it, too, to make us believe that he would not only have been incapable of seducing female innocence but would have been slow to withhold in any regard the full meed of deferential respect due to a chaste girl or a virtuous matron. It is hard to repress a smile when we read under the head of "Humility" in his _Table of Virtues_, just below the words, in which, under the head of "Chast.i.ty," he deprecates the use of "venery" to the injury of one"s own or another"s peace or reputation, the injunction for his own guidance, "imitate Jesus and Socrates." All the same, it is a fact that one person, at any rate, Jane Mecom, his sister, even thought him not unworthy to be compared with our Saviour. "I think," she said, "it is not profanity to compare you to our Blessed Saviour who employed much of his time while here on earth in doing good to the body as well as souls of men." Elizabeth Hubbard, the stepdaughter of his brother John, even warned him that, if he was not less zealous in doing good, he would find himself alone in heaven. Through all the observations of his contemporaries vibrates the note that he was too wise and benevolent to belong to anything less than the entire human race.
Jonathan Shipley, "The Good Bishop," suggested as a motto suitable to his character, "his country"s friend, but more of human kind." Burke called him "the lover of his species." By Sir Samuel Romilly he was p.r.o.nounced "one of the best and most eminent men of the present age." Chatham eulogized him in the House of Lords as one "whom all Europe held in high Estimation for his Knowledge and Wisdom, and rank"d with our Boyles and Newtons; who was an Honour, not to the English Nation only, but to Human Nature." In one of his works, Lord Kames spoke of him as "a man who makes a great figure in the learned world; and who would make a still greater figure for benevolence and candor, were virtue as much regarded in this declining age as knowledge." Less formal was the heartfelt tribute of Dr. Samuel Cooper, of Ma.s.sachusetts, after many years of intercourse: "Your friendship has united two things in my bosom that seldom meet, pride and consolation: it has been the honor and the balm of my life." And when towards the close of Franklin"s life he wrote to George Washington, "In whatever State of Existence I am plac"d hereafter, if I retain any Memory of what has pa.s.s"d here, I shall with it retain the Esteem, Respect, and Affection, with which I have long been, my dear Friend, yours most sincerely," he received a reply, which was not only a reply, but the stately, measured judgment of a man who never spoke any language except that of perfect sincerity. "If,"
said Washington, "to be venerated for benevolence, if to be admired for talents, if to be esteemed for patriotism, if to be beloved for philanthropy, can gratify the human mind, you must have the pleasing consolation to know, that you have not lived in vain." "And I flatter myself," he continued, "that it will not be ranked among the least grateful occurrences of your life to be a.s.sured that, so long as I retain my memory, you will be recollected with respect, veneration, and affection by your sincere friend." These were credentials indeed for the old printer to take with him on his journey to the bright orbs which it was a part of his early religious fantasies to believe were swayed by G.o.ds intermediate in the scale of intelligent existence between ourselves and the "one Supreme, most Perfect Being, Author and Father of the G.o.ds themselves."[1]
It is, we repeat, the _Autobiography_ which is mainly responsible for the unfavorable impressions that have been formed about the character of Franklin. It is there that we learn what heady liquor his sprightly mind and free spirit quaffed from the cup of boyhood and what errata blurred the fair, fresh page of his early manhood. It is there that he has told us how, as the result of his written attacks upon the Established Order, Puritan Boston began to consider him in an unfavorable light "as a young genius that had a turn for libelling and satyr"; how his indiscreet disputations about religion caused him to be pointed at with horror by good people in the same starch town as an infidel or atheist; how he availed himself of a fraud in the second indentures of apprenticeship between his brother and himself to claim his freedom before his time was up; how, in distant London, he forgot the troth that he had plighted to Deborah Read; how he attempted familiarities with the mistress of his friend Ralph which she repulsed with a proper resentment; how he broke into the money which Mr.
Vernon had authorized him to collect; how he brought over Collins and Ralph to his own free-thinking ways; how he became involved in some foolish intrigues with low women which from the expense were rather more prejudicial to him than to them. It is in the _Autobiography_ also that we learn from him how he thought that the daughter of Mrs. G.o.dfrey"s relation should bring him as his wife enough money to discharge the remainder of the debt on his printing house even if her parents had to mortgage their house in the loan office; how partly by sheer force and pinching economy and partly by dexterity and finesse, sometimes verging upon cunning, he pushed himself further and further along the road to fortune, and finally how he was so successful with the help of his _Art of Virtue_, despite occasional stumblings and slips, in realizing his dream of moral perfection as to be able to write complacently upon the margin of the _Autobiography_, "nothing so likely to make a man"s fortune as virtue." It is things like these in the _Autobiography_ that have tended to create in minds, which know Franklin only in this narrative, the idea that he was a n.i.g.g.ard, a squalid utilitarian, and even a little of a rogue; though the same _Autobiography_ witnesses also that he was not so engrossed with his own selfish interests as not to find time for the enlarged projects of public utility which to this day render it almost impossible for us to think of Philadelphia without recalling the figure of Franklin. _Si monumentum requiris circ.u.mspice_, was the proud inscription placed over the grave of Sir Christopher Wren in the city where his genius had designed so many edifices. The same inscription might be aptly placed over the grave of Franklin in Christ Church yard in the city where his public spirit and wisdom laid the foundations of so much that has proved enduring.
There is unquestionably a shabby side to the _Autobiography_, despite the inspiring sacrifice of his physical wants which Franklin made in his boyhood to gratify his intellectual cravings, the high promptings which the appet.i.tes and unregulated impulses of his unguarded youth were powerless to stifle, the dauntless resolution and singleness of purpose with which he defied and conquered his adverse star, the wise moderation of his hour of victory, the disinterested and splendid forms of social service to which he devoted his sagacious and fruitful mind, his manly hatred of injustice and cruelty, his fidelity to the popular cause which neither flattery could cajole nor power overawe. In its mixture of what is n.o.ble with what is ign.o.ble the _Autobiography_ reminds us of the merchandise sold at the new printing-office near the Market in Philadelphia, where Franklin conducted his business as a printer and a merchant, where his wife, Deborah, a.s.sisted him by folding and st.i.tching pamphlets, tending shop and purchasing old linen rags, and where his mother-in-law, Mrs. Read, compounded her sovereign remedy against the itch and lice. Now it was a translation of Cato"s _Moral Distichs_ or a pamphlet against slavery fresh from his own press, now it was a copy of some devotional or useful work which the last packet had brought over from London, now it was a lot of goose feathers, or old rags, or a likely young negro wench. But on the whole we cannot help thinking that the calm view, which Franklin himself, in the cool of the evening of his life, takes of the early part of his existence, was, with some qualifications, not far wrong. Notwithstanding the dangerous season of youth and the hazardous situations, in which he was sometimes placed among strangers, when he was remote from the eye and advice of his sterling father, Josiah Franklin, he believed, as we know from the _Autobiography_, that he had not fallen into any "willful gross immorality or injustice"; and, start as the student of Franklin may at times at things which might chill for the moment the enthusiasm of even such a Boswellian as the late John Bigelow, to whose editorial services the reputation of Franklin is so deeply indebted, he is likely in his final estimate to find himself in very much the same mood as that which impelled Franklin in the _Autobiography_ to make the famous declaration, so true to his normal and intensely vital nature, that, were it offered to his choice, he "should have no objection to a repet.i.tion of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults of the first." Be this as it may, it is at least safe to say that it is very unfair to judge the character of Franklin by the _Autobiography_ without bearing in mind one of the leading motives by which he was induced to write his own life. To his great honor it can be said that to do good in the higher social sense, to promote the lasting interests of humanity, to free the march of the race from every handicap, every impediment, whether arising in or outside of ourselves, to instruct, to enlighten, were the dominant incentives, the mellow, yet commanding pa.s.sions of his existence.
Like many another philosopher before and since, in his zeal to subserve the general interest he forgot himself. If other young men treading in his footsteps could be deterred by the warnings of his errors from becoming involved in the mistakes and moral lapses in which his youth and inexperience were involved, he was willing, though not without some misgivings, to lay before them and the whole world all the details of these errors. In composing the _Autobiography_, he was influenced to no little degree by the spirit of a man who bequeaths his own body to the surgeons for the advancement of science. If his reputation suffered by his tender of himself as a _corpus vile_ for the benefit of future generations, he was prepared to take this risk, as he was prepared to take the risks of the two electric shocks, which nearly cost him his life, in the promotion of human knowledge. It is impossible for anyone, who is not familiar with the perfect lack of selfish reserve brought by Franklin to the pursuit of truth or the universal interests of mankind, to understand the extent to which, in composing the _Autobiography_, he was moved by generous considerations of this sort. In no other production of his did he show the same disposition to turn the seamier side of his existence to the light for the simple reason that no other production of his was written with the same homiletic purpose as the _Autobiography_. And, if this purpose had not been so strong upon him, how easy it would have been for him by a little judicious suppression here and a few softening touches there to have altered the whole face of the _Autobiography_, and to have rendered it as faithless a transcript of the slips and blots of his life as are most autobiographies of human beings--even those of men who have enjoyed a high repute for moral excellence--in their relations to the indiscretions, the follies and the transgressions of their immaturer years! At any rate, of the offences of Franklin, mentioned in the _Autobiography_, may be said what cannot be said of the similar offences of many men. He handsomely atoned for them all so far as the opportunity to atone for them arose. It was undoubtedly a serious breach of the moral law for him to have begotten William Franklin out of lawful wedlock, and in the impartial affection, which he publicly bestowed upon his illegitimate son and his legitimate daughter, we see another ill.u.s.tration of his insensibility to the finer inflections of human scruples. But when we see him accept this illegitimate son as if he had come to him over his right shoulder instead of his left, take him under his family roof, give him every advantage that education and travel could confer, seek an honorable alliance for him, put him in the way to become the Governor of Colonial New Jersey, even affectionately recognize his illegitimate son as a grandson, we almost feel as if such ingenuous naturalism had a kind of b.a.s.t.a.r.d moral value of its own.
The _Autobiography_ is interesting in every respect but in none more so than in relation to the System of Morals adopted by Franklin for his self-government in early life, when, to use his own words in that work, he "conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection."
This project once formed, he went about its execution in a manner as strictly mechanical as if he had been rectifying a smoky chimney or devising a helpful pair of gla.s.ses for his defective eyesight. The virtues were cla.s.sified by him under thirteen heads: Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquillity, Chast.i.ty and Humility. These terms were all tabulated by him in a little pocketbook kept for that especial purpose, and to each virtue the close attention of a week was successively given by him.
If an offence was committed by him on a certain day, it was entered by a little black mark under that date opposite the affronted virtue. The object was to so concentrate his vigilance upon each virtue in turn and to so strengthen his capacity to resist every temptation to violate it as to finally render its practice habitual and instinctive. The plan in spirit was not unlike the system of prudential algebra to which he told Joseph Priestley, many years afterwards, that he resorted when his judgment was in a state of uncertainty about some problem. In one column he would jot down on a piece of paper all the _pros_ of the case, and in another all the _cons_, and then, by appraising the relative value of each _pro_ and _con_ set down before his eye, and cancelling equivalent considerations, decide upon which side the preponderance of the argument lay. Even Franklin himself admits that his plan for making an automatic machine of virtue did not work in every respect. Order he experienced extreme difficulty in acquiring. Indeed, this virtue was so much against his grain that he felt inclined to content himself with only a partial measure of fidelity to it, like the man, he said in the _Autobiography_, who, though at first desirous of having his whole ax bright, grew so tired of turning the grindstone on which it was being polished that when the smith, who was holding it, remarked that it was only speckled, and asked him to turn on, he replied, "But I think I like a speckled ax best." The Humility, too, which Franklin acquired, he was disposed to think was more specious than real. Pride, he moralizes in the _Autobiography_, is perhaps the hardest of our natural pa.s.sions to subdue, and even, if he could conceive that he had completely overcome it, he would probably, he thought, be proud of his humility. This reminds us of his other observation in the _Autobiography_ that he gave vanity fair quarter wherever he met with it, and that, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank G.o.d for his vanity among the other comforts of life. In the effort, however, to acquire Humility, Franklin did, he informs us in the same work, acquire, as time wore on, the habit of expressing his opinions in such conciliatory forms that no one perhaps for fifty years past had ever heard a dogmatic expression escape him. "And to this habit (after my character of integrity)," he declares, "I think it princ.i.p.ally owing that I had early so much weight with my fellow citizens when I proposed new inst.i.tutions, or alterations in the old, and so much influence in public councils when I became a member; for I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, and yet I generally carried my points." On the whole, even though Franklin did find Order and Humility not easy of attainment, he was very well satisfied with the results of his plan for imparting the force of habit to virtue. In his seventy-ninth year the former tradesman sat down to count deliberately his moral gains. To his "little artifice" with the blessing of G.o.d he owed, he felt, the constant felicity of his life until that time. To Temperance he ascribed his long-continued health and what was still left to him of a good const.i.tution; to Industry and Frugality the early easiness of his circ.u.mstances and the acquisition of his fortune with all that knowledge that enabled him to be a useful citizen and obtained for him some degree of reputation among the learned; to Sincerity and Justice the confidence of his country and the honorable employs it conferred upon him; and to the joint influence of the whole ma.s.s of the virtues, even in the imperfect state that he was able to acquire them, all that evenness of temper and that cheerfulness in conversation which made his company still sought for and agreeable even to his younger acquaintance. From other expressions of his in the _Autobiography_ we are left to infer that he believed that Frugality and Industry, by freeing him from the residue of the debt on his printing house and producing affluence and independence, had made more easy the practice of sincerity and justice and the like by him.
So highly did Franklin esteem his method that he intended to follow it up with a treatise, to be known as the _Art of Virtue_, containing a practical commentary upon each of the virtues inserted in his little book, and showing just how anyone could make himself virtuous, if he only had a mind to. In this treatise, it was his desire, he says in the _Autobiography_, to expound the doctrine that vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden but forbidden because they are hurtful, the nature of man alone considered, and that it is therefore to the interest of everyone to be virtuous who wishes to be happy even in this world. "I should from this circ.u.mstance," he said, "(there being always in the world a number of rich merchants, n.o.bility, states, and princes, who have need of honest instruments for the management of their affairs, and such being so rare), have endeavoured to convince young persons that no qualities were so likely to make a poor man"s fortune as those of probity and integrity." The thought was more fully developed in a letter to Lord Kames, dated May 3, 1760.
I purpose likewise [he said], a little work for the benefit of youth, to be called the _Art of Virtue_.
From the t.i.tle I think you will hardly conjecture what the nature of such a book may be. I must therefore explain it a little. Many people lead bad lives that would gladly lead good ones, but know not _how_ to make the change. They have frequently _resolved_ and _endeavoured_ it; but in vain, because their endeavours have not been properly conducted. To expect people to be good, to be just, to be temperate, &c., without _shewing_ them _how_ they should _become_ so, seems like the ineffectual charity mentioned by the Apostle, which consisted in saying to the hungry, the cold, and the naked, "Be ye fed, be ye warmed, be ye clothed,"
without shewing them how they should get food, fire, or clothing.
Most people have naturally _some_ virtues, but none have naturally _all_ the virtues. To _acquire_ those that are wanting, and secure what we acquire, as well as those we have naturally, is the subject of _an art_.
It is as properly an art as painting, navigation, or architecture. If a man would become a painter, navigator, or architect, it is not enough that he is _advised_ to be one, that he is _convinced_ by the arguments of his adviser, that it would be for his advantage to be one, and that he resolves to be one, but he must also be taught the principles of the art, be shewn all the methods of working, and how to acquire the habits of using properly all the instruments; and thus regularly and gradually he arrives, by practice, at some perfection in the art.
The virtue, which this new art was to fabricate, was obviously too much in keeping with the national tendency to turn over tasks of every sort to self-directed machinery. The _Art of Virtue_, however, was never actually penned, owing to the demands of private and public business upon Franklin"s time, and the world was consequently left to get along as it best could with virtue of the old impulsive and untutored type. We are also apprised in the _Autobiography_ that the _Art of Virtue_ itself was to be but an incident of a great and extensive project which likewise never reached maturity for the same reasons that arrested the completion of that work.
This project was the formation of a United Party for Virtue, to be composed of virtuous men of all nations under the government of suitable good and wise rules. The conditions of initiation into this body, which was to move on sin and debt throughout the world with embattled ranks and flying banners, were to be the acceptance of Franklin"s final religious creed, of which we shall have something to say presently, and the continuous practice for thirteen weeks of Franklin"s moral regimen; and the members were to engage to afford their advice, a.s.sistance and support to each other in promoting one another"s interests, business and advancement in life. For distinction, the a.s.sociation was to be called The Society of the Free and Easy, "free, as being, by the general practice and habit of the virtues, free from the dominion of vice; and particularly by the practice of industry and frugality, free from debt, which exposes a man to confinement, and a species of slavery to his creditors." It is in the _Autobiography_ also that Franklin states that he filled the s.p.a.ces between the remarkable days in the calendar in his _Poor Richard"s Almanac_ with proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality, "as the means," he declared, "of procuring wealth, and thereby securing virtue; it being more difficult for a man in want, to act always honestly, as, to use here one of those proverbs, _it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright_."[2]
This prudential view of morality also found utterance in other forms in the writings of Franklin. In the first of the two graceful dialogues between Philocles, the Man of Reason and Virtue, and Horatio, the Man of Pleasure, which appeared in the _Pennsylvania Gazette_, the former warns the latter in honeyed words that he would lose even as a man of pleasure, if, in the pursuit of pleasure, he did not practice self-denial, by taking as much care of his future as his present happiness, and not building one upon the ruins of the other; all of which, of course, was more epigrammatically embodied in that other injunction of Poor Richard, "Deny self for self"s sake." No wonder that Horatio was so delighted with a theory of self-denial, which left him still such a comfortable margin for sensual enjoyment, that, when Philocles bids him good night, he replies: "Adieu!
thou enchanting Reasoner!"
"Money makes men virtuous, Virtue makes them happy"; this is perhaps an unfair way of summarizing Franklin"s moral precepts, but it is not remote from fairness. "Truth and Sincerity," he had written in his _Journal of a Voyage from London to Philadelphia_, when he was but twenty years of age, "have a certain distinguishing native l.u.s.tre about them, which cannot be perfectly counterfeited; they are like fire and flame, that cannot be painted." It would have been well for the moralist of later years to have remembered this statement when he made up his mind to contract the habit of moral perfection. His Milton, from which he borrowed the _Hymn to the Creator_ that is a part of his _Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion_, might have told him,
"Virtue could see to do what Virtue would By her own radiant light, though sun and moon Were in the flat sea sunk,"
or in those other words from the same strains of supernal melody,
"If Virtue feeble were Heaven itself would stoop to her."
In teaching and pursuing a system of morals, which was nothing but a scheme of enlightened selfishness, dependent for its aliment upon pecuniary ease and habit, he was simply faithful to a general conception of life and character entirely too earthbound and grovelling to satisfy those higher intuitions and ideals which, be the hard laws of our material being what they may, not only never permit our grosser natures to be at peace, but reject with utter disdain the suggestion that they and our vices and infirmities are but offshoots of the same parent stock of selfishness. It cannot be denied that, as a general rule, a man with some money is less urgently solicited to commit certain breaches of the moral law than a man with none, or that we should be in a bad way, indeed, if we did not have the ply of habit as well as the whisper of conscience to a.s.sist us in the struggle between good and evil that is ever going on in our own b.r.e.a.s.t.s.
But the limited freedom from temptation, secured by the possession of money, and the additional capacity for resisting temptation, bred by good habits, are, it is hardly necessary to say, foundations too frail to support alone the moral order of the universe. Beyond money, however conducive it may be in some respects to diminished temptation, there must be something to sweeten the corrupting influence of money. Beyond good habits, however desirable as aids to virtue, there must be something to create and sustain good habits. This thing no merely politic sense of moral necessity can ever be. Franklin"s idea of supplying our languid moral energies with a system of moral practice as material as a go-cart or a swimming bladder is one, it is safe to say, upon which neither he nor anyone else could build a character that would, as Charles Townsend might have said, be anything but "a habit of lute string--a mere thing for summer wear." His _Art of Virtue_ was a spurious, pinchbeck, shoddy subst.i.tute for the real virtue which has its home in our uninstructed as well as our instructed moral impulses; and for one man, who would be made virtuous by it, ten, we dare say, would be likely to be made shallow formalists or canting scamps. It is a pity that Poor Richard did not make more of that other time-honored maxim, "Virtue is its own reward."
Indeed, we shrewdly suspect that even Franklin"s idea that he was such a debtor to his fact.i.tious system of moral practice was not much better than a conceit. The improvement in his moral character, after he first began to carry the virtues around in his pocket, is, we think, far more likely to have been due to the natural decline of youthful waywardness and dissent, the discipline of steady labor, the settling and sober effects of domestic life and the wider vision in every respect in our relations to the world which comes to us with our older years. It is but just to Franklin to say that, even before he adopted his "little artifice," his character as respects the virtues, which he specifically names as having had a hand in producing the constant felicity of his life, namely, Temperance, Industry, Frugality, Sincerity and Justice was, so far as Temperance, Industry and Frugality were concerned, exceptionally good, and, so far as Sincerity and Justice were concerned, not subject to any ineffaceable reproach. In truth, even he, we imagine, would have admitted with a laugh, accompanied perhaps by a humorous story, that the period of his life, before his dream of moral perfection was formed, when he was so temperate as to be known to his fellow printers in London as the "Water American," and to be able to turn from the common diet to the vegetarian, and back again, without the slightest inconvenience, would compare quite favorably with the period of his life, after his dream of moral perfection had been formed, when he had to confess on one occasion to Polly Stevenson that he had drunk more at a venison feast than became a philosopher, and on another to his friend, John Bartram that, if he could find in any Italian travels a recipe for making Parmesan cheese, it would give him more satisfaction than a transcript of any inscription from any old stone whatever. How far the effect of his moral regimen was to strengthen the virtues of Silence, Resolution, Moderation, Cleanliness and Tranquillity we lack sufficient materials for a judgment. These, a.s.suming that Cleanliness must have gone along with such an eager propensity for swimming as his, were all native virtues of his anyhow we should say. But as to Chast.i.ty the invigorating quality of the regimen is certainly open to the most serious doubt. There is only too much in the correspondence which has survived him to give color to the statement of John Adams that even at the age of seventy-odd he had neither lost his love of beauty nor his taste for it. When we bear this in mind and recall what he had to say in the _Autobiography_ about the "hard-to-be-governed pa.s.sion of youth," which frequently hurried him into intrigues with low women that fell in his way before he resolved to acquire the habit of chast.i.ty with the aid of his book, we realize that the artificial scaffolding, which he proposed to build up around his character, reasonably enough broke down at just the point where the natural vigor of his character was the weakest.
In point of s.e.xual morality, Franklin was no better than the Europe of the eighteenth century; distinctly worse than the America of that century. His domestic affections were uncommonly strong, but the notable peculiarity about his domestic life is that he was not a whit less soberly dutiful in his irregular than in his regular family connections, and always acted as if the nuptial ceremony was a wholly superfluous form, so far as a proper sense of marital or paternal obligation, or the existence of deep, unreserved affection, upon the part of a husband or father, went. His lack of scruples in this respect almost reminds us of the question put by his own Polly Baker, when she was prosecuted the fifth time f