French ministers, without embarrassment to their government. At this house he received the great men of Paris, and from it he returned their calls and made the famous social visits that increased his renown and popularity. He thus created in all classes of the French people such enthusiasm for the American cause that when the news of the victories of Trenton and Saratoga reached Paris, the government could no longer resist the popular demand for active assistance to the rebels. Louis XVI recognized the independence of the colonies, signed a treaty of alliance, and officially received the American envoys. This was only a part of the service that Franklin rendered the cause of the colonies at this time. As American agent in Paris and later as our first minister to the court of France, he succeeded in borrowing the large sums of money that formed the most important source of income to the Revolutionary government. It is a remarkable fact that this money was obtained from a bankrupt government against the strong protests of its able minister of finance. These diplomatic successes were due largely to Franklin's personality and character. Like his contemporary, Dr. Johnson, Franklin was a keen observer. He knew men and affairs thoroughly. He had, too, a fine sense of the fitness of things, absolute good taste, and an invincible self-control, which neither obstinacy, nor stupidity, nor duplicity, nor wearisome delay, could ever break down. He never irritated the French government by pressing his cause unduly. He never antagonized as did John Adams. Vergennes, the French minister, spoke of his conduct as wise and circumspect, as well as zealous and patriotic, and added that Franklin's success was largely due to the perfect confidence of the French people in his veracity. To these qualities of the successful diplomat must be added his optimism and cheerfulness, which were so contagious as to keep all about him in good spirits. In spite of his many official duties in Paris, Franklin still found time to indulge his love of social pleasure. In order to amuse the delighted circle of which he had become the center, he wrote his famous Bagatelles, or essays in a light vein. The most notable are The Story of the Whistle, The Ephemera, A Petition of the Left Hand (a plea for teaching children to use both hands with equal facility), The Morals of Chess, and the famous Dialogue between Franklin and the Gout. Franklin was now seventy-five years old; and he sent an appealing letter to Congress asking permission to give up the duties of his office, which, by reason of ill-health and old age, had become a greater burden than he felt he ought to bear. But his pleading was in vain, and he remained in Paris another four years to play a principal part in negotiating the treaty of peace with England. Finally, in 1785, Congress permitted Franklin to come home, sending out Jefferson as Minister to France. When Count de Vergennes first met the new minister he said, "You replace Dr. Franklin, I hear." Jefferson replied, "I succeed, no one can replace him." Even at seventy-nine Franklin was not, however, to find the rest for which he longed. He had hardly done receiving the congratulations and thanks of his countrymen on his return home, when he was elected Chairman of the Council of Philadelphia and later President of Pennsylvania. He wrote an old friend that he was again harnessed to the service of his countrymen. "They engrossed the prime of my life. They have eaten my flesh, and seem resolved now to pick my bones." He was elected a member of the convention to frame the Consti tution, and to his influence and Washington's was largely due the final adoption of the Constitution. "It is not too much to say that to Franklin, perhaps more than to any other one man, the present Constitution of the United States owes most of those features which have given it durability and have made it the ideal by which all other systems of government are tested by Americans." 1 During all this time Franklin's pen continued active. He wrote on the abolition of slavery, of which he was one of the first advocates; satires on the "liberty of the press," which had degenerated into slander; and on the British demands for the payment of American debts. His last writing, a satirical answer to a pro-slavery speech in Congress, was in his best style, and is thought to be as good as the pleasantries of Swift. Soon afterwards, on April 17, 1790, he died quietly at his home, and was buried beside his wife in the graveyard of Christ Church, Philadelphia. The mourning for his death was general. The Members of Congress wore black badges for thirty days. The French National Assembly also put on mourning and many eulogies were delivered in his memory. His service may be summed up by Turgot's famous adaptation of the Latin motto universally applied to Franklin at the time. "He snatched the lightning from the heavens and the scepter from the tyrant's hand." Franklin's place in literature is hard to determine because he was not primarily a literary man. His aim in his writings as in his life work was to be helpful to his fellowmen. For him writing was never an end in itself, but always a means to an end. Yet his success as a scientist, a statesman, and a diplomat, as well as socially, 1 Bigelow, The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. III, p. 383. "His was in no little part due to his ability as a writer. letters charmed all, and made his correspondence eagerly sought. His political arguments were the joy of his party and the dread of his opponents. His scientific discoveries were explained in language at once so simple and so clear that plow-boy and exquisite could follow his thought or his experiment to its conclusion." 1 As far as American literature is concerned, Franklin had no contemporaries. Before the Autobiography only one literary work of importance had been produced in this country Cotton Mather's Magnalia, a church history of New England in a ponderous, stiff style. Franklin was the first American author to gain a wide and permanent reputation in Europe. The Autobiography, Poor Richard, Father Abraham's Speech or The Way to Wealth, as well as some of the Bagatelles, are as widely known abroad as any American writings. Franklin must also be classed as the first American humorist. English literature of the eighteenth century was characterized by the development of prose. Periodical literature reached its perfection early in the century in The Tatler and The Spectator of Addison and Steele. Pamphleteers flourished throughout the period. The homelier prose of Bunyan and Defoe gradually gave place to the more elegant and artificial language of Samuel Johnson, who set the standard for prose writing from 1745 onward. This century saw the beginnings of the modern novel, in Fielding's Tom Jones, Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. Gibbon wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hume his History of England, and Adam Smith the Wealth of Nations. In the simplicity and vigor of his style Franklin more 1 The Many-Sided Franklin.-Paul L. Ford. nearly resembles the earlier group of writers. In his first essays he was not an inferior imitator of Addison. In his numerous parables, moral allegories, and apologues he showed Bunyan's influence. But Franklin was essentially a journalist. In his swift terse style, he is most like Defoe, who was the first great English journalist and master of the newspaper narrative. The style of both writers is marked by homely, vigorous expression, satire, burlesque, repartee. Here the comparison must end. Defoe and his contemporaries were authors. Their vocation was writing and their success rests on the imaginative or creative power they displayed. To authorship Franklin laid no claim. He wrote no work of the imagination. He developed only incidentally a style in many respects as remarkable as that of his English contemporaries. He wrote the best autobiography in existence, one of the most widely known collections of maxims, and an unsurpassed series of political and social satires, because he was a man of unusual scope of power and usefulness, who knew how to tell his fellowmen the secrets of that power and that usefulness. II AUTOBIOGRAPHY The Autobiography is Franklin's longest work, and yet it is only a fragment. The first part, written as a letter to his son, William Franklin, was not intended for publication; and the composition is more informal and the narrative more personal than in the second part, from 1730 on, which was written with a view to publication. The entire manuscript shows little evidence of revision. In fact the expression is so homely and natural that his |