Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. By JAMES PARTON. New York : Mason Brothers. Two Volumes. 8vo.

To appreciate the importance of this work, we must remember that it covers more than three-fourths of a century full of great events, if not of great men ; that it begins with Boston and Philadelphia as small provincial towns, and leaves them the thriving capitals of independent States ; that it finds colonial energy struggling with metropolitan jealousy and ignorance; that it follows the struggle through all its phases, until the restrictions of the mother became oppression, and the love of the children was converted into hatred; that it traces the growth and expansion of American industry, — the dawn of American invention, so full of promise,—the development of the principle of self-government, so full of power,—the bitter contest, so full of lessons which, used aright, might have spared us more than half the blood and treasure of the present war.

To appreciate the difficulty of this work, we must remember that the inner and the outer life of the subject of it are equally full of marvels ; that, beginning by cutting off candle-wicks in a tallow-chandler’s shop in Boston, he ended as the greatest scientific discoverer among those men renowned for science who composed the Royal Society of London and the Academy of Sciences of Paris ; that, with the aid of an odd volume of the “ Spectator,” used according to his own conception of the best way of using it, he made himself master of a pure, simple, graceful, and effective English style ; that the opinions and maxims which he drew from his own observation and reflection have passed into the daily life of millions, warning, strengthening, cheering, and guiding; that he succeeded in the most difficult negotiations, was a leader of public opinion on the most important questions, and, holding his way cheerfully, resolutely, and lovingly to the end, left the world wiser in many things, and in some better, for the eighty-four years that he had passed in it.

Nor must we forget, that, among the many things which this wonderful old man did, was to tell us half the story of his own life, and with such unaffected simplicity, such evident sincerity, and such attractive grace, as to make it — as far as it goes — the most perfect production of its class. Then why attempt to do it over again ? is the question that naturally springs to every lip, on reading the title of Mr. Parton’s book.

Mr. Parton has anticipated this question, and answered it. “ Autobiography is one of the most interesting and valuable kinds of composition ; but autobiography can never be accepted in lieu of biography, because to no man is the giftie given of seeing himself as others see him. Rousseau’s Confessions are a miracle of candor : they reveal much concerning a certain weak, wandering, diseased, miserable, wicked Jean Jacques ; but of that marvellous Rousseau whose writings thrilled Europe they contain how much ? Not one word. Madame D’Arblay’s Diary relates a thousand pleasant things, but it does not tell us what manner of person Madame D’Arblay was. Franklin’s Autobiography gives agreeable information respecting a sagacious shopkeeper of Philadelphia, but has little to impart to us respecting the grand Franklin, the world’s Franklin, the philosopher, the statesman, the philanthropist. A man cannot reveal his best self, nor, unless he is a Rousseau, his worst. Perhaps he never knows either.”

The basis of Mr. Parton’s work is, as the basis of every satisfactory biography must be, the writings of its subject. “After all,” he says, “Dr. Jared Sparks’s excellent edition of the ‘Life and Works of Franklin,’ is the source of the greater part of the information we possess concerning him.The libraries, the public rec-

ords, and the private collections of England, France, and the United States, were so diligently searched by Dr. Sparks, that, though seven previous editions of the works of Franklin had appeared, he was able to add to his publication the astonishing number of six hundred and fifty pieces of Dr. Franklin’s composition never before collected, of which four hundred and fifty had never before appeared in print. To unwearied diligence in collecting Dr. Sparks added an admirable talent in elucidating. His notes are always such as an intelligent reader would desire, and they usually contain all the information needed for a perfect understanding of the matter in hand. Dr. Sparks’s edition is a monument at once to the memory of Benjamin Franklin and to his own diligence, tact, and faithfulness.” We take great pleasure in copying this passage, both because it seems to illustrate the spirit which Mr. Parton brought to his task, and because the value of Mr. Sparks’s labors have not always been so freely acknowledged by those who have been freest in their use of them.

To a careful study of those volumes Mr. Parton has added patient and extensive research among the newspapers and magazines of the time, and, apparently, a wide range of general reading. Thus he has filled his work with facts, some curious, some new, and all interesting, as well in their bearing upon the times as upon the man. He is a good delver, a good sifter, and, what is equally important, a good interpreter,— not merely bringing facts to the light, but compelling them to give out, like Correggio’s pictures, a light of their own. He possesses, too, in an eminent degree, the power of forming for himself a conception of his subject as a whole, keeping it constantly before his mind in the elaboration of the parts, and thus bringing it vividly before the mind of the reader. Franklin’s true place in history has never before been assigned him upon such incontrovertible evidence.

If we were to undertake to name the parts of this work which have given us most satisfaction, we should, although with some hesitation, name the admirable chapters which Mr. Parton has devoted to Franklin’s diplomatic labors in England and France. In none of his good works has that great man been more exposed to calumny, or treated with more barefaced ingratitude by those who profited most by them, than in bringing to light the dangerous letters of Hutchinson and Oliver. Even within the last few years, the apologetic biographer of John Adams repeats the accusation of moral obliquity in a tone that would hardly have been misplaced in a defence of Wedderburn. Mr. Parton tells the story with great simplicity, and, without entering into any unnecessary disquisition, accepts for his commentary upon it Mr. Bancroft’s wise, and, as it seems to us, unanswerable conclusion. “ Had the conspiracy which was thus laid bare aimed at the life of a minister or tire king, any honest man must have immediately communicated the discovery to the Secretary of State : to conspire to introduce into America a military government, and abridge American liberty, was a more heinous crime, of which irrefragable evidence had now come to light.”

Never, too, was philosopher more severely tried than Franklin was tried by the colleagues whom Congress sent him, from time to time, as clogs upon the great wheel which he was turning so skilfully. And this, too, Mr. Parton has set in full light, not by the special pleading of the apologist, but by the documentary researches of the historian.

There are some things, however, in this work which we could have wished somewhat different from what they are. Mr. Parton’s fluent and forcible style sometimes degenerates into flippancy. We could cite many instances of felicitous expression, some, also, of bad taste, and some of hasty assertion. “ Clubable” is hardly a good enough word to hear frequent repetition. “ This question was a complete baffler ” is too much like slang to he admitted into the good company which Mr. Parton’s sentences usually keep. We were not aware that “ Physician, heal thyself" was a stock classical allusion. We do not believe — for Dante and Milton would rise up in judgment against us, even if the vast majority of other great men did not— that “ it is only second-rate men who have great aims.” We do not believe that the style of the “ Spectator “ is an “ easily imitated style ” ; for, of the hundreds who have tried, how many, besides Franklin, have really succeeded in imitating it? We do not believe that Latin and Greek are an “ obstructing nuisance,” or that the student of Homer and Thucydides and Demosthenes and Plato and Aristotle and Cæsar and Cicero and Tacitus is merely studying ‘the prattle of infant man,” or “adding the ignorance of the ancients to the ignorance he was born with.” We believe, on the contrary, that it was by such studies that Gibbon and Niebuhr and Arnold and Grote acquired their marvellous power of discovering historical truth and detecting historical error, and that from no modern language could they have received such discipline.

But we not only agree with the sentiment, but admire the simple energy of the expression, when he says that “ Franklin was the man of all others then alive who possessed in the greatest perfection the four grand requisites for the successful observation of Nature or the pursuit of literature,—a sound and great understanding, patience, dexterity, and an independent income.” Equally judicious and equally well - expressed is the following passage upon the Penns :—“ Thomas Penn was a man of business, careful, saving, and methodical. Richard Penn was a spendthrift. Both were men of slender abilities, and not of very estimable character, They had done some liberal acts for the Province, such as sending over presents to the Library of books and apparatus, and cannon for the defence of Philadelphia. If the Pennsylvanians had been more submissive, they would doubtless have continued their benefactions. But, unhappily, they cherished those erroneous, those Tory notions of the rights of sovereignty which Lord Bute infused into the contracted mind of George III., and which cost that dull and obstinate monarch, first, his colonies, and then his senses. It is also rooted in the British mind, that a landholder is entitled to the particular respect of his species. These Penns, in addition to the pride of possessing acres by the million, felt themselves to be the lords of the land they owned, and of the people who dwelt upon it.” And in speaking of English ideas of American resistance : — “Englishmen have made sublime sacrifices to principle, but they appear slow to believe that any other people can.” And, “George III. sat upon a constitutional throne, but he had an unconstitutional mind.” It would be difficult to find a more comprehensive sentence than the following: — “The counsel employed by Mr. Mauduit was Alexander Wedderburn, a sharp, unprincipled Scotch barrister, destined to scale all the heights of prefermont which shameless subserviency could reach.”

It would be easy to multiply examples, hut we have given, we believe, more tlmn enough to show that we look upon Mr. Barton’s “ Franklin ” as a work of very great value.