A History of American Literature. Boynton Percy Holmes
etc., etc. We kept no idle servants, our table was plain and simple, our furniture of the cheapest. For instance, my breakfast was a long time bread and milk (no tea), and I ate it out of a twopenny earthen porringer, with a pewter spoon. But mark how luxury will enter families, and make a progress, in spite of principle: being called one morning to breakfast, I found it in a China bowl, with a spoon of silver! They had been bought for me without my knowledge by my wife, and had cost her the enormous sum of three and twenty shillings, for which she had no other excuse or apology to make, but that she thought her husband deserved a silver spoon and China bowl as well as any of his neighbors. This was the first appearance of plate and China in our house, which afterward in a course of years, as our wealth increased, augmented gradually to several hundred pounds in value.
Many and many of the simplest episodes reveal how shrewd, penetrating, and, above all, how clear headed he invariably was. Such, for example, was the hour when he was listening to the great evangelist, Whitefield, and while all his other auditors were being thrilled by the speaker’s eloquence, Franklin was backing away from him step by step, in order to estimate how far his voice would carry, and thus to verify the newspaper accounts of his having preached to twenty-five thousand people in the fields. Franklin went away full of admiration for the preacher’s voice, but with no word of comment on his sermon. He went often to hear Whitefield, but always as a very human public speaker and never as a “divine.” A biographer, even one of his associates, could not have known many of the intimate facts that Franklin included, and he would almost surely have left out other details as irrelevant or impertinent. Franklin himself, in contrast, wrote the things which still clung in his old man’s memory and which must have been important in his development, or he would have forgotten them.
Another striking feature of the “Autobiography” is its honesty, for he did not hesitate to record happenings which revealed defects in his character – defects which nine out of ten admiring biographers would have been inclined to omit or even actually to cover up. Franklin knew that his life had not been all admirable, that many times it had not been above reproach; but, all things considered, he was willing to let it stand for what it was. In consequence, if one reads his story as honestly as Franklin wrote it, – and few people do, – it will appear that not only was he disorderly and unmethodical but that he was not always truthful, that he was sometimes unscrupulous in business, and that he was at times self-indulgent and immoral. In fact too often the editing of Franklin’s life-story seems to have been done on the principle laid down by Dr. Samuel Johnson about Chesterfield’s “Letters to his Son” – that they should be put into the hands of every young man after the immorality had been taken out of them. This is not honest teaching and does not lead to honest habits of study.
The truth is that Franklin was like other people in being a combination of virtues and defects. He was unlike other people in having extraordinary talents and virtues and in owning up to his defects. For the two great “errata” of his life – the use of money intrusted to him for Mr. Vernon and his unfaithfulness while in London to Miss Read, his betrothed – he afterward made the fullest possible atonement. In his glorification of usefulness at every turn he was at once the greatest expounder and the greatest example of his century. He made a religion of usefulness, putting it into a simple creed which gives less heed to the spirit of worship than many of us need, but far more to the spirit of service than most of us follow:
It is expressed in these words, viz.:
That there is one God, who made all things.
That he governs the world by his providence.
That he ought to be worshipped by adoration, prayer and thanksgiving.
But that the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man.
That the soul is immortal.
And that God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice, either here or hereafter.
In the third of these articles Franklin recommended a worship which he did not practice, but in the fourth he presented a doctrine of service of which his life was a remarkable fulfillment. In his theory of life Franklin seemed to make no claims for the finer emotions, but in his actual citizenship in all its public aspects he was so far above the average man as to serve as a pretty safe “working model” for this and coming generations.
If he had not written this uncompleted life-story we should not know the man as intimately as we do, for to read the “Autobiography” is to read Franklin himself.
Since the “Autobiography” brings the story of Franklin only up to 1757, it gives no hint of the Revolutionary struggle in which as negotiator and diplomat he was hardly less important than was Washington as military leader. The America presented in these pages is loyal and contented. The rising voices of discomfort from 1765 to 1775, of doubt during the next year, and of decision for revolt in 1776 were all echoed and often led by Franklin in his political writings. Moreover, it is of especial significance in these days to recall another fact unrecorded in his own story – that he was the first American to represent his nation among other nations, and that in his feeling for America as a member of the great world-family he was a hundred years and more ahead of his countrymen. The new marshaling of forces in 1917 which brought about the celebration of the Fourth of July in London and the arrival of allied American troops in Paris recalled from hour to hour the name of Franklin as our first great international figure.
BOOK LIST
General References
Brooks, van Wyck. America’s Coming of Age, chap. i. 1915.
Dunning, A. E. Congregationalists in America. 1894.
Fiske, John. New France and New England, chap. vi. 1902.
Walker. W. History of the Congregational Churches in the United States. 1894.
Individual Authors
Jonathan Edwards. There have been at least twenty-two editions and printings of Edwards’s collected work. The most accessible is that in four volumes which appeared originally in 1843 and has been reprinted nine times, the last in 1881. In these volumes the most important pages are in Vol. I, pp. 1–27 (biographical), and in Vol. IV (sermons).
Biography and Criticism
Dwight, Timothy. Travels in New England and New York (1822), Vol. IV, pp. 323 ff.
Holmes, O. W. Pages from an Old Volume of Life. 1891.
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. 1902.
Macphail, Andrew. Essays in Puritanism. 1905.
Sanborn, F. B. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. XVII, No. 4. October, 1883.
Stephen, Leslie. Littell’s Living Age, Vol. V (ser. 5), No. 1546. Jan. 24, 1874.
Walker, Williston. Ten New England Leaders. 1901.
Ward, W. H. The Independent, Vol. LV, No. 2861. Oct. 1, 1903.
Woodbridge, F. J. E. Philosoph. Rev., Vol. XIII, No. 4. July, 1904. The Congregationalist and Christian World, Edwards number, Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 40. Oct. 3, 1903.
Benjamin Franklin. There are eleven editions of Franklin’s collected works in English, French, and German, dating from 1773 to 1905. The best of these is the one compiled and edited by John Bigelow. 1889. 10 vols. Poor Richard Improved, 1757. This was later issued as Father Abraham’s Speech, over 150 editions and reprints of which are recorded. Autobiography. First issued in Paris, 1791. Best recent editions: John Bigelow, editor, 1874; H. E. Scudder, editor, Riverside Literature Series, 1886; William MacDonald, editor, Temple Autobiography Series, 1905; William MacDonald, editor, Everyman’s Library, 1908.
History and Biography
Bruce, W. C. Benjamin Franklin Self-Revealed: A Biographical and Critical Study based mainly on his own Writings. 1918. 2 vols.
Ford, P. L. The Many-Sided Franklin. 1899.
Hale, E. E. and E. E., Jr. Franklin in France; from original documents most of which are now published for the first time. 1887–1888. 2 vols.
McMaster,