SUPPLEMENT

TO THE

MEMOIRS:

COMPRISING

CHARACTERS, EULOGIUMS, AND ANECDOTES

OF

DR. FRANKLIN,

SELECTED FROM VARIOUS WRITERS.

I AM hardly able to tell you how kindly I take the letters with which you favor me. Your last, containing an account of the death of our excellent friend, Dr. Franklin, and the circumstances attending it, deserves my particular gratitude. The account which he has left of his life will show, in a striking example, how a man, by talents, industry, and integrity, may rise from obscurity to the first eminence and consequence in the world; but it brings his history no lower than the year 1757, and I understand, that since he sent over the copy, which I have read, he has been able to make no additions to it. It is with a melancholy regret I think of his death; but to death we are all bound by the irreversible order of nature, and in looking forward to it, there is comfort in being able to reflect-that we have not lived in vain, and that all the useful and virtuous shall meet in a better country beyond the grave.

Dr. Franklin, in the last letter I received from him, after mentioning his age and infirmities, observes, that it has been kindly ordered by the author of nature, that, as we draw nearer the conclusion of life, we are furnished with more helps to wean us from it, among which one of the strongest is the loss of dear friends. I was delighted with the account you gave in your letter, of the honor shown to his memory at Philadelphia, and by congress; and yesterday I received a high additional pleasure, by being informed, that the national assembly of France had determined to go into mourning for him.-What a glorious seene is opened there! The annals of the world furnish no parallel to it.

I am, with great respect, your obliged and very humble servant,

VOL. I.

RICHARD PRICE. 3 HI

Extract of a Letter from the Hon. Thomas Jefferson, Esq. to Dr. William Smith, of

Philadelphia.

I FEEL both the wish and the duty to communicate, in compliance with your request, whatever, within my knowledge, might render justice to the memory of our great countryman, Dr. Franklin, in whom philosophy has to deplore one of its principal luminaries extinguished. But my opportunities of knowing the interesting facts of his life have not been equal to my desire of making them known.

I can only, therefore, testify in general, that there appeared to me more respect and veneration attached to the character of Dr. Franklin in France, than to that of any other person in the same country, foreign or native. I had opportunities of knowing particularly, how far these sentiments were felt by the foreign ambassadors and ministers at the court of Versailles. The fable of his capture by the Algerines, propagated by the English newspapers, excited no uneasiness, as it was seen at once to be a fabrication to please certain readers; but nothing could exceed the anxiety of his diplomatic brethren on a subsequent report of his death, which, although premature, bore some marks of authenticity.

I found the ministers of France equally impressed with his talents and integrity. The Count de Vergennes particularly gave me repeated and unequivocal demonstrations of his entire confidence in him.

When he left Passy, it seemed as if the village had lost its patriarch. On taking leave of the court, which he did by letter, the King ordered him to be handsomely complimented, and furnished him with a litter and mules of his own, the only kind of conveyance the state of his health could bear.

The succession to Dr. Franklin, at the court of France, was an excellent school of humility to me. On being presented to any one, as the minister of America, the common-place question to me was "c'est vous, Monsieur, qui remplacez le Docteur Franklin"-it is you, Sir, who replace Dr. Franklin. I generally answered-" No one can replace him, Sir; I am only his

successor."

I could here relate a number of those bon-mots, with which he was used to charm every society, having heard many of them; but these are not your object. Particulars of greater dignity happened not to occur, during his stay of nine months after my arrival in France.

A little before that time, Argand had invented his celebrated lamp, in which the flame is spread into a hollow cylinder, and thus brought into contact with the air, within as well as without. Dr. Franklin had been on the point of the same discovery. The idea had occurred to him; but he had tried a bullrush as a wick, which did not succeed. His occupations did not permit him to repeat and extend his trials to the introduction of a larger column of air, than could pass through the stem of a bullrush.

' Extracted from the Eulogium on Dr. Franklin, delivered by Dr. W. Smith, before the American Philosophical Society.

About that time, also, the King of France gave him a signal testimony of respect, by joining him with some of the most illustrious men of the nation to examine that ignis-fatuus of philosophy, the animal magnetism of the maniac, Mesmer; the pretended effects of which had astonished all Paris. From Dr. Franklin's hand, in conjunction with his brethren of the learned committee, that compound of fraud and folly was unveiled, and received its death-wound. After this nothing very interesting was before the public, either in philosophy or politics, during his stay; and he was principally occupied in winding up his affairs, and preparing for his return to America.

These small offerings to the memory of our great and dear friend (whom time will be making still greater, while it is spunging us from its records) must be accepted by you, Sir, in that spirit of love and Veneration for him, in which they are made; and not according to their insignificancy in the eyes of a world, which did not want this mite to fill up the measure of his worth.

His death was an affliction which was to happen to us at some time or other. We have reason to be thankful he was so long spared; that the most useful life should be the longest also; that it was protracted so far beyond the ordinary span allotted to humanity, as to avail us of his wisdom and virtue, in the establishment of our freedom in the west; and to bless him with a view of its dawn in the east, where men seemed till now to have learned every thingbut how to be free.

Extract of a Letter from Dr. Joseph Priestley to the Editor of the Monthly Magazine, dated Northumberland, Nov. 10, 1782.*

SIR,

I have just read in the Monthly Review, vol. 36, p. 357, that the late Mr. Pennant said of Dr. Franklin, that, "living under the protection of our mild government, he was secretly playing the incendiary, and too successfully inflaming the minds of our fellow subjects in America, till that great explosion happened, which for ever disunited us from our happy colonies."

As it is in my power, as far as my testimony will be regarded, to refute this charge, I think it due to our friendship to do it. It is probable, that no person now living was better acquainted with Dr. Franklin and his sentiments on all subjects of importance, than myself, for several years before the American war. I think I knew him as well as one man can generally know another. At that time I spent the winters in London, in the family of the Marquis of Lansdown, and few days passed without my seeing more or less of Dr. Franklin; and the last day that he passed in England, having given out that he should depart the day before, we spent together, without any interruption, from morning till night.

Now he was so far from wishing for a rupture with the colonies, that he did more than most

* Inserted in the number for February, 1803.