177 



The Literary Labors of Benjamin Franklin". 



When the New World sent Franklin to Europe, England 

 and France received him, without question, as the equal of 

 their own greatest men. Lavoisier, Turgot and Raynal, Buffon, 

 Rousseau and Condorcet were his admirers, Gibbon, Hume, 

 and Adam Smith, Karnes, Robertson, Bentham and Priestly, 

 his friends, while to the poet Cowper praise by him atoned for 

 all the carpings of the critics. 



When he first met Voltaire, in the hall of the French 

 Academy of Sciences, the two old men saluted affectionately, 

 amid the tears and the applause of the spectators, and it was 

 proclaimed through Europe that Sophocles and Solon had 

 embraced. 



His colleague, John Adams, by no means the most ardent 

 of his admirers, said of him : 



" His reputation was more universal than that of Leibnitz 

 or Newton, Frederick the Great or Yoltaire, and his character 

 more beloved and esteemed than any or all of them. Newton 

 had astonished, perhaps, forty or fifty men in Europe ; for 

 not more than that number, probably, at any one time had 

 read him and understood him, and these being held in admi- 

 ration in their respective countries, at the head of the philos- 

 ophers, had spread among scientific people a mysterious won- 

 der at the genius of this, perhaps the greatest man that ever 

 lived. But his fame was confined to men of letters. The 

 common people cared nothing about such a recluse philosopher. 

 Leibnitz's name was still more confined. Frederick was hated 

 by one-half Europeans much as Napoleon is. Yoltaire was 

 considered as a vain and profligate wit, and not esteemed by 

 anybody, though admired by all who knew his works. But 

 Franklin's fame was universal. His name was familiar to 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXVIII. 133. W. PRINTED JUNE 2, 1890. 



