THE PUBLICATION OF FRANKLIN'S LETTERS. 583 



tive insignificance. For not only was this the first great 

 utilization of everything that had been learned from the 

 rubbed amber and its posterity, but the importance of it 

 as a safeguard to life and property was inestimable. 

 Hitherto the Royal Society had not been unfavorably 

 disposed to Franklin, and even Watson, in appropriating 

 his honors, did so in a considerate and even laudatory 

 way. But when Collinson came with this story and 

 wanted the Society to consider it, he met with prompt re- 

 buff and even derision. The whole matter was regarded 

 as too visionary for serious discussion by the Society, 

 whatever individual members might think about it. 1 



The calm indifference with which Franklin accepted 

 this turn of affairs found no reflection in the breast of Col- 

 linson, who, on the contrary, developed a most unquaker- 

 like spirit of antagonism. He was now determined that 

 not only should these last papers of the American phil- 

 osopher be published, but that the earlier letters already 

 received should go to the world, whether the Royal Society 

 put their imprint on them or not. And to this he was 

 urgently incited by Dr. Fothergill, who cordially under- 

 took to assist him. 



So he offered the letters to Cave Cave, the lordly 

 owner of the Gentleman's Magazine; Cave, the typical 

 Grub Street publisher, who regarded ^50 as an adequate 

 bait for the highest literary genius the Cave of Dr. 

 Samuel Johnson, who looked upon his very abode at St. 

 John's Gate with respectful awe; and Cave refused them 

 place in those sacred pages, although he was filling the 

 latter with long diatribes from nobodies about the latest 

 humbugs in u medical (!) electricity." But Cave had an 

 eye to profit, and while unwilling to imperil the fortunes 

 of his magazine by admitting such heterodox matter, 



1 Nevertheless a brisf notice of Franklin's electrified cloud theory 

 found place in the transactions very shortly afterwards, through a report 

 on it by Dr. William Stukely, who had heard the first letter to Collinsou 

 publicly read at some gathering. Phil. Trans., 496, 601. 



