9 



in their choice of books, took the whole care of collecting and 

 shipping them, and transmitted to the directors the earliest 

 account of every improvement in agriculture and the arts, and 

 of every philosophical discovery. 



" Franklin, who was the founder of that library, made his first 

 electrical experiments with an apparatus that had been sent to 

 it as a present by Peter Collinson. He deemed it, therefore, a 

 proper mark of acknowledgment to inform him of the success 

 with which it had been used, and his first essays on electricity 

 were originally communicated to this good man. They were 

 read in the Royal Society, ' where they were not thought worth 

 so much notice as to be printed in their transactions ;' and his 

 paper in which the sameness of lightning with electricity was 

 first asserted, was laughed at by the connoisseurs. Peter Collin- 

 son, however, gave the letters to Cave for the Gentleman's 

 Magazine. Cave, forming a better judgment than the Royal 

 Society had done, printed them separately in a pamphlet, for 

 which Dr. Fothergill wrote a preface ; the pamphlet by succes- 

 sive additions swelled to a volume in quarto, which went through 

 five editions, and, as Franklin observes, ' cost Cave nothing for 

 copy money.' 



" What a contrast between this English Quaker and Monsieur 

 La Cour at Leyden, who, having raised a double tuberose from 

 the seed, and propagated it by the roots till he had as many as 

 he could find room to plant, destroyed the rest as fast as they 

 were produced, that he might boast of being the only person in 

 Europe who possessed it." 



We present this passage entire, from that curious book of 

 miscellanies, "The Doctor," which having no index, and one 

 part having no connection with another, except that each was 

 written down by Southey, few know all the good things it con- 

 tains. The author's allusion to Franklin and the conduct of 

 the Royal Society, are in a spirit above the prejudices which 

 sometimes influence the judgment of a poet-laureate, and there 

 are some who will suspect that Southey was not aware of the 

 high compliment he was bestowing upon this country in his 

 praise of Peter Collinson ; or, where it was that Peter found 

 such extensive means of conferring good upon his fellow sub- 

 jects of the kingdom of England. It has a marked emphasis 



