98 Presidentship of the Earl of Morton 1767 



descent and had been a stockbroker, acquiring such a 

 fortune as enabled him, though young, to quit business 

 and cultivate literature and politics. In 1775 he was 

 appointed Under Secretary of State. He was selected to 

 be the "Professor of Commercial Politicks " in the visionary 

 College which Johnson and Boswell, when at St. Andrews, 

 amused themselves by imagining. He deserves also to be 

 remembered as one of the signatories to the famous round- 

 robin presented to Johnson about his Latin epitaph on 

 Goldsmith. 1 



The records of this year afford pleasing evidence of the 

 growth of the friendship between Sir John Pringle and 

 Benjamin Franklin. On the i8th June Pringle invited his 

 colonial friend to the Club, at the same time asking his 

 helpful correspondent, Peter Collinson, to meet him. To- 

 wards the end of August Sir John and Franklin set out on 

 a short trip into France. A brief account of their journey 

 is given in a letter from Franklin to Miss Stevenson, dated 

 Paris, September 14. At Versailles, where they were 

 presented at Court, " the King talked a good deal to Sir 

 John, asking many questions about our royal family, and 

 did me too the honour of taking some notice of me : that 

 is saying enough ; for I would not have you think me so 

 much pleased with this King and Queen, as to have a whit 

 less regard than I used to have for ours. No Frenchman 

 shall go beyond me in thinking my own King and Queen 

 the very best in the world and the most amiable." 2 



It was an anxious time for Franklin and he needed all 

 the relaxation which he enjoyed at the Club, and in such 

 excursions as that which he took to France. He had been 



1 Boswell's Life of Johnson (Birkbeck Hill's Edit.) i. 478. 



2 Life of Franklin, 4th Edit. i. p. 542. His loyalty continued not- 

 withstanding the political antagonisms amidst which he moved. Thus 

 on ist January 1769, for the opening of the Royal Academy of Arts, he 

 wrote some congratulatory verses in which he described his muse joining 

 the throng of jubilants as 



Tho' poor, yet willing, and tho' rude, sincere ; 

 To praise the Sovereign whom her heart approves, 

 And pay this tribute to the Arts she loves. 



Ann. Register, 1769, p. 214. 



