Benjamin Franklin: Self-Revealed, Volume 1 — Chapter 6, Franklin's British Friends, Part 3

Less than two years after these merry words were penned, Franklin wrote to Andrew Strahan, Strahan's son, saying, "I condole with you most sincerely on the Departure of your good Father and Mother, my old and beloved Friends."

Equally dear to Franklin, though in a different way, was Jonathan Shipley, the Bishop of St. Asaph's, whom he termed in a letter to Georgiana, one of the Bishop's daughters, "that most honoured and ever beloved Friend."

In this same letter, Franklin speaks of the Bishop as the "good Bishop," and then, perhaps, not unmindful of the unflinching servility with which the Bench of Bishops had supported the American policy of George III.

, exclaims, "Strange, that so simple a Character should sufficiently distinguish one of that sacred Body!"

During the dispute with the Colonies, the Bishop was one of the wise Englishmen, who could have settled the questions at issue between England and America, to the ultimate satisfaction of both countries, with little difficulty, if they had been given a _carte blanche_ to agree with Franklin on the terms upon which the future dependence of America was to be based.

Two productions of his, the "Sermon before the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts" and his "Speech intended to have been spoken on the Bill for Altering the Charters of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay," were among the compositions which really influenced the course of the events that preceded the American Revolution.

We know from Franklin's pen that the sermon was for a time "universally approved and applauded," and, in letters to Thomas Cushing, he said that the speech was admired in England as a "Masterpiece of Eloquence and Wisdom," and "had an extraordinary Effect, in changing the Sentiments of Multitudes with regard to America."

For both sermon and speech the Bishop was all the more to be honored by Americans, because, as Franklin observed to Galloway of the sermon, the Bishop's censure of the mother country's treatment of the Colonies, however tenderly expressed, could not recommend him at court or conduce in the least to his promotion.

On the contrary, it probably cost him the most splendid temporal reward that could be conferred upon a Churchman, the Archbishopric of Canterbury; for, when Charles James Fox was desirous of elevating him to that exalted office, the King defeated his intentions by hastily appointing another person to it.

At Chilbolton, by Twyford, the country seat of the Bishop, some of the most pleasant days that Franklin spent in England were passed.

So fond of Franklin were the Bishop and his wife that the latter carried in her memory even the ages of all Franklin's children and grandchildren.

As he was on the point of leaving Twyford, at the end of the three weeks' visit, during which he began the _Autobiography_, she insisted on his remaining that day, so that they might all celebrate the anniversary of Benjamin Bache's birth together.

Accordingly, at dinner there was among other things a floating island, such as the hosts always had on the several birthdays of their own six children; all of whom, with one exception, were present as well as a clergyman's widow upwards of one hundred years old.

The story is thus told by Franklin to his wife: The chief Toast of the Day was Master Benjamin Bache, which the venerable old Lady began in a Bumper of Mountain.

The Bishop's Lady politely added, _and that he may be as good a Man as his Grandfather_.

I said I hop'd he would be _much better_.

The Bishop, still more complaisant than his Lady, said, "We will compound the Matter, and be contented, if he should not prove _quite_ so good."

This Chitchat is to yourself only, in return for some of yours about your Grandson, and must only be read to Sally, and not spoken of to anybody else; for you know how People add and alter Silly stories that they hear, and make them appear ten times more silly.

The room at the Bishop's home, in which the _Autobiography_ was begun, was ever subsequently known as Franklin's room.

After his return to America from France, Catherine Louisa Shipley, one of the Bishop's daughters, wrote to him, "We never walk in the garden without seeing Dr. Franklin's room and thinking of the work that was begun in it."

In a letter to the Bishop in 1771, Franklin says: I regret my having been oblig'd to leave that most agreeable Retirement which good Mrs. Shipley put me so kindly in possession of.

I now breathe with Reluctance the Smoke of London, when I think of the sweet Air of Twyford.

And by the Time your Races are over, or about the Middle of next Month (if it should then not be unsuitable to your Engagements or other Purposes) I promise myself the Happiness of spending another Week or two where I so pleasantly spent the last.

Close behind this letter, went also one of his "books," which he hoped that Miss Georgiana, another daughter of the Bishop, would be good enough to accept as a small mark of his "Regard for her philosophic Genius," and a quantity of American dried apples for Mrs. Shipley.

A month later, he writes to the Bishop that he had been prevented from coming to Twyford by business, but that he purposed to set out on the succeeding Tuesday for "that sweet Retreat."

How truly sweet it was to him a letter that he subsequently wrote to Georgiana from Passy enables us in some measure to realize.

Among other things, it contained these winning and affecting words: Accept my Thanks for your Friendly Verses and good Wishes.

How many Talents you possess!

Painting, Poetry, Languages, etc. , etc. All valuable, but your good Heart is worth the whole.

Your mention of the Summer House brings fresh to my mind all the Pleasures I enjoyed in the sweet Retreat at Twyford: the Hours of agreeable and instructive Conversation with the amiable Family at Table; with its Father alone; the delightful Walks in the Gardens and neighbouring Grounds.

Pleasures past and gone forever!

Since I have had your Father's Picture I am grown more covetous of the rest; every time I look at your second Drawing I have regretted that you have not given to your Juno the Face of Anna Maria, to Venus that of Emily or Betsey, and to Cupid that of Emily's Child, as it would have cost you but little more Trouble.

I must, however, beg that you will make me up a compleat Set of your little Profiles, which are more easily done.

You formerly obliged me with that of the Father, an excellent one.

Let me also have that of the good Mother, and of all the Children.

It will help me to fancy myself among you, and to enjoy more perfectly in Idea, the Pleasure of your Society.

My little Fellow-Traveller, the sprightly Hetty, with whose sensible Prattle I was so much entertained, why does she not write to me?

If Paris affords anything that any of you wish to have, mention it.

You will oblige me.

It affords everything but _Peace_!

Ah!

When shall we again enjoy that Blessing.

Previously he had written to Thomas Digges that the portrait of the Bishop mentioned by him had not come to hand; nor had he heard anything of it, and that he was anxious to see it, "having no hope of living to see again the much lov'd and respected original."

His request for the little profiles of the Shipleys was complied with, we know, because in a letter to the Bishop some two years afterwards he said: "Your Shades are all plac'd in a Row over my Fireplace, so that I not only have you always in my Mind, but constantly before my Eyes."

This letter was written in reply to a letter from the Bishop which was the first to break the long silence that the war between Great Britain and America had imposed upon the two friends.

"After so long a Silence, and the long Continuance of its unfortunate Causes," Franklin began, "a Line from you was a Prognostic of happier Times approaching, when we may converse and communicate freely, without Danger from the Malevolence of Men enrag'd by the ill success of their distracted Projects."

Among the entries in the desultory Journal that Franklin kept of his return from France to America, are these relating to the visit paid him at Southampton by the Bishop: "Wrote a letter to the Bishop of St. Asaph, acquainting him with my arrival, and he came with his lady and daughter, Miss Kitty, after dinner, to see us; they talk of staying here as long as we do.

Our meeting was very affectionate."

For two or three days, the reunited friends all lodged at the Star, at Southampton, and took their meals together.

The day before his ship sailed, Franklin invited the Bishop and his wife and daughter to accompany him on board, and, when he retired, it was with the expectation that they would spend the night on the ship, but, when he awoke the next morning, he found that they had thoughtfully left the ship, after he retired, to relieve the poignancy of the farewell, and that he was off on his westward course.

In his last letter to the Bishop, Franklin expresses his regret that conversation between them at Southampton had been cut short so frequently by third persons, and thanks him for the pleasure that he derived from the copy of Paley's _Moral Philosophy_, given to him by the Bishop there.

Along with the usual contradiction of the English and Loyalist view at this time of our national condition, and the usual picture of himself encircled by his grandchildren, he indulges in these striking reflections about the chequered fate of parental expectations: He that raises a large Family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, _stand_, as Watts says, _a broader Mark for Sorrow_; but then he stands a broader Mark for Pleasure too.

When we launch our little Fleet of Barques into the Ocean, bound to different Ports, we hope for each a prosperous Voyage; but contrary Winds, hidden Shoals, Storms, and Enemies come in for a Share in the Disposition of Events; and though these occasion a Mixture of Disappointment, yet, considering the Risque where we can make no Insurance, we should think ourselves happy if some return with Success.

Timed as they were, the force of these reflections were not likely to be lost upon the Bishop.

Some years before, Georgiana had married with his bitter disapproval Francis Hare-Naylor, the writer of plays and novels, and author of the _History of the Helvetic Republics_, who was so unfortunate as to be arrested for debt during his courtship, while in the episcopal coach of the Bishop with Georgiana and her parents.

After the Bishop refused to recognize the husband, the Duchess of Devonshire settled an annuity of three hundred pounds a year upon the couple, and among the wise, weighty letters of Franklin is one that he wrote from France to Georgiana, after her marriage, in which he replies to her inquiries about the opening that America would afford to a young married couple, and refers to this annuity.

The concluding portion of this letter also has its value as another illustration of the calm manner in which Franklin looked forward to his end.

He tells Georgiana that, if he should be in America, when they were there, his best counsels and services would not be wanting, and that to see her happily settled and prosperous there would give him infinite pleasure, but that, of course, if he ever arrived there, his stay could be but short.

Franklin survived the Bishop, and his letter to Catherine, in reply to hers, announcing the death of her father, is in his best vein.

That excellent man has then left us!

His departure is a loss, not to his family and friends only, but to his nation, and to the world; for he was intent on doing good, had wisdom to devise the means, and talents to promote them.

His "Sermon before the Society for Propagating the Gospel," and his "Speech intended to have been spoken," are proofs of his ability as well as his humanity.

Had his counsels in those pieces been attended to by the ministers, how much bloodshed might have been prevented, and how much expense and disgrace to the nation avoided!

Your reflections on the constant calmness and composure attending his death are very sensible.

Such instances seem to show, that the good sometimes enjoy in dying a foretaste of the happy state they are about to enter.

According to the course of years, I should have quitted this world long before him.

I shall however not be long in following.

I am now in my eighty-fourth year, and the last year has considerably enfeebled me; so that I hardly expect to remain another.

You will then, my dear friend, consider this as probably the last line to be received from me, and as a taking leave.

Present my best and most sincere respects to your good mother, and love to the rest of the family, to whom I wish all happiness; and believe me to be, while I _do_ live, yours most affectionately.

His friendship in this instance, as usual, embraced the whole family.

In a letter in 1783 to Sir William Jones, the accomplished lawyer and Oriental scholar, who married Anna Maria, one of the Bishop's daughters, he said that he flattered himself that he might in the ensuing summer be able to undertake a trip to England for the pleasure of seeing once more his dear friends there, among whom the Bishop and his family stood foremost in his estimation and affection.

To the Bishop himself he wrote from Passy in the letter which mentioned the shades of the Shipleys above his fireplace: "Four daughters!

how rich!

I

have but one, and she, necessarily detain'd from me at 1000 leagues distance.

I feel the Want of that tender Care of me, which might be expected from a Daughter, and would give the World for one."

And later in this letter he says with the bountiful affection, which made him little less than a member of the families of some of his friends, "Please to make my best Respects acceptable to Mrs. Shipley, and embrace for me tenderly all our dear Children."

At the request of Catherine, he wrote the _Art of Procuring Pleasant Dreams_ in which hygiene and the importance of preserving a good conscience are so gracefully blended, and received from her a reply, in which, after declaring that it flattered her exceedingly that he should employ so much of his precious time in complying with her request, she put to him the question, "But where do you read that Methusaleh slept in the open air?

I

have searched the Bible in vain to find it."

When Sir William Jones was on the eve of being married to Anna Maria, and of sailing away to India, where he was to win so much distinction, Franklin wrote to him the letter already mentioned, joining his blessing on the union with that of the good Bishop, and expressing the hope that the prospective bridegroom might return from that corrupting country with a great deal of money honestly acquired, and with full as much virtue as he carried out.

The affection that he felt for Catherine and Georgiana, his letters to them, from which we have already quoted, sufficiently reveal.

Of the four daughters, Georgiana was, perhaps, his favorite, and she is an example with Mary Stevenson of the subtle magnetism that his intellect and nature had for feminine affinities of mind and temperament.

It was to Georgiana, when a child, that he wrote his well-known letter containing an epitaph on her squirrel, which had been dispatched by a dog.

The letter and epitaph are good enough specimens of his humor to be quoted in full: DEAR MISS,

I lament with you most sincerely the unfortunate end of poor Mungo.

Few squirrels were better accomplished; for he had had a good education, had travelled far, and seen much of the world.

As he had the honor of being, for his virtues, your favourite, he should not go, like common skuggs, without an elegy or an epitaph.

Let us give him one in the monumental style and measure, which, being neither prose nor verse, is perhaps the properest for grief; since to use common language would look as if we were not affected, and to make rhymes would seem trifling in sorrow.

EPITAPH

Alas!

poor Mungo!

Happy wert thou, hadst thou known Thy own felicity.

Remote from the fierce bald eagle, Tyrant of thy native woods, Thou hadst nought to fear from his piercing talons, Nor from the murdering gun Of the thoughtless sportsman.

Safe in thy wired castle, GRIMALKIN never could annoy thee.

Daily wert thou fed with the choicest viands, By the fair hand of an indulgent mistress;

But, discontented, Thou wouldst have more freedom.

Too soon, alas!

didst thou obtain it;

And wandering, Thou art fallen by the fangs of wanton, cruel Ranger!

Learn hence, Ye who blindly seek more liberty, Whether subjects, sons, squirrels or daughters, That apparent restraint may be real protection;

Yielding peace and plenty With security.

You see, my dear Miss, how much more decent and proper this broken style is, than if we were to say, by way of epitaph, Here SKUGG Lies snug, As a bug In a rug.

and yet, perhaps, there are people in the world of so little feeling as to think that this would be a good-enough epitaph for poor Mungo.

If you wish it, I shall procure another to succeed him;

but perhaps you will now choose some other amusement.

Two of Georgiana's letters to Franklin, after his arrival in France, are very interesting, and one of them especially could not have been written by any but a highly gifted and accomplished woman.

In this letter, the first of the two, she begins by expressing her joy at unexpectedly receiving a letter from him.

How good you were [she exclaimed] to send me your direction, but I fear I must not make use of it as often as I could wish, since my father says it will be prudent not to write in the present situation of affairs.

I am not of an age to be so very prudent, and the only thought that occurred to me was your suspecting that my silence proceeded from other motives.

I could not support the idea of your believing that I love and esteem you less than I did some few years ago.

I therefore write this once without my father's knowledge.

You are the first man that ever received a private letter from me, and in this instance I feel that my intentions justify my conduct; but I must entreat that you will take no notice of my writing, when next I have the happiness of hearing from you.

She then proceeds to tell Franklin all about her father, her mother, her sister Emily and Emily's daughter, "a charming little girl, near fifteen months old, whom her aunts reckon a prodigy of sense and beauty."

The rest of her sisters, she said, continued in _statu quo_.

Whether that proceeded from the men being difficult or from _their_ being difficult, she left him to determine.

His friends all loved him almost as much as she did; as much she would not admit to be possible.

Dr. Pringle had made her extremely happy the preceding winter by giving her a print of her excellent friend, which, was certainly very like him, although it wanted the addition of his own hair to make it complete; but, as it was, she prized it infinitely, now that the dear original was absent.

She then has a word to say about Smith's _Wealth of Nations_, Gibbon's _History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ and the _Economics_, which she had read with great attention, as indeed everything else she could meet with relative to Socrates; for she fancied she could discover in each trait of that admirable man's character a strong resemblance between him and her much-loved friend--the same clearness of judgment, the same uprightness of intention and the same superior understanding.

Other words are bestowed on the account which Sir William Hamilton had lately given her of a new electrical machine invented in Italy, the happiness that she would enjoy, if Franklin were in England to explain it to her, and the envy excited in her by the opportunities that his grandson had for showing him kindness and attention.

"Did my family," she further declares, "know of my writing, my letter would scarce contain the very many things they would desire me to say for them.

They continue to admire and love you as much as they did formerly, nor can any time or event in the least change their sentiments."

She then concludes partly in French and partly in English in these words: Adieu, mon cher Socrate; conservez-vous pour l'amour de moi, et pour mille autres raisons plus importants.

Je ne vous en dirai pas d'advantage pour aujourd'hui, mais je veux esperer de vous entretenir plus á mon aise, avant que soit longue.

Pray write whenever a safe conveyance opens, since the receiving letters is reckoned very different from answering them.

I must once more repeat nobody knows of this scroll; "a word to the wise,"--as Poor Richard says.

In her second letter, Georgiana speaks of the difficulty she experienced in having her letters conveyed safely to Passy.

"Strange," she declared, "that I should be under the necessity of concealing from the world a correspondence which it is the pride and glory of my heart to maintain."

His _Dialogue with the Gout_, she said, was written with his own cheerful pleasantry, and _La belle et la mauvaise Jambe_ recalled to her mind those happy hours they once passed in his society, where they were never amused without learning some useful truth, and where she first acquired a taste _pour la conversation badinante and réfléchie_.

Her father grew every year fonder of the peace of Twyford; having found his endeavors to serve his country ineffectual, he had yielded to a torrent which it was no longer in his power to control.

Sir John Pringle (Franklin's friend) had left London and gone to reside in Scotland; she feared that he was much straitened in his circumstances; he looked ill and was vastly changed from what he remembered him; Dr. Priestley (another friend of Franklin) was then on a short visit to his friends in town; good Dr. Price (another friend of Franklin) called on them often, and gave them hopes of a visit to Twyford.

The letter also informed Franklin that the first opportunity that they had of sending a parcel to Paris he might expect _all_ their shades; and expressed her gratitude to Mr. Jones for undertaking the care of her letter, and giving her an opportunity of assuring Franklin how much she did and ever should continue to love him.

Catherine Ray was not far wrong when she spoke of Franklin as a conjurer.

Catherine Shipley's letter to him, after she had parted with him at Southampton, though without the romantic flush of these two letters, spoke the same general language of deep-seated affection.

She was quite provoked with herself, she said, when she got to Southampton that she had not thought of something, such as a pincushion, to leave with him, that might have been useful to him during the voyage to remind him of her.

"Did you ever taste the ginger cake," she asked, "and think it had belonged to your fellow-traveller?

In short, I want some excuse for asking whether you ever think about me."

And from this letter it appears that he had a place in the hearts of Emily and Betsey too.

She had had a letter from Emily, Catherine further said, the night after she got home, to inquire whether his stay at Southampton would allow time for her coming to see him.

Betsey regretted much that she had lost that happiness, and the writer had written to dear Georgiana a long account of him, for she knew every circumstance would be interesting to her.

"Indeed, my dear sir," the letter ended, "from my father and mother down to their _youngest child_, we all respect and love you."

[34] When Franklin was told by Georgiana that Sir John Pringle was pinched by poverty, and looked ill, he must have been sorely distressed; for Sir John he once described as his "steady, good friend."

A pupil of Boerhaave, a high authority upon the application of sanitary science to the prevention of dysentery and hospital fevers, physician to the Queen, and President of the Royal Society, Dr. Pringle was one of the distinguished men of his time.

What churchmen were to the preservation of classical learning, before teaching became a special calling, physicians were to general scientific knowledge before science became such; and, among these physicians, he occupied an honorable position.

[35] "His speech in giving the last medal, (of the Royal Society) on the subject of the discoveries relating to the air," Franklin wrote to Jan Ingenhousz, "did him great honour."

He was quite unlike the courtiers who sought to convince King Canute that he could stay the incoming tide by his command, as George III.

found out when he asked him, after the outbreak of the American Revolution, to pronounce an opinion in favor of the substitution of blunt for pointed lightning rods on Kew Palace.

The laws of nature, Sir John hinted, were not changeable at royal pleasure, but positions of honor and profit he soon learnt, if he did not know it before, were; for he fell into such disfavor with the King that he had to resign as President of the Royal Society, and was deprived of his post as physician to the Queen.

The circumstances in which his disgrace originated leave us at but little loss to understand why the King should have become such a dogged partisan of blunt conductors.

Prior to the Revolution, Franklin had been consulted by the British Board of Ordnance as to the best means of protecting the arsenals at Purfleet from lightning, and, after he had visited the powder magazine there, the Royal Society, too, was asked by the Board for its opinion.

The Society accordingly appointed a committee of learned men, including Cavendish and Franklin, to make a report on the subject.

All of the committee except Benjamin Wilson, who dissented, reported in favor of pointed conductors as against blunt ones, and Franklin, the inventor of pointed lightning rods, drew up the report.

The scientific controversy that followed soon assumed a political character, when Franklin dropped the philosophical task of snatching the lightning from the skies for the rebellious task of snatching the sceptre from a tyrant.

When he heard that George III.

was, like Ajax, obstinate enough to defy even the lightning, he wrote to an unknown correspondent: The King's changing his _pointed_ conductors for _blunt_ ones is, therefore, a matter of small importance to me.

If I had a wish about it, it would be that he had rejected them altogether as ineffectual.

For it is only since he thought himself and family safe from the thunder of Heaven, that he dared to use his own thunder in destroying his innocent subjects.

Dr. Ingenhousz, however, was not so self-contained, and made such an angry attack on Wilson that Franklin, who invariably relied in such cases upon silence and the principle that Truth is a cat with nine lives to defend him, laughingly remarked, "He seems as much heated about this _one point_, as the Jansenists and Molinists were about the _five_."

As for King George, he had at least the satisfaction of realizing that his people still had a ready fund of wit for timely use.

One homely couplet of the period, referring to Franklin's famous kite, ran in this way: "He with a kite drew lightning from the sky, And like a kite he pecked King George's eye."

Another more polished poet penned these neat lines: "While you, great George, for knowledge hunt, And sharp conductors change for blunt, The Empire's out of joint.

Franklin another course pursues And all your thunder heedless views By keeping to the point."

If we may believe Franklin, Sir John held the efficacy of the healing art in very moderate esteem.

The reader has already been told of the humorous manner in which he let it be known that, in his opinion, of the two classes of practitioners, old women and regular physicians, the former had done the most to save the honor of the profession.

Franklin also informed Dr. Rush that Sir John "once told him 92 fevers out of 100 cured themselves, 4 were cured by Art, and 4 proved fatal."

But many people must have had a more favorable opinion of the professional value of Sir John than Sir John himself had, for his "Conversations" were in high repute.

On this point, there is some evidence in a letter from Franklin to Dr. Thomas Bond, who was desirous of giving his son Richard the benefit of a foreign medical education.

Referring to Sir John, Franklin wrote: Every Wednesday Evening he admits young Physicians and Surgeons to a Conversation at his House, which is thought very improving to them.

I will endeavour to introduce your Son there when he comes to London.

And to tell you frankly my Opinion, I suspect there is more valuable knowledge in Physic to be learnt from the honest candid Observations of an old Practitioner, who is past all desire of more Business, having made his Fortune, who has none of the Professional Interest in keeping up a Parade of Science to draw Pupils, and who by Experience has discovered the Inefficacy of most Remedies and Modes of Practice, than from all the formal Lectures of all the Universities upon Earth.

That Dr. John cured at least one patient, we are told by Dr. Rush on the authority of Franklin, but it was Only himself of a tremor, and that by simply ceasing to take snuff.

Dr. Pringle and himself, Franklin told Dr. Rush, observed that tremors of the hands were more frequent in France than elsewhere, and probably from the excessive use of snuff.

"He concluded," says Dr. Rush, "that there was no great advantage in using tobacco in any way, for that he had kept company with persons who used it all his life, and no one had ever advised him to use it.

The Doctor in the 81st year of his age declared he had never snuffed, chewed, or smoked."

Among the persons who sought Sir John's professional advice was Franklin himself.

It was in relation to a cutaneous trouble which vexed him for some fourteen years, and broke out afresh when he was in his eighty-third year.

But the best medicine that Franklin ever obtained from Sir John was his companionship upon two continental tours, one of which was inspired by the latter's desire to drink the waters at Pyrmont, and the other by the attractions of the French capital.

When the news of Sir John's death reached Franklin at Passy he paid the usual heartfelt tribute.

"We have lost our common Friend," he wrote to Jan Ingenhousz, "the excellent Pringle.

How many pleasing hours you and I have pass'd together in his Company!"

Another English physician, for whom Franklin entertained a feeling of deep affection, was the Quaker Dr. John Fothergill.

After the death of this friend, in a letter to Dr. John Coakley Lettsom, still another friend of his, and one of the famous English physicians of the eighteenth century, he expressed this extraordinary opinion of Dr. Fothergill's worth: "If we may estimate the goodness of a man by his disposition to do good, and his constant endeavours and success in doing it, I can hardly conceive that a better man has ever existed."

No faint praise to be uttered by the founder of the Junto and one who valued above all things the character of a doer of good!

Like Sir John Pringle, Dr. Fothergill belonged to the class of physicians who pursued medicine, as if it were a mistress not to be wooed except with the favor of the other members of the scientific sisterhood.

He was an ardent botanist, and his collection of botanical specimens and paintings on vellum of rare plants was among the remarkable collections of his age.

Two of his correspondents were the Pennsylvania botanists, John Bartram and Humphrey Marshall, who brought to his knowledge a flora in many shining instances unknown to the woods and fields of the Old World.

His medical writings were held in high esteem, and were published after his death under the editorial supervision of Dr. Lettsom.

As a practitioner, he was eminently successful, and numbered among his patients many representatives of the most powerful and exclusive circles in London.

What the extent of his practice was we can infer from a question put to him by Franklin in 1764. By the way [he asked], when do you intend to live?

--_i.

e. _, to enjoy life.

When will you retire to your villa, give yourself repose, delight in viewing the operations of nature in the vegetable creation, assist her in her works, get your ingenious friends at times about you, make them happy with your conversation, and enjoy theirs: or, if alone, amuse yourself with your books and elegant collections?

To be hurried about perpetually from one sick chamber to another is not living.

Do you please yourself with the fancy that you are doing good?

You are mistaken.

Half the lives you save are not worth saving, as being useless, and almost all the other half ought not to be saved, as being mischievous.

Does your conscience never hint to you the impiety of being in constant warfare against the plans of Providence?

Disease was intended as the punishment of intemperance, sloth, and other vices, and the example of that punishment was intended to promote and strengthen the opposite virtues.