In his limitations, no less than in his power of assimilation,
Franklin was the representative man of his era. He had no
artistic interests, no liking for metaphysics after his brief
devotion, in early manhood, to the dialogues of Plato. He taught
himself some Latin, but he came to believe that the classics had
little significance and that they should be superseded by the
modern languages. For the mediaeval world he had no patience or
understanding. To these defects of his century we must add some
failings of his own. He was not always truthful. He had an
indelible streak of coarseness. His conception of the "art of
virtue" was mechanical. When Carlyle called Franklin the "father
of all the Yankees," we must remember that the Scotch prophet
hated Yankees and believed that Franklin's smooth, plausible,
trader type of morality was only a broad way to the everlasting
bonfire.
But it is folly to linger over the limitations of the tallow-
chandler's son. The catalogue of his beneficent activity is a
vast one. Balzac once characterized him as the man who invented
the lightning-rod, the hoax, and the republic.
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