Colloquial Powers Of Franklin

Never have I known such a fireside companion.

Great as he was both as a statesman and philosopher,

he never shone in a light more winning than when

he was seen in a domestic circle.

Great American Statesman,

Postmaster, Writer

Benjamin Franklin

(1706-1790)

It was once my good fortune to pass two or three

weeks with him, at the house of a private gentleman,

in the back part of Pennsylvania, and we were

confined to the house during the whole of that time

by the unintermitting constancy and depth of the snows.

But confinement never could be felt where Franklin was 

an inmate. His cheerfulness and his colloquial powers

spread around him a perpetual spring.

When I speak, however, of his colloquial powers,

I do not mean to awaken any notion analogous to that which

Boswell has given us of Johnson. 

The conversation of the

latter continually reminds me of the

 "pomp and circumstances of glorious war." 

It was, indeed, a perpetual contest for victory,

or an arbitrary or despotic exaction of homage to his 

superior talents.

 It was strong, acute, prompt, splendid, and

vociferous; as loud, stormy, and sublime as those winds

which he represents as shaking the Hebrides,and rocking the old castle

which frowned on the dark-rolling sea beneath.

But one gets tired of storms, however sublime they may be, 

and longs for the more orderly current of nature.

Of Franklin, no one ever became tired.

There was no ambition of eloquence, no effort to shine

in anything which came from him. 

There was nothing which made any demand upon 

either your allegiance or your admiration.

His manner was as unaffected as infancy. It was nature's self.

He talked like an old patriarch;  and his plainness and simplicity

put you at once at your ease, and gave you the full and free

possession and use of your faculties.

His thoughts were of a character to shine 

 by their own light, without any adventitious aid. 

They only required a medium of vision like his pure and simple style,

 to exhibit to the highest advantage their native radiance and beauty. 

His cheerfulness was unremitting. It seemed to be as much the effect 

of a systematic and salutary exercise of the mind,
 as of its superior organization.

His wit was of the first order.

 It did not show itself merely in occasional corruscations 

but, without any effort or force on his part, it shed a 

constant stream of the purest light over the whole of his discourse.

Whether in the company of commons or nobles, he was always the 

same plain man;  always most perfectly at ease, with his faculties

in full play, and the full orbit of his genius forever clear and unclouded.

And then, the stores of his mind were inexhaustible.

He had commenced life with an attention so vigilant that

nothing had escaped his observation; and a judgment so solid

that every incident was turned to an advantage. His youth had

not been wasted in idleness, nor overcast by intemperance.

He had been, all his life, a close and deep reader, as well as

a thinker; and by the force of his own powers, had wrought up

the raw materials which he had gathered from books, with such

exquisite skill and felicity, that he had added a hundred fold to

their original value, and justly made them his own.

"Colloquial Powers Of Franklin"

By William Wirt

(1772-1834)