Gleanings from the Harvest-Fields of Literature: A Melange of Excerpta

by Unknown

TURGOT’S EPIGRAPH ON FRANKLIN.

Eripuit cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis.

This inscription, the highest compliment ever paid to the American philosopher and statesman, and originally ascribed to Condorcet and Mirabeau, was written by Turgot, Louis XVI.’s minister and controller-general of finance, and first appeared in the correspondence of Grimm and Diderot, April, 1778. It is, however, merely a modification of a line in the Anti-Lucretius of Cardinal de Polignac, lib. i., v. 37:—

Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, Phœboque sagittas,

which is in turn traced to the Astronomicon of Marcus Manilius, a poet of the Augustan age, who says of Epicurus, lib. i. v. 104,—

Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, viresque Tonanti.

Taking the laurel from the brow of Epicurus to place it upon the head of Franklin is not so inappropriate, when we recall the sketch of the former by Lucretius illustrans commoda vitæ.