BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND JOHN SLIDELL AT PARIS.
Article in the Atlantic Monthly, November, 1863.
This article appeared originally under the title, “Monograph from an Old Note-Book.” Beyond the curiosity of the discussion was the object, at a critical moment, of contrasting the diplomatic representative of our fathers at Paris and that of Rebel Slavery, with a new appeal to France. It was in the same vein with the recent speech on Our Foreign Relations.[216]
In a famous speech, made in the House of Lords, March 6, 1838, against the Eastern slave-trade, Lord Brougham arrests the current of his eloquence by the following illustrative diversion.
“I have often heard it disputed among critics, which of all quotations was the most appropriate, the most closely applicable to the subject-matter illustrated; and the palm is generally awarded to that which applied to Dr. Franklin the line in Claudian,—
‘Eripuit fulmen cœlo, mox sceptra tyrannis’;
yet still there is a difference of opinion, and even that citation, admirably close as it is, has rivals.”[217]
The British orator errs in attributing this remarkable verse to Claudian, misled, perhaps, by reminiscence of like-sounding words by that poet,—
“Rapiat fulmen sceptrumque Typhœus.”[218]