Les flots de l’Océan s’abaissent à sa voix;
Il réprime ou dirige à son gré le tonnerre:
Qui désarme les dieux, peut-il craindre les rois?”[245]
These lines seem to contain the very idea in the verse of Turgot. But they were suppressed at the time by the censor, on the ground that they were “blasphemous,” although it is added in a note that “they concerned only the King of England.” Was it that the negotiations with Franklin were not yet sufficiently advanced? And here mark the dates.
It was only after the communication to Great Britain of the Treaty of Alliance and the reception of Franklin at Versailles, that the seal seems to have been broken. Baron Grimm, in his “Correspondance,” under date of April, 1778, makes the following entry.
“A very beautiful Latin verse has been made for the portrait of Dr. Franklin,—
‘Eripuit cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis.’
It is a happy imitation of a verse of the ‘Anti-Lucretius,’—
‘Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, Phœboque sagittas.’”[246]
Here is the earliest notice of this verse, authenticating its origin. Nothing further is said of the “Anti-Lucretius”; for in that day it was familiar to every lettered person. But I shall speak of it before I close.