Like Newton’s book, that of Franklin was not immediately successful--at least not in England. Not appearing under the patronage of the Royal Society, the supposed fountain-head of all legitimate science, it was looked coldly upon by the public and the critics, and it was only after having been greeted with immense applause in France, that at last something like justice was done to it in England. The great success of Franklin’s little treatise in France was due, in the first instance, to rather accidental circumstances, but was none the less genuine. By a happy chance a copy of the pamphlet printed by Mr. Cave fell into the hands of the Count de Buffon, the greatest naturalist of the age, and whose pre-eminent position was established not only in France, but throughout the whole of Europe. Himself familiar with the English language, he yet thought that it was necessary to have the book immediately translated into French, and he employed for the purpose Professor Dubourg, a literary man of note, well versed in electrical science. Under such favourable auspices, Franklin’s pamphlet, carefully translated, was issued at Paris in the summer of 1751, three or four months after its appearance in London. Its success in France was as immediate as it was great, and the wave of it spread at once over Europe, marked by German, Italian, and Latin translations of the ‘New Experiments.’ For a considerable time nothing was talked of among the upper classes of France but the discoveries in science of the unknown Philadelphia printer, and the king, Louis XV., following the fashion of the day, ordered a course of the electrical experiments, described by Franklin, to be performed before him at St. Germain, in the presence of the whole court.
A rather ludicrous incident, and which gave rise to a great deal of scientific tournamenting, added to the celebrity of Franklin’s little book on the continent of Europe. The greatest of French electricians, Abbé Nollet, a man of acknowledged merit, but inordinately vain, was mystified in believing that the pamphlet which caused such an immense stir at court and among the public was not the production of the obscure man Franklin of Philadelphia, but got up among his enemies in England and France, to rob him of his reputation. With this belief fixed in his mind, he sat down at his desk to write a series of letters intended to demolish the man of Philadelphia, and proving, entirely to his own satisfaction, first, that Franklin did not exist at all; secondly, that he had no right to exist; and thirdly, that all his pretended discoveries were mere dreams. Not long after the publication of his letters, the wrathful Abbé received undoubted proofs from America that at Philadelphia there was a man called Franklin, who himself mildly asserted his right not only to live, but to make experiments in electricity. Poor Abbé Nollet felt his humiliation all the more keenly as holding the post of preceptor in Natural Philosophy to the royal family of France, and he had to suffer from a ‘burst of inextinguishable laughter’ at one of his appearances at court.