Note 25 — CANTO I. OURSELF!
Reading edition
Illumed as one would light a candle.
In my younger days, I lived on terms of intimacy with Doctor Franklin, highly honorable to both parties, as it showed we were both men of discernment in choosing each a great man for his friend.
In a letter from that venerable sage, afterwards printed (See Franklin’s Works, p. 115, vol. ii. third edition) he told me that toads buried in sand, shut up in hollow trees, &c. would live forever, as it were; and, among other things, informed me of certain curious facts about flies, which I will relate in his own words. “I have seen an instance of common flies preserved in a manner somewhat similar. They had been drowned in Madeira wine, apparently about the time when it was bottled in Virginia, to be sent to London. At the opening of one of the bottles, at the house of a friend where I was, three drowned flies fell into the first glass which was filled. Having heard it remarked that drowned flies were capable of being revived by the rays of the sun, I proposed making the experiment upon these. They were therefore exposed to the sun upon a sieve, which had been employed to strain them out of the wine. In less than three hours two of them began by degrees to recover life. They commenced by some convulsive motions of the thighs, and at length they raised themselves upon their legs, wiped their eyes with their fore feet, beat and brushed their wings with their hind feet, and soon after began to fly, finding themselves in Old England, without knowing how they came thither. The third continued lifeless until sun-set, when, losing all hopes of him, he was thrown away.
“I wish it were possible, from this instance, to invent a method of embalming drowned persons, in such a manner that they might be recalled to life, at any period, however distant; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to an ordinary death, the being immersed in a cask of Madeira wine, with a few friends, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country. But since, in all probability, we live in an age too early, and too near the infancy of science, to see such an art brought, in our time, to perfection, I must, for the present, content myself with the treat which you are so kind as to promise me, of the resurrection of a fowl or turkey cock.”