To Benjamin Franklin from Antoine Yart: A Poem, 4 October 1777: résumé
From Antoine Yart:4 A Poem
AD: American Philosophical Society
<Ecoüis, near Rouen, October 4, 1777, in French: The poem, of sixty-eight lines, is packed with fulsome praise. It describes the Americans as orphaned by Franklin’s absence, and assures them that “loin de l’amérique il la porte en son coeur.” Franklin then first addresses King Louis, adjuring him to avenge British insults and “à l’empire des lys, joins l’empire des mers.” The next appeal is to the Belgians and the Swiss to support the rebel cause until the Americans “regnent, comme vous, libres, independans.”>
4. The abbé Yart (1709–91) was a royal censor, one of the founders in 1744 of the Rouen Academy, and a prolific author; his best known work was an anthology of English poetry in translation, Idée de la poésie anglaise (8 vols., Paris, 1749–71). Larousse; Quérard, France littéraire. He seems to have sent this poem as a letter; it is a fair sample of the kind of fustian that BF inspired.