MANUSCRIT. - MALOT (Marc-Antoine Lazare). L'Électricité. Pie - Lot 96

MANUSCRIT. - MALOT (Marc-Antoine Lazare). L'Électricité. Piece crowned at the Académie de Marseille, August 25, 1786. S.l.n.d. [ca. 1786]. Small folio manuscript (295 x 190 mm), 6 pages, modern hardback. Autograph manuscript of this interesting eighteenth-century scientific poem on electricity. The ode, in 20 stanzas, was written by Marc-Antoine Lazare Malot, lawyer and King's prosecutor at the bailliage of Avallon in Burgundy, and won him the Prix de l'Académie de Marseille on August 25, 1786. It bears witness to the Enlightenment's interest in the electricity fairy, with the author evoking Benjamin Franklin's research into the lightning rod: "The modest Franklin arms himself against the storm / And goes to seek lightning in its darkest homes, / He prescribes its course, and, from the bosom of the cloud, / Without a sound, makes it descend and die at his feet.