A summary of so versatile a genius is impossible. His services to America in England and France rank him as one of the heroes of the American War of Independence and as the greatest of American diplomats. Almost the only American scientist of his day, he displayed remarkably deep as well as remarkably varied abilities in science and deserved the honours enthusiastically given him by the savants of Europe.
Bibliography.—Franklin’s works were not collected in his own lifetime, and he made no effort to publish his writings. Experiments and Observations on Electricity (London, 1769) was translated into French by Barbeu Dubourg (Paris, 1773); Vaughan attempted a more complete edition, Political, Miscellaneous and Philosophical Pieces (London, 1779); an edition in three volumes appeared after Franklin’s death (London, 1806); what seemed the authentic Works, as it was under the care of Temple Franklin, was published at London (6 vols., 1817-1819; 3 vols., 1818) and with some additional matter at Philadelphia (6 vols., 1818). Sparks’s edition (10 vols., Boston, 1836-1842; revised, Philadelphia, 1858) also contained fresh matter; and there are further additions in the edition of John Bigelow (Philadelphia, 1887-1888; 5th ed., 1905) and in that by Albert Henry Smyth (10 vols., New York, 1905-1907). There are important Frankliniana, about 13,000 papers, in the possession of the American Philosophical Society, to which they were conveyed by the son of Temple Franklin’s executor, George Fox. Other papers which had been left to Fox lay for years in barrels in a stable garret; they were finally cleared out, their owner, Mary Fox, intending to send them to a paper mill. One barrel went to the mill. The others, it was found, contained papers belonging to Franklin, and this important collection was bought and presented to the university of Pennsylvania. The valuable Frankliniana collected by Henry Stevens were purchased by Congress in 1885. These MS. collections were first carefully gone over for the edition of the Works by A. H. Smyth. Franklin’s Autobiography was begun in 1771 as a private chronicle for his son, Governor William Franklin; the papers, bringing the story of his father’s life down to 1730, were lost by the governor during the War of Independence, and in 1783 came into the possession of Abel James, who restored them to Franklin and urged him to complete the sketch. He wrote a little in 1784, more in 1788, when he furnished a copy to his friend le Veillard, and a little more in 1790. The original manuscript was long in the possession of Temple Franklin, who spent years rearranging the matter in it and making over into politer English his grandfather’s plain-spokenness. So long was the publication delayed that it was generally believed that Temple Franklin had sold all the papers to the British government; a French version, Mémoires de la vie privée (Paris, 1791), was retranslated into English twice in 1793 (London), and from one of these versions (by Robinson) still another French version was made (Paris, 1798). Temple Franklin, deciding to print, got from le Veillard the copy sent to him in 1788 (sending in return the original with autograph alterations and the final addition), and from the copy published (London, 1817) an edition supposed to be authentic and complete. The complete autograph of the biography, acquired by John Bigelow in 1867 from its French owners, upon collation with Temple Franklin’s edition showed that the latter contained 1200 emasculations and that it omitted entirely what had been written in 1790. Bigelow published the complete Autobiography with additions from Franklin’s correspondence and other writings in 1868; a second edition (3 vols., Philadelphia, 1888) was published under the title, The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Written by Himself.
In addition to the Autobiography see James Parton, Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (2 vols., New York, 1864); John T. Morse, Jr., Benjamin Franklin (Boston, 1889, in the American Statesmen series); J. B. McMaster, Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters (Boston, 1887, in American Men of Letters series); Paul L. Ford, The Many-Sided Franklin (New York, 1899) and Franklin Bibliography (Brooklyn, 1889); E. E. Hale and E. E. Hale, Jr., Franklin in France (2 vols., Boston, 1888); J. H. A. Doniol, Histoire de la participation de la France a l’établissement des États-Unis d’Amérique (Paris, 6 vols., 1886-1900); S. G. Fisher, The True Benjamin Franklin (Philadelphia, 1899); E. Robins, Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1898, in the American Men of Energy series); W. A. Wetzel, “Benjamin Franklin as an Economist,” No. 9, in series 13 of Johns Hopkins Studies in Historical and Political Science; and the prefaces and biographical matter in A. H. Smyth’s edition of the Works (New York, 10 vols., 1905-1907).
(R. We.)
[1] Keimer and his sister had come the year before from London, where he had learned his trade; both were ardent members of the fanatic band of “French prophets.” He proposed founding a new sect with the help of Franklin, who after leaving his shop ridiculed him for his long square beard and for keeping the seventh day. Keimer settled in the Barbadoes about 1730; and in 1731 began to publish at Bridgetown the semi-weekly Barbadoes Gazette. Selections from it called Caribbeana (1741) and A Brand Plucked from the Burning, Exemplified in the Unparalleled Case of Samuel Keimer (1718) are from his pen. He died about 1738.
[2] The meeting between Franklin, the type of the shrewd, cool provincial, and Braddock, a blustering, blundering, drinking British soldier, is dramatically portrayed by Thackeray in the 9th chapter of The Virginians.
[3] Many questions (about 20 of the first 25) were put by his friends to draw out what he wished to be known.
[4] The house is familiar from the drawing of it by Victor Hugo.
[5] Many of these portraits bore inscriptions, the most famous of which was Turgot’s line, “Eripuit fulmen coelo sceptrumque tyrannis.”