The Works of Benjamin Franklin
Volume 1
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 1
Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck
86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9
Deutschland
ISBN: 9783849653989
www.jazzybee-verlag.de
CONTENTS:
PREFACE
THE addition of another to the already numerous collections of Franklin’s works requires some explanation.
Though a voluminous writer and one of the great masters of English expression, Franklin wrote habitually with a single eye to immediate practical results. He never posed for posterity. Of all the writings to which he mainly owes his present fame, it would be difficult to name one which he gave to the press himself or of which he saw the proofs. Yet he never wrote a dull line nor many which a century of time has robbed of their interest or value. Whatever he wrote seems to have been conceived upon a scale which embraced the whole human race as well as the individual or class to whom it was specifically addressed, the one evidence of true greatness which never deceives nor misleads. If he wrote to his wife, it was more or less a letter from every husband to his wife; if to his daughter, it was a letter that any daughter would be pleased to receive from her father; if to a philosopher or a statesman, there was always that in the manner and the matter of it which time cannot stale, and which will be read by every statesman and philosopher with the sort of interest they would have felt had it been addressed personally to them.
In proportion to Franklin’s apparent indifference to posthumous fame, has been the zeal with which the products of his pen have been hunted down and gathered in from all the corners of the earth and new precautions taken to guard them from the depredations of time.
The first collection made of any of Franklin’s writings we owe to his faithful and accomplished friend, Peter Collinson. Ref. 002 It consisted of letters he had received from Franklin from time to time on electricity, and made only a moderate-sized pamphlet, and was sold for half a crown. Ref. 003 It was enlarged in 1752 by the addition of another communication on the same subject, and again in 1754, and, by subsequent additions of letters and papers on various philosophical subjects it amounted in 1766 to a quarto volume of five hundred pages. The first edition of these papers was given to the public without the author’s knowledge, the editor assigning as his excuse for the liberty he had taken, their extreme importance. They went through at least a half dozen editions before they began to be reprinted in more comprehensive collections, and were promptly translated into the Latin, Italian, French, and German languages.
In 1779 a collection of Franklin’s writings, which, with a very few exceptions, were not included in Collinson’s collection, was published under the editorial supervision of Mr. Benjamin Vaughan, Ref. 004 who for a period of more than thirty years, and until separated by death, was one of Franklin’s most devoted friends and valued correspondents.
In the preface to this edition Mr. Vaughan says:
The times appear not ripe enough for the editor to give expression to the affection, gratitude, and veneration he bears to a writer he has so intimately studied: nor is it wanting to the author; as history lies in wait for him, and the judgment of mankind balances already in his favor. The editor only wishes that other readers may reap that improvement from his productions which he conceives they have rendered to himself. Yet perhaps he may be excused for stating one opinion. He conceives that no man ever made larger or bolder guesses than Dr. Franklin from like materials in politics and philosophy, which, after the scrutiny of events and fact, have been more completely verified. Can Englishmen read these things and not sigh at recollecting that the country which could produce their author was once without controversy their own! Yet he who praises Dr. Franklin for mere ability, praises him for that quality of his mind which stands lowest in his own esteem. Reader, whoever you are and how much soever you think you hate him, know that this great man loves you enough to wish to do you good. His “country’s friend, but more of human kind.”
Dr. Franklin died on the 17th of April, 1790. In his will, after disposing of portions of his library, he adds:
The rest, residue, and remainder of all my books and manuscripts I do give to my grandson, William Temple Franklin.
A few months after his grandfather’s decease, William Temple Franklin left the United States for London with all of his precious heritage that he had been able to reduce to possession, intending, as he assured his correspondents, at once to prepare and publish a complete and final edition of his grandfather’s writings. Some twenty-six years, however, were permitted to elapse before this intention was executed. Meantime, and in the year 1793, the Messrs. Robinson, of London, published “The Works of Franklin” in two small volumes. Ref. 005 In this collection, what purported to be Franklin’s autobiography, translated from a French version which appeared in Paris in 1791, made its first appearance in an English dress. It only gave Franklin’s autobiography down to 1731, with Dr. Stuber’s continuation, which had already appeared in the Columbian Magazine of Philadelphia. The second volume of this edition consisted mainly of essays written after the publication of Mr. Vaughan. “In the present volumes,” says the preface, “will be found all the different collections we have enumerated, together with the various papers of the same author that have been published in separate pamphlets, inserted in foreign collections of his works or in the transactions of our own or of foreign philosophical societies, or in our own or foreign newspapers or magazines, as discoverable by the editor, who has been assisted in the research by a gentleman in America.”
A German edition of his works, substantially a translation of the preceding, was published at Weimar the year following. Ref. 006
In 1799 a French collection of some of Franklin’s writings was published in Paris, translated from the English, by one J. Castéra. Ref. 007 It is a curious circumstance that the copy of the memoirs given in this collection of Castéra was translated from an English edition, which was itself only a translation from the first French translation, thus removed by three translations from the original. This edition contained some new pieces which had not appeared in the English collections, and a second fragment of the memoirs. “I have yet to regret,” says M. Castéra in his preface, “not having had all these memoirs, which go, it is said, to 1757.” Confounding Dr. Franklin’s grandson,