text runs thus:
I perused your tracts with pleasure. I see you inherit all the various learning of your famous ancestors Cotton and Increase Mather, both of whom I remember. The father Increase, I once when a boy heard preach at the Old South for Mr. Pemberton.
The words in italics are omitted in Sparks, and “Meeting” is inserted after “Old South.”
Though the errors, of which he has here given a specimen, are of a character which no editor would justify, the editor of the edition now submitted to the public will feel that he is to be congratulated if he shall have no more nor graver to apologize for than he has detected in the monumental work of Dr. Sparks.
The Autobiography is here printed, for the first time in any collected edition of his works, from the original manuscript and without mutilation. Most of the versions of this delightful work are reprints of a translation from the French, in which language it happened first to be given to the world. It was not discovered until a few years ago, when the editor was fortunate enough to become possessed of the original manuscript, that the first edition, which purported to be made from the original manuscript, and was published in 1816, under the nominal editorship of Dr. Franklin’s grandson, had in fact been made from a copy, and from a copy too that was incomplete, and which had been further mutilated to suit the political taste of the time in England, and, it is presumed, the personal exigencies of the editor. Upon a careful collation of the edition of 1816 with the autograph manuscript, it was discovered that over 1200 alterations of the text had been made, and what was more remarkable, that some of the later pages of this masterpiece of biography had been omitted altogether. It was the text of this incomplete London reprint which Dr. Sparks followed in his edition, and which has been the English text in popular use throughout the world.
To the Pennsylvania Historical Society the editor is indebted for several important papers, including Franklin’s accounts, both domestic and official, during his residence in Paris, which time has invested with a curious interest.
To the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia he is happy to acknowledge his obligations also for several interesting letters, but especially for one from the pen of Madame Helvetius, written to Franklin after his return to the United States. He doubts if there is any letter of that distinguished lady in print, as her early education would appear, from this specimen of her correspondence, to have been more sadly neglected even than Mrs. Franklin’s.
Irrespective of the Autobiography, restorations and corrections of the text taken from the Sparks edition, the reader will find in this collection between three hundred and fifty and four hundred letters and documents which have never appeared in any previous collection of Franklin’s writings, and I think I may add everything hitherto unpublished from Franklin’s pen of any importance that still survives him.
In previous collections, Franklin’s writings have been arranged more or less according to subjects. In this edition they will be arranged chronologically. Such a departure from the example of his predecessors requires from the editor a word of explanation. Much the larger part of Franklin’s writings were in the form of communications addressed to the public, or to some individual, and were essentially the offspring of the day or hour in which they were begotten. To be fully understood and appreciated they should be read in chronological order and by the light of current events, for every one of them was as much the product of its time and circumstances as the fruits and flowers of our gardens are of their respective seasons. Nor is this less true of his philosophic than of his literary and miscellaneous papers. Franklin was not a philosopher by profession. He never wrote a treatise on any science, nor ever attempted to define the ascertained limits of any department of human knowledge. He made experiments as opportunity offered, and if he discovered any thing which he thought of value, it was his practice to communicate it in the form of a letter to some scientific friend like Collinson and Priestley in England and Le Roy and Dalibard in France. His scientific correspondence of this kind covers a period of more than fifty years. His friend Collinson, without consulting him, and before he had become at all famous published the letters which he received on electricity by themselves, and it has suited the convenience of subsequent editors to follow his example. The editor has thought it best to give these, with all his other letters and papers, in the order of time in which they came from his pen.
In adopting this arrangement, these volumes become not merely the repository of Franklin’s best thought and work, but they constitute his autobiography. We know but little of Franklin except from himself, but he did little of importance which he had not occasion at some time or other to describe. These volumes, therefore, will give the most complete record of his life and of the growth of his influence and usefulness from year to year that it is now possible to produce.
The notes and editorial matter in the following pages will be limited strictly to illustrations of the text. Very few will occur which are not from the pen of the editor, and for all such as are not assigned to some other person, he is responsible.
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
FRANKLIN began his Autobiography, the longest of his writings, during his residence in England as agent of the colonies, in the year 1771. He was at the time on a visit to the family of Dr. Jonathan Shipley, the bishop of St. Asaph, with whom he was on terms of peculiar and cordial intimacy. The part then written covers the period from his birth, in 1706, to his marriage, in 1730. It was executed to this point, he informs us, for the gratification of his own family. It afterwards was continued, at the solicitation of some of his friends, with the expectation that it would ultimately be given to the public. The second part, which is comparatively brief, was written at his residence in Passy, while Minister to France. The third part was begun in August, 1788, after his return to his home in Philadelphia, and brings the narrative down to 1757. This part ends the autobiography so far as it was printed up to 1867, when the first edition ever printed from the original manuscript was given to the public, and which contained a fourth part, consisting of a few pages written in 1789. Franklin died in the spring of the following year, and by his will left most of his papers and manuscripts, this autobiography among them, to his grandson, William Temple Franklin, who sailed for England a few months after, with the intention, as he then proclaimed, of publishing it in a collection of his grandfather’s works. This purpose was not destined to be realized, however, until after an interval of twenty-seven or eight years. Ref. 009 Meantime, and in the year following Franklin’s death, a French version of the first portion of the autobiography was published in Paris. From this point the history of this manuscript is a succession of surprises, which has scarce any parallel in ancient or modern bibliography, with the possible exception of the writings of Aristotle and the Table Talk of Martin Luther. Where the text was obtained, from which this translation was made, and by whom it was made, are secrets which the grave of time has not yet given up. Ref. 010 The Nouvelle Biographie Générale, Paris, 1858, attributes the translation to Dr. Jacques Gibelin, who, to the professions of physician and naturalist, added that of a translator from the English. Whether he or some one else made the translation is of very little consequence now. It would, however, be a satisfaction to know how he obtained the text from which he translated. The first sentence in his Preface practically concedes that it was obtained by some method which he does not think it worth his while to reveal to the public.
“I shall not enter,” he says, “into a detail of little importance to my readers—on the manner in which the original manuscript of these memoirs, which is in English, fell into my hands. From the moment I had run over it, it appeared to me to be so interesting that I do not hesitate to allow myself the pleasure of putting it into French.”
It appears by Franklin’s correspondence that copies of this first part of his autobiography were sent to two or three of his friends in Europe prior to his beginning work on the second part. It is probable—in fact, it hardly admits of a doubt, that the first French version
