1901.] ROSENGARTEN — FRANKLIN 's BAGATELLES. 125 



terms were too high. The printers demurred, and nothing more 

 has been heard of the offer. * The reason is plain : The pro- 

 prietor, it seems, has found a bidder of a different description in 

 some emissary of Government, whose object is to withhold the 

 manuscripts from the world, not to benefit it by their publication, 

 and they were either passed into other hands or the person to 

 whom they were bequeathed received a remuneration for sup- 

 pressing them.' The Edinburgh Review (July, 1806) sifted, denied 

 and pronounced the accusation foolish. But it again crossed the 

 Atlantic, and was once more set afloat by the A?nerican Citizen, a 

 newspaper published in New York. ' William Temple Franklin,' 

 said the writer, ' without shame, without remorse, mean and 

 mercenary, has sold the sacred deposit committed to his care by 

 Dr. Franklin to the British Government. Franklin's works are 

 lost to the world forever.' Idle as the story was, it would not 

 down, but was next taken up by a Paris journal called The Argus, or 

 London Review (March 28, 1807), in which it is quite likely the 

 slander for the first time reached the eyes of Temple Franklin. He 

 promptly branded the charge as false, the editor accepted his state- 

 ment as final, the London Chronicle republished it, and through 

 this channel the denial made its way back to the United States, 

 where respectable journals reprinted it and respectable men went 

 on disbelieving it, till Franklin began to issue his volumes in 181 7. 

 Even then there were some who remained unconvinced, and as late 

 as 1829 it was reiterated by the publication of Jefferson's Anas. 

 Such delay in the case of most men would have been fatal to the 

 success of the book, but nothing could dim the popular interest in 

 Franklin the world over. Since his death in 1790 there had been 

 published twenty-eight editions of such of his writings as could 

 be collected, thirty-three editions of his life in English and thir- 

 teen in French, some twenty editions of Father Abraham' s Speech 

 and The Way to Wealth, besides innumerable reprints of his 

 famous tracts and pamphlets. The writings of no other American 

 were so scattered over Europe. Save Irving and Cooper, no other 

 American writer had yet approached him in fame, even in Eng- 

 land." 



Thus many of Franklin's own writings were preserved by 

 William Temple Franklin and printed in his editions of Franklin's 

 works, and after many years of oblivion, they were rescued by Mr. 

 Stevens and sold by him to the Government of the United States. 



PROC AMER. PHILOS. S0C. XL. 166. I. PRINTED JULY 23, 1901. 



