1901.] ROSENGARTEN — FRANKLIN'S BAGATELLES. 129 



satire Franklin makes the Count de Schaumburg (his pseudonym 

 for the hereditary Prince of Hesse) write to Baron HohendorfT, 

 commanding the Hessian troops in America, and that among the 

 letters addressed to Franklin, and preserved in the large collection 

 of his papers in the Philosophical Society, is one dated Feb- 

 ruary 25, 1778 (No. 130, Vol. 8), from C. M. Hillegas, at York 

 Town, introducing Baron de HoltzendorfT, and later one from 

 Baron HoltzendorfT, dated Paris, September 11, 1779, asking for 

 an interview. 



It is a good answer to the charge that Franklin was careless 

 as to his papers, that he preserved apparently everything addressed 

 to him and everybody wrote to him. This collection is now 

 being carefully indexed, so that hereafter there may be still more 

 thorough knowledge of Franklin's busy life. 



Stevens, in his pamphlet on his collection sold to the United 

 States Government, says that Franklin's essays were printed in a 

 pirated edition by Buisson in Paris in 1791, and in London in 

 1 793 by Parsons in one volume, and by Robinson in two, both 

 from the French of Buisson, which was itself a translation from 

 Franklin's originals. It is hard to find out what became of these. 

 Were they used by Castera in his edition of Franklin's writings, 

 published by Buisson in Paris in 1797, or did they share the fate 

 of the originals used, it is charged, by William Temple Franklin 

 as " printer's copy" for his edition, published in London in 

 181 7, in an 8vo edition in six volumes, and a quarto edition in 

 three volumes, and by Duane in Philadelphia in 18 18 in six 

 volumes 8vo ? Both Temple Franklin and Duane must have had 

 access to the originals, and yet what survived of the Temple 

 Franklin collection, which passed through Stevens to the library 

 of the State Department at Washington, contains only two manu- 

 script ''Bagatelles," although Stevens, in his pamphlet descrip- 

 tion, says his collection contains original manuscripts by Franklin, 

 his essays, miscellaneous writings, squibs, bagatelles, etc.; but 

 Stevens was mistaken in supposing that his was a unique copy of 

 the pretended supplement to the Boston Chronicle, and he ignored 

 or was ignorant of the copies of Franklin's "Bagatelles" in New 

 York and Philadelphia. Still it remains a mystery yet unsolved as 

 to what became of most of the originals, or. of the few copies 

 printed on Franklin's Passy press. Even if only enough, ten or a 

 dozen, were all that he printed for his friends there, it seems un- 



