May 1, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



691 



who, after a long interval, published in 

 London and in Philadelphia six volumes of 

 Franklin's works. Of course, this repre- 

 sented but a small part of his papers. 

 Those used in the preparation of Temple 

 Franklin's edition are now the property of 

 the United States, which has never yet 

 printed a calendar of them. Temple Frank- 

 lin selected from his gi'andfather's papers 

 those that he thought suitable for publica- 

 tion, and left the rest of them in charge of 

 his friend, Charles Fox, to whom he be- 

 queathed them, and Charles Fox, in turn, 

 after a long lapse of years, presented them 

 to the American Philosophical Society, in 

 whose custody they have remained ever 

 since. 



They have been roughly classified, and 

 are bound in a rude and careless way. 

 Under the present efficient librarian, Dr. 

 Hays, a calendar is being made as fast as 

 the limited means at his disposal will per- 

 mit, and, when that is completed, it is hoped 

 that it will be printed as a useful guide 

 to the miscellaneous matter collected here. 

 Sparks, Hale, Ford, Parton, Fisher and 

 others who have written about Franklin 

 have used them, but even the most indus- 

 trious student may well be appalled at the 

 labor required to master all the contents of 

 these bulky volumes, representing Frank- 

 lin's long and many-sided activity. 



He kept copies of most of his own let- 

 ters and the originals addressed to him, 

 often indorsing on them the heads of his 

 replies. These volumes contain papers 

 from 1735 to 1790— the first forty-four 

 volumes, letters to him; the forty-fifth, 

 copies of his own letters; the forty-sixth, 

 his correspondence with his wife ; the forty- 

 seventh and forty-eighth, his own letters 

 from 1720 to 1791 ; the forty-ninth, his sci- 

 entific and political papers ; the fiftieth, his 

 other writings — notably his Bagatelles, 

 those short essays which had such a vogue, 

 and are still read ; the fifty-first, poetry and 



verse, his own and that of others, no doubt 

 selected by him for use in his publications ; 

 the fifty-second, the Georgia papers — he 

 was agent for that colony ; and the remain- 

 ing twenty volumes all the multifarious 

 correspondence, other than official, mostly 

 during his long stay in France, his various 

 public offices at home and abroad, his enor- 

 mous correspondence about appointments 

 from men of all nationalities, who wanted 

 to come to America, under his patronage, 

 to fight, to settle, to teach, to introduce 

 their inventions, for every imaginable and 

 unimaginable purpose. 



Both in England and France he kept 

 all notices of meetings, such as those of 

 the Royal Society, and other scientific 

 bodies of which he was a member, invita- 

 tions, visiting cards, notes, business cards, 

 etc., and at home he kept copies of wills, 

 deeds, powers of attorney, bonds, agree- 

 ments, bills and drafts, checks, bills of lad- 

 ing, public accounts and even certified 

 copies of acts of Congress and account 

 books, and, in addition. Temple Franklin 

 left eight volumes of letters to him from 

 1775 to 1790. 



In this mass of material his biographers 

 have found much that was of value, but 

 there remains almost untouched the inter- 

 esting correspondence of his friends in 

 England during the years before and those 

 of the War of Independence. There are ex- 

 amples of his own clever jeux d' esprit in 

 the 'Intended Speech for the Opening of 

 the Parliament in 1774, ' in which the King 

 himself is made to foretell the ' seven or ten 

 years' job' that his 'ministers have put 

 upon him to undertake the reduction of the 

 whole continent of North America to un- 

 conditional submission.' His friend Hart- 

 ley sent it to him in 1786, when the proph- 

 ecy had be^en fully realized. Again in 1778 

 he received a full report of the famous 

 dying speech of Chatham and of that of 

 Lord Shelbourne in his defense of the 



