Pretty much all of importance that we know of Franklin we gather from his private cor respondence. His contemporaries wrote or at least printed very little about him ; scarcely one of the multitude whose names he embalmed in his 'Autobiography' ever printed a line about him. All that we know of the later half of his life not covered by his autobiography, we owe almost exclusively to his private and offi cial correspondence. Though reckoning among his warm friends and correspondents such men as David Hume, Dr. Joseph Priestly, Dr. Price, Lord Kames, Lord Chatham, Dr. Fothergill, Peter Collinson, Edmund Burke, the bishop of Saint Asaph and his gifted daughters, Voltaire, the habitués of the Helvetius salon, the Mar quis de Segus, the Count de Vergennes, his near neighbors De Chaumont and Le Veillard the moire of Passy,— all that we learn of his achievements, of his conversation, of his daily life, from these or many other associates of only less prominence in the Old World, might be written on a single foolscap sheet. Nor are we under much greater obligations to his American friends. It is to his own letters (and except his 'Autobiography," he can hardly be said to have written anything in any other than the epistolary form; and that was written in the form of a letter to his son William, and most of it only began to be published a quarter of a century after his death), that we must turn to learn how full of interest and importance to mankind was this last half-century of his life. Beyond keeping copies of his correspondence, which his official character made a duty as well as a necessity, he appears to have taken no precautions to insure the posthumous fame to which his correspondence during that period was destined to contribute so much. Hence, all the biographies — and they are numberless owe almost their entire interest and value to his own pen. All,. so far as they are biographies, are autobiographies; and for that reason it may be fairly said that all of them are interesting.
It is also quite remarkable that though Franklin's life was a continuous warfare, he had no personal enemies. His extraordinary and even intimate experience of every phase of hu man life, from the very lowest to the very high est, had made him so tolerant that he regarded differences of opinions and of habits much as he regarded the changes of the weather,— as good or bad for his purposes, but which, though he might sometimes deplore, he had no right to quarrel with or assume personal responsibility for. Hence he never said or did things per sonally offensive. The causes that he repre sented had enemies, for he was all his life a reformer. All men who are good for any-thing have such enemies. have, as you observe,* wrote Franklin to John Jay the year that he retired from the French mission, "some enemies in England, but they are my enemies as an American ; I have also two or three in America who -are my enemies as a minister; but I thank God there are not in the whole world any who are my enemies as a man; for by His grace, through a long life I have been enabled so to conduct myself that there does not exist a human being who can justly say, 'Ben Frank lin has wronged mei This, my friend, is in old age a comfortable reflection. You, too, have or may have your enemies; but let not that ren der you unhappy. If you make a right use of
them, they will do you more good than harm. They point out to us our faults; they put us upon our guard and help us to live more cor rectly." Franklin's place in literature as a writer has not been generally appreciated, probably be cause with him writing was only a means, never an end, and his ends always dwarfed his means, however effective. He wrote to persuade others, never to parade his literary skill. He never wrote a dull line, and was never nimious. The longest production of his pen was his autobiog raphy, written during the closing years of his life. Nearly all that he wrote besides was in the form of letters, which would hardly average three octavo pages in length. And yet what ever the subject he touched upon, he never left the impression of incompleteness or of in conclusiveness. Of him may be said, perhaps with as much propriety as of any other man, that he never said a word too soon, nor a word too late, nor a word too much.
The Doric simplicity of his style; his incom parable facility of condensing a great principle into an apologue or an anecdote, many of which, as he applied them, have become the folk-lore of all nations; his habitual moderation of state ment, his aversion to exaggeration, his inflexible logic, and his perfect truthfulness,— made him one of the most persuasive men of his time, and his writings a model which no one can study without profit. A judicious selection from Franklin's writings should constitute a part of the curriculum of every college and high school that aspires to cultivate in its pupils a pure style and correct literary taste.
There was one incident in Franklin's life, which though more frequently referred to in terms of reproach than any other, will probably count for more in his favor in the Great Assize than any other of his whole life. While yet in his teens he became a father before he was a husband. He never did what men of the loft iest moral pretensions not unfrequently do,— shirk as far as possible any personal responsi bility for his indiscretion. On the contrary, he took the fruit of it to his home; gave him the best education the schools of the country then afforded. When he went abroad, this son accompanied him, was presented as his son wherever he went, was presented in all the great houses in which he himself was received; he entered him at the Inns of Court, and in due time had him admitted to the English bar; made him his private secretary, and at an early age caused him to be appointed by the Crown governor of New Jersey. The father not only did everything to repair the wrong he had done his son, but at a time when he was at the zenith of his fame and official importance, pub licly proclaimed it as one of the great errors of his life. The world has always abounded with bastards, but with the exception of crowned heads claiming to hold their sceptres by divine right, and therefore beyond the reach of popular criticism or reproach, it would be difficult to name another parent of his generation of any thing like corresponding eminence with Frank lin, who had the courage and the magnanimity to expiate such a wrong to his offspring so fully and effectively.