FRANKLIN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Franklin began his autobiography while he was visiting the bishop of Saint Asaph at Twyford in 1771. This first instalment carried the ac count from 1706, the date of Franklin's birth, to 1731. It was intended solely for his own posterity, and contains what he called • several little family anecdotes of no importance to others,' but the manuscript proved so interest ing to some of his friends that he was per suaded, when the Revolution had ended and he again found a little leisure, to continue his task for the sake of the public. At Passy in 1784 he wrote the engaging pages which tell of his early religious speculations and his pursuit of moral perfection. In 1788, once more at home in Philadelphia, he brought his history from 1731 to 1757, and the next year, the year of his death, added a brief section which breaks off, however, without going beyond his initial trials as agent of the Pennsylvania as sembly. Part I was issued in French in 1791; Part II, in French in 1798; Part III, in English in 1817 (with I and II) ; Part IV, in French in 1828. The whole book, as Franklin wrote it, was first published in 1868 by John Bigelow, whose text and notes are indispensable.
Franklin was already a cosmopolite, a great diplomat and statesman, and an honored citizen of the world, when he thus related his small beginnings, but he assumed no posture in pre senting himself as he had been when he was only a printer and provincial politician. Nothing can exceed the candor with which he tells of his struggles for a livelihood unless it be the lack of modesty with which he recounts his successes. He is, though he makes no claim
to be heroic, actually the hero, in the 'Autobi ography,' of one of the few universally interest ing plots — that in which a man wins his way unaided. There is something essentially dra matic in Franklin's steady progress to wealth and influence; he had the golden touch which turns every material thing to some human ad vantage. And yet the book has no romantic coloring. The °family anecdotes" of Part I are neither intimate nor sentimental; the later comments upon style, politics, morals and re ligion take no higher tone than that of good sense ; his noble achievements as scientist and philanthropist are narrated as quietly as the purchase of his first silver spoon. In part, of course, this classic simplicity is due to the fact that he wrote as a richly experienced man, in comparably bland, smooth-tempered, prudent and just; but it is due even more largely to the fact that Franklin was above all the citizen, that he lived most truly when his particular life was most involved in civil affairs. His language is the plain speech of the man who has no private eccentricities of thought or feel ing; he instinctively chooses to tell about him self what he knows• from his wide knowledge of the world that the world will want to know. The 'Autobiography) is not only one of the greatest of autobiographies; it is one of the most truly republican books ever written.