FRANCKLIN, THOMAS, D.D., was born at London in 1721. Being the son of a well-known printer, Richard Francklin, who, for his paper ' The Craftsman,' and other services to Walpole's enemies, expected or had been promised a provision in the church for hia son, he was educated at Westminster School, and thence sent to Cambridge, where he became a Fellow of Trinity College. Afterwards, while an usher in Westminster School, he gained some reputation by translations of Phalaris'a 'Epistles,' and of Cicero's 'De Natura Deorum ;' and in 1750, after a contest, he was chosen Greek professor in the University of Cambridge, an appointment to which he appears to have done as little credit by the regularity of his deportment as by his literary exertions. After having held lectureships in London, he was presented by his college in 1758 to the livings of Ware and Thundrich en Hert fordshire. Although however several sermons of his were published during his life, and three volumes of them after his death, he was always chiefly employed in London in literary labours and literary quarrels. Among his disputes, that with Arthur Murphy was the
most noted. Ile died in Loudon on the 15th of March 1784. Ilia writings were numerous and varied, but of little value. Among his original works were a poem called ' Translation,' 1753; a periodical called 'The Centinel,' intended as a continuation of ' The World,' but dropped at the twenty-seventh number; contributions to Smollett's 'Critical Review; and one or two indifferent playa. Ili, translations were voluminous. Several were of tragedies from the French of Voltaire and La Ilarpe, in the presenting of which to the stage the sources borrowed from were not always acknowledged. But the only translations of Franeklin that are now remembered by any one are his ' Sophoelos,' 2 vols. 4to, 1759; and 'Lucian,' 2 vols. 4to, 1780.