See title para... THE LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN; CONTAINING THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY, WITH NOTES AND A CONTINUATION. BY JARED SPARKS. "His country's friend, but more of human kind." BOSTON: WHITTEMORE, NILES, AND HALL. 1856. E 302 .F82 1856 25531 Entered according to the act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and forty, by HILLIARD, GRAY, AND COMPANY, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. ANDOVER: PRINTED BY W. F. DRAPER. PREFACE. THIS volume contains the Autobiography of Dr. FRANKLIN as far as he wrote it, with a Continuation to the end of his life. There is a curious circumstance connected with the first publication of the Autobiography. He began to write it in England as carly as the year 1771, and from time to time he made such additions as his leisure would permit. While he was in France, as Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States, he showed a copy of it to some of his friends there, and one of them, M. Le Veillard, translated it into French. Not long after Dr. Franklin's death, this French translation appeared from the Paris press. It was then retranslated, by some unknown but skilful hand, into English, and published in London; and this retranslation is the Life of Franklin, which has usually been circulated in Great Britain and the United States, and of which numerous editions have been printed. And even to this day it continues to be read, and to be quoted by respectable writers, as if it were the author's original work; although the fact of its being a translation is expressly stated in the Preface to the first edition, and although twenty-five years have elapsed |