The Select Works of Benjamin Franklin: Including His Autobiography; With Notes and a Memoir (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Select Works of Benjamin Franklin: Including His Autobiography; With Notes and a Memoir

Franklin's personal celebrity has so eclipsed his liter ary fame, that justice has hardly been done to him as a writer and an essayist; and yet he has himself confessed that he was indebted mainly to his pen for his advancement in public life. He was singularly indifi'erent, however, to any reputation or profit that might accrue from his writ ings, and left it to his friends to collect and republish them as they might please. The consequences of this indifference are'manifest even to the present time, in the absence of any cheap popular edition of his select works. He has been posthumously fortunate, however, in having so able an editor as Mr. Sparks, whose ten volumes of the Works of Franklin, with a memoir and notes, leave nothing to be desired in the way of an ample and accurate collection.

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