If we hear less of Strahan, it must yet be conceded that, although no such remarkable genius as Franklin, he was a man of mark and integrity, whose success as a bookseller and publisher won him a place in Parliament. That he was capable of warm and enduring friendship, however, becomes at once apparent in these genial letters, written by the American printer to his brother print across the seas. He is generally considered to have been one in whom excess of intellectual activity and Yankee shrewdness overbalanced the exercise of his emotional nature. One cannot rise from a perusal of these documents without entertaining a higher regard for Benjamin Franklin as a man of feeling. This friendship of over forty years, sprung from a mere casual business transaction, ripened into a sincere respect and a warm affection on both sides, and seems to have called into action the best qualities of Franklin’s character. As both were printers and booksellers, these relics of Franklin give us very interesting glimpses at the condition of letters and the practice of the art of printing in the American Plantations at that period. What adds to the value and interest of this “find” is the fact that these letters represent a very large portion of the correspondence of Franklin with his friend William Strahan. They were shown immediately after that to an American gentleman, who purchased them and brought them to this country last summer.
Strahan, and for some unexplained reason were finally placed in the hands of a London bookseller, for sale. These letters were long kept in the family of Mr. Naturally, the supply is drawing near its final limit there was indeed reason to conclude that this limit had already been reached when a group of letters, in Franklin’s own hand, recently came to light in England. But voluminous as are the epistolary remains of Franklin, they are yet of such value and importance that his countrymen are eve ready to welcome additions to these inestimable biographical archives, whereby to increase our knowledge of one of the most extraordinary men America has produced. This is doubtless due in part to his methodical habits and thorough mastery of his powers, and in part, most likely, to the fact that during his long and busy career he followed with success a number of entirely distinct pursuits, each of which brought him into relations with a separate class of the world’s workers.
Among great representative Americans, no one has left behind him so voluminous a correspondence as Benjamin Franklin. It is therefore a matter of growing importance to preserve the correspondence of the men of past ages, and to welcome heartily every newly discovered addition to a class of historic and intellectual wealth that erelong will reach the limit of accretion. “We correspond no more we only telegraph.”
Johnson said, “We travel no more we only arrive at places.” Thus we of the nineteenth century may say in turn. The exigencies of the rapid life of this century are rendering these sources of historic record more and more rare. But when through his correspondence we obtain unpremeditated glimpses of his heart or the development of his career, we reach a mine that yields profit not only of interest, but sometimes of incalculable historic value. When a well-known character himself relates the story of his life, the interest is greatly increased.
There is no department of literature more fascinating to the general reader than biography.