And I will willingly receive the Petit Canon again which you propose to return."

To his grandson, who was twenty-one years of age at the time of his death, Franklin left "all the Types and Printing Materials which I now have in Philadelphia with the complete Letter Foundry, which, in the whole, I suppose to be worth near one thousand Pounds."

CHAP. X V.

The Private Press at Passy.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN sailed from Philadelphia on his mission as one of the three commissioners to France, October 27, 1776. He landed nearly two months later, proceeded immediately to Paris, and soon had established himself in the Hotel de Valentinois, in Passy, a village between Paris and Versailles, at which latter place the headquarters of the French government was located. The growth of Paris in the direction of Versailles in the years that have intervened has swallowed up the village of Passy, and the Hotel de Valentinois long since disappeared. A replica of Boyle's statue of Franklin in front of the postoffice on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia has been placed in that part of Paris which once was

Passy on the Rue Franklin, so named because of Franklin's residence there.

He used the residence for eight and a half years, and it comes within the scope of the present volume because during practically all of that time he operated in it a printing equipment for the production of leaflets, broadsides, etc., some of them for practical use, but mostly for the amusement of himself and his friends.

Franklin's biographers have had little to say about the press at Passy. William Temple Franklin dismisses it with the single sentence, "Notwithstanding Dr. Franklin's various and important occupations, he occasionally amused himself in composing and printing, by means of a small set of types and a press he had in his house, several of his light essays, bagatelles, or jeux d'esprit, written chiefly for the amusement of his intimate friends."

Edward Everett Hale in his two volumes, "Franklin in France," says: "Franklin soon established in his own house at Passy a little printing establishment, from which occasionally a tract or handbill was issued. From this press the pretended 'Independent Chronicle,' with an account of Indian scalping, was issued, and the little books published here are among the treasures most desired by the connoisseurs.'

Professor Smyth makes only one important

WHO WOULD REMOVE

то AMERICA.

MANY Perfons in Europe having directly or by

Letters, exprefs'd to the Writer of this, who is well acquainted with North-America, their Defire of tranfporting and establishing themselves in that Country; but who appear to him to have formed thro' Ignorance, miftaken Ideas & Expectations of what is to be obtained there; he thinks it may be ufeful, and prevent inconvenient, expenfive & fruitlefs Removals and Voyages of improper Perfons, if he gives fome clearer & truer Notions of that Part of the World than appear to have hitherto prevailed.

He finds it is imagined by Numbers that the Inhabitants of North-America are rich, capable of rewarding, and difpos'd to reward all forts of Ingenuity; that they are at the fame time ignorant of all the Sciences; & confequently that ftrangers poffeffing Talents in the Belles-Letters, fine Arts, &c. must be highly efteemed, and fo well paid as to become eafily rich themfelves; that there are alfo abundance of profitable Offices to be difpofed of,

A

First page of a twelve-page pamphlet printed at Passy. Exact size.

From "Franklin and His Press at Passy."

reference to the press in Passy: "Sometimes they were printed upon his private press at Passy, in limited editions of perhaps a dozen or fifteen copies. Nearly all are lost. The fictitious 'Supplement' exists in the Library of Congress and the Library of the American Philosophical Society, and the latter collection has also the printed original of 'La Belle et la Mauvaise Jambe' (Passy, 1779). But the other fugitive leaves have disappeared."

It remained for the late Luther S. Livingston in his beautiful volume, "Franklin and His Press at Passy," privately published by the Grolier Club in 1914, to present a nearly complete account of the printing done at the Hotel de Valentinois.

Livingston describes fifteen "bagatelles," fourteen of which, each a separately printed piece, are bound together in a little volume in the Franklin collection of William Smith Mason. He says, "three of these are sixteen pages each, one is of twelve pages, two of eight pages, one of six pages, one of four pages, and six of two pages (or a single leaf) each. The fifteenth is a single sheet printed on one side only, among the Franklin papers in the Library of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.

William Temple Franklin was too much of a dandy to think of giving his time and attention to such trivial matters as setting type and working

a press. A younger grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, was of a different mold. It was the grandfather's intention to bring the younger boy up in a way that would fit him for public business, but evidently reflection upon his own personal experience of the limited financial return to be derived from such a career caused him to change his mind, for we find him writing to the boy's father that he had determined to teach him a trade, that "he may have fomething to depend on, and not be oblig'd to ask Favours or Offices of anybody." Franklin further said, "he has already begun to learn the business from Mafters who come to my House, and is very intelligent in working and quick in learning."

This reference is confirmed by an entry in Benjamin Franklin Bache's diary to the effect that a "mafter founder" had come to Passy to teach him to cast printing types and that the teacher was to remain all winter. A later entry says that M. Didot, whom he describes as "the best printer of this age and even the best that has ever been seen," had consented to take him into his house for some time in order to teach him his art. The statement is made that in the house is combined "engraving, the forge, the foundry, and the printing office." A further reference in the diary, dated April 5, 1785, to M. Didot's establishment, is to the effect. that "the meals are frugal."