Autobiography Author:Benjamin Franklin Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NOTES [The two numbers b boldfaced type preceding a note, refer to page and paragraph on tie page respectively.) i-i. The first part of the Autobiography i... more »s dated in the MS. "Twyford, at the Bishop of St. Asaph's, 1771." It was addressed to the author's son, William Franklin, at this time governor of New Jersey. How are the reasons which Franklin gives for writing the Autobiography typical of the author? See the section on "Franklin's Character" in the Introduction. 1-2. / should have no objection to a repetition of the same life. Franklin felt that life was worth living for its own sake, not that this world was a "vale of tears," intended simply as a preparation for a better. His early New England religious training would have inclined him to the latter view. i—2. The advantages authors have in a second edition. Note Franklin's fondness for comparisons drawn from his own business of printing and book-making. 2—i. Sinister. Literally, on the left hand, and so, according to the old belief, unlucky, inauspicious. Franklin seems to use the word as equivalent to unfortunate, or unpleasant. 2—2. This may be read or not as any one pleases. If Franklin's own statement in regard to this part of the Autobiography is true, he referred in this sentence only to the members of his own family. It is possible, however, that he thought, even from the first, that the narrative might pass into the hands of others. 2-3. The acknowledgment in this paragraph, though undoubtedly genuine, sounds a trifle formal, like the invocations once common at the opening of wills and other documents. Franklin nowhere speaks of Providence as directly controlling any particular events of his life, though such a manner of speaking was much more common when he wrote than now. 3-2. A franklin, or...« less