we are already possessed of old ones sufficiently expressive, I confess must be generally wrong, as it tends to change the language; yet, at the same time, I cannot but wish the usage of our tongue permitted making new words, when we want them, by composition of old ones whose meanings are already well understood. The German allows of it, and it is a common practice with their writers. Many of our present English words were originally so made; and many of the Latin words. In point of clearness, such compound words would have the advantage of any we can borrow from the ancient or from foreign languages. For instance, the word inaccessible, though long in use among us, is not yet, I dare say, so universally understood by our people, as the word uncomeatable would immediately be, which we are not allowed to write. But I hope with you, that we shall always in America make the best English of this Island our standard, and I believe it will be so. I assure you it often gives me pleasure to reflect, how greatly the audience (if I may so term it) of a good English writer will, in another century or two, be increased by the increase of English people in our colonies.

My son presents his respects with mine to you and Dr. Monro. We received your printed circular letter to the members of the Society,* and purpose some time next winter to send each of us a little philosophical essay. With the greatest esteem, I am, dear Sir, your most obedient and most humble serB. FRANKLIN.

vant,

A Philosophical Society lately established at Edinburgh.

TO JOHN BASKERVILLE.

*

On the Use of his Printing Types.

DEAR SIR,

Craven Street 1760.

Let me give you a pleasant instance of the prejudice some have entertained against your work. Soon after I returned, discoursing with a gentleman concerning the artists of Birmingham, he said you would be a means of blinding all the readers in the nation; for the strokes of your letters, being too thin and narrow, hurt the eye, and he could never read a line of them without pain. "I thought," said I, "you were going to complain of the gloss of the paper, which some object to." "No, no," said he, "I have heard that mentioned, but it is not that; it is in the form

John Baskerville, a celebrated printer, was born at Wolverley, in the county of Worcester, in the year 1706. He was heir to a small paternal estate, but he occupied himself for several years in teaching a school at Birmingham. Possessing a taste for painting, he entered into a lucrative branch of japanning, in which business he continued for life, and acquired by it a fortune, which made him independent. In the year 1750 he turned his thoughts towards an improvement in type-founding and printing. Several years were spent before he could produce such types as pleased him, and he expended six hundred pounds in the process. The first work he printed was a quarto edition of Virgil, in the year 1756. This was followed at different dates by a folio Bible, The Book of Common Prayer, Newton's edition of Milton, Juvenal and Persius, Horace, Addison's Works, and several of the other Latin classics and English authors. These publications were unsurpassed in their typographical beauty, and they place Baskerville among the most eminent of those, who have contributed to the improvement of the art of printing. The profits of the undertaking, however, were not in proportion to the enterprise and expense attending it; as will be seen by the following extract from a letter, which he wrote to Dr. Franklin, dated Birmingham, September 7th, 1767. Dr. Franklin was at that time on a visit to Paris.

"After having obtained the reputation of excelling in the most useful art known to mankind, of which I have your testimony, is it not

and cut of the letters themselves; they have not that height and thickness of the stroke, which make the common printing so much the more comfortable to the eye." You see this gentleman was a connoisseur. In vain I endeavoured to support your character against the charge; he knew what he felt, and could see the reason of it, and several other gentlemen among his friends had made the same observation, &c.

Yesterday he called to visit me, when, mischievously bent to try his judgment, I stepped into my closet, tore off the top of Mr. Caslon's specimen, and produced it to him as yours, brought with me from Birmingham; saying, I had been examining it, since he spoke to me, and could not for my life perceive the disproportion he mentioned, desiring him to point it out to me. He readily undertook it, and went over the several founts, showing me everywhere what he

to the last degree provoking, that I cannot get even bread by it? I must starve, had I no other dependence. I have offered the London booksellers to print for them within five per cent as low as their common currency, but cannot get from them a single job. I offered my whole apparatus of letter-founding, printing, &c. to the Court of France by the Duke de Nivernois, when he was ambassador here, for eight thousand pounds, which was politely refused as being too large a sum. Mr. Godfroy, who may be heard of at Mr. Sayde's, optician to the King, lately told our good friend Mr. Boulton, that France wished to be possessed of my printing, &c., on moderate terms, in which I heartily join. "The intention of this is, therefore, to beg the favor of you to propose and recommend this affair, as Mr. Godfroy may point out the way. I want only to set on foot a treaty; if they will not come to my terms, I may possibly come to theirs. Suppose we reduce the price to six thousand pounds. Louis the Fourteenth would have given three times that sum, or Czar Peter. Let the reason of my parting with it be, the death of my son and intended successor, and, having acquired a moderate fortune, I wish to consult my ease in the afternoon of life, as I am now turned of sixty."

The French government did not accept the offer. Baskerville died on the 8th of January, 1775. In the year 1779, his types were purchased by a literary Society in Paris for £3700, and were employed in printing Beaumarchais's edition of Voltaire.

thought instances of that disproportion; and declared, that he could not then read the specimen, without feeling very strongly the pain he had mentioned to me. I spared him that time the confusion of being told, that these were the types he had been reading all his life, with so much ease to his eyes; the types his adored Newton is printed with, on which he has pored not a little; nay, the very types his own book is printed with, (for he is himself an author,) and yet never discovered this painful disproportion in them, till he thought they were yours. I am, &c.

B. FRANKLIN.

TO MRS. DEBORAH FRANKLIN.

MY DEAR CHILD,

London, 1760.

Yesterday I received your letter of February 10th, in which you mention that it was some months since you heard from me. During my journey I wrote several times to you, particularly from Liverpool and Glasgow, and since my return some very long letters, that might have been with you before your last to me; but I suppose the severe winter on your coast, among other delays, has kept the vessels out. One packet, Bonnel, was blown quite back to England.

I am sorry for the death of your black boy, as you seem to have had a regard for him. You must have suffered a good deal in the fatigue of nursing him in such a distemper. F has wrote me a very idle letter, desiring me not to furnish the woman, pretending to be his wife, with any thing on his account, and says the letters she shows are a forgery.*

But

In a previous letter to Mrs. Franklin, dated August 6th, 1759, he

I have one she left with me, in which he acknowledges her to be his wife, and the children his, and I am sure it is his handwriting by comparing it with this he has now wrote to me and a former one. So he must be a very bad man, and I am glad I never knew him. She was sick and perishing with her children in the beginning of the winter, and has had of me in all about four guineas. What is become of her now, I know not. She seemed a very helpless body, and I found her in some falsehoods that disgusted me; but I pitied the poor children, the more as they were descended though remotely from our good old friends, whom you remember.

I have now the pleasure to acquaint you, that our business draws near a conclusion, and that in less than a month we shall have a hearing, after which I shall be able to fix a time for my return.* My love to all, from, dear Debby, your affectionate husband, B. FRANKLIN.

said; "There is a person, who represents herself to be the wife of Mr. H. F, watchmaker, of Philadelphia. She tells me a very lame story of her husband's sending her over before him, with two small children, to prepare a place for him, he intending to come here to settle. I cannot understand it; but, as the woman is in distress, and ready to starve with her children for want of necessaries, I have, out of regard for my townsman, furnished her with a little money. Pray mention it privately to him, that I may know whether I ought to advance any more on his account."

In a postscript to the same letter he says; "When you get Mr. Dunlap to direct your letters, desire him not to put the title Honorable before my name, but to direct plainly and simply to B. Franklin, Esq., in Craven Street, London."

* The business was not concluded so soon as he anticipated. The hearing came on, but a strong opposition was made by the Proprietors' counsel against the Pennsylvania claims. Thomas Penn, in a letter to Governor Hamilton, dated June 6th, 1760, says, "Since I wrote to you, we have, on Tuesday last, finished our opposition to the acts of Assembly at the Board of Trade; and we think the arguments, which were well enforced by our counsel, had such an effect on the Lords, as to induce them to repeal most of the laws. From a conversation