ngs and measures would
secure attention to your Biography, and Art of Virtue; and your
Biography and Art of Virtue, in return, would secure attention to them.
This is an advantage attendant upon a various character, and which
brings all that belongs to it into greater play; and it is the more
useful, as perhaps more persons are at a loss for the means of
improving their minds and characters, than they are for the time or the
inclination to do it. But there is one concluding reflection, sir,
that will shew the use of your life as a mere piece of biography. This
style of writing seems a little gone out of vogue, and yet it is a very
useful one; and your specimen of it may be particularly serviceable, as
it will make a subject of comparison with the lives of various public
cutthroats and intriguers, and with absurd monastic self-tormentors or
vain literary triflers. If it encourages more writings of the same
kind with your own, and induces more men to spend lives fit to be
written, it will be worth all Plutarch's Lives put together. But being
tired of figuring to myself a character of which every feature suits
only one man in the world, without giving him the praise of it, I shall
end my letter, my dear Dr. Franklin, with a personal application to
your proper self. I am earnestly desirous, then, my dear sir, that you
should let the world into the traits of your genuine character, as
civil broils nay otherwise tend to disguise or traduce it. Considering
your great age, the caution of your character, and your peculiar style
of thinking, it is not likely that any one besides yourself can be
sufficiently master of the facts of your life, or the intentions of
your mind. Besides all this, the immense revolution of the present
period, will necessarily turn our attention towards the author of it,
and when virtuous principles have been pretended in it, it will be
highly important to shew that such have really influenced; and, as your
own character will be the principal one to receive a scrutiny, it is
proper (even for its effects upon your vast and rising country, as well
as upon England and upon Europe) that it should stand respectable and
eternal. For the furtherance of human happiness, I have always
maintained that it is necessary to prove that man is not even at
present a vicious and detestable animal; and still more to prove that
good management may greatly amend him; and it is for much the same
reason, that I am anxiou