be ascertained from his writings, his public acts, and the testimony of his contemporaries.
The engraved portrait of Dr. Franklin, prefixed to the first volume, is from an original picture now in the possession of Mr. Thomas W. Sumner, of Brookline, Massachusetts. Neither the name of the artist, nor the precise time at which it was painted, is known. The picture formerly belonged to his brother, John Franklin, and it is mentioned in his will, dated in January, 1756. It has been retained in the family ever since. It was painted when Franklin was a young man, probably before he was thirty years old, and twenty-five or thirty years earlier than the portraits, from which any of the other engravings extant have been taken. The head of Mrs. Franklin, contained in this work, is from a picture owned by the Reverend Dr. Charles Hodge, of Princeton, New Jersey. Both these portraits are of the size of life. They have never before been engraved. The portrait by Duplessis has been generally acknowledged to exhibit the best likeness of Franklin in his old age. The engraving of it for this work was executed in Paris, from the original.
Although the Editor has spared neither labor nor expense in his endeavours to make this edition a complete collection of the writings of Franklin, yet he is constrained to say, in justice to the memory of the author, that he has been less successful than he could have wished. Many papers, known to have once existed, he has not been able to find. Of this