*Faÿ, Bernard. _Franklin, the Apostle of Modern Times._ Boston: 1929. (A readable critical biography said to be based on "six hundred to nine hundred unpublished letters." Would have been more useful had it been given scholarly documentation. Some new light on Franklin's Masonic activities and his efforts during 1757-1762 to effect the growth of a British empire. [Faÿ used the Franklin-Galloway correspondence in the W. S. Mason and W. L. Clements collections.] Believes that Franklin was a "follower of the seventeenth-century English Pythagoreans": since this belief is largely undocumented, one feels it curious that Pythagoreanism should bulk larger than the pattern of thought provoked by Locke and Newton. See very critical reviews by H. M. Jones in _American Literature_, II, 306-12 [Nov., 1930], and W. C. Bruce, _American Historical Review_, XXXV, 634 ff. [April, 1930]. The latter concludes that "there is very little, indeed, in the text of the book under review that makes any unquestionably substantial addition to our pre-existing knowledge of Franklin, or is marked by anything that can be termed freshness of interpretation.") Faÿ, Bernard. _The Two Franklins: Fathers of American Democracy._ Boston: 1933. (Charmingly spirited portrait of patriarchal Franklin of Passy [reworking of materials in _Franklin, the Apostle of Modern Times_]. Faÿ's habit of mingling quotation, paraphrase, and intuition in use of Bache's Diary suggests untrustworthy documentation. The second Franklin is, of course, Benjamin Franklin Bache [1769-1798, son of Sally Franklin and Richard Bache], editor of the republican _Aurora General Advertiser_. For a judicial, unsympathetic review see A. Guerard's in the _New York Herald Tribune Books_, Oct. 22, 1933. J. A. Krout, in the _American Historical Review_, XXXIX, 741-2 [July, 1934], observes that Faÿ "fails to establish the elder Franklin's paternal relation to the democratic forces of the 'revolutionary' decade after 1790.") Fisher, S. G. _The True Benjamin Franklin._ Philadelphia: 1899. (Highly prejudiced interpretation with disproportionate attention to Franklin's acknowledged shortcomings.) *Ford, P. L. _The Many-Sided Franklin._ New York: 1899. (A gracefully solid and inclusive standard work.) Hale, E. E., and Hale, E. E., Jr. _Franklin in France. From Original Documents, Most of Which Are Now Published for the First Time._ 2 vols. Boston: 1887-1888. (Convenient collection of letters to Franklin; authors had access to Stevens and American Philosophical Society collections. Franklin letters and documents here given later published in Smyth. Useful chapters on Franklin's friends, his vogue in France, meetings with Voltaire, his activities in science, his interest in balloons, and investigation of Mesmerism. See reviews in _Dial_, VIII, 7, IX, 204; _Nation_, XLIV, 368; _Athenaeum_, II, 77 [1887]; _Atlantic Monthly_, LX, 318.)