McMaster, J. B. _Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters._ American Men of Letters series. Boston: 1887. (Fullest account of this aspect of the many-minded Franklin. See also MacLaurin and Jorgenson items, pp. clxv, clxvi below.) More, P. E. _Benjamin Franklin._ Riverside Biographical Series. Boston: 1900. (Suggestive of a _précis_ of Parton's _Life_ with judicial, if not historical, penetration. Stimulating notes, such as the following: Franklin was "a great pagan, who lapsed now and then into the pseudo-religious platitudes of the eighteenth-century deists.") Morse, John Torrey, Jr. _Benjamin Franklin._ American Statesmen series. Boston: 1889. (Compact account stressing his political and diplomatic career.) *Parton, James. _Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin._ 2 vols. New York: 1864. (Although not all works ascribed to Franklin by Parton are by his pen, and although new materials have been added to the Franklin canon, he remains the most encyclopedic and often the most penetrating of Franklin's biographers. He deserves credit for printing in an appendix Franklin's _Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain_. For reviews see _North American Review_ [July, 1864]; _Atlantic Monthly_ [Sept., 1864]; _London Quarterly_, XXIII, 483; _Littell's Living Age_, LXXXIV, 289.) Russell, Phillips. _Benjamin Franklin, the First Civilised American._ New York: 1926. (The _esprit_ and readableness of this popular work do not offset its lack of precision, historical scholarship, and taste.) Smyth, Albert H. "Life of Benjamin Franklin," in Vol. X, 141-510, of _The Writings of Benjamin Franklin_. (Stimulating survey.) Swift, Lindsay. _Benjamin Franklin._ Beacon Biographies of Eminent Americans. Boston: 1910. (Brief series of biographical "impressions" arranged chronologically.) Weems, Mason L. _The Life of Benjamin Franklin, with many Choice Anecdotes and Admirable Sayings of this Great Man._ Baltimore: 1815. (One would think it unfair to smile at a writer who had the wit to describe Franklin as one who "with such equal ease, could play the _Newton_ or the _Chesterfield_, and charm alike the lightnings and the ladies." Contains some imaginative, though intuitive, remarks on Franklin's religion.) IV. BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES Abbe, C. "Benjamin Franklin as Meteorologist," _Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_, XLV, 117-28 (1906). ("Worthy co-laborer" with Newton, Huygens, Descartes, Boyle, and Gay-Lussac. He is "the first meteorologist of America," "pioneer of the rational long-range forecasters.") Abbot, G. M. _A Short History of the Library Company of Philadelphia: Compiled from the Minutes, together with some personal reminiscences._ Philadelphia: 1913. Amiable, L. _Une loge maçonnique d'avant 1789. La R.·. L.·. Les Neuf Sœurs._ Paris: 1897. (Fullest account of Franklin's activities in French Freemasonry.)