From Benjamin Franklin to William Strahan, 4 February 1751
To William Strahan
ALS: Yale University Library
Philada. Feb. 4. 1750, 1
Dear Sir
I wrote you per Capt. Budden, who sail’d the Beginning of December, and sent you a Bill of Exchange on Jonathan Gurnel & Co. for Fifty Pounds, and desired you to send me Viner’s, Bacon’s and Danvers’s Abridgments of the Law, with Wood’s and Coke’s Institutes.7 I have no Copy of the Letter, and forget whether I added the Compleat Attorney in 6 or 8 Vols. 8vo.8 the Precedents in English; please to send that also. I likewise desired you to enter my Son’s Name, William Franklin, in one of the Inns of Court, as a Student of Law, which I am told costs between £4 and £5 and to let me know what Time must expire before he can be called to the Bar after such Entry, because he intends to go to London a Year or two before, to finish his Studies. I hope that Letter got to hand. Enclos’d I send you the second Bill. I see they have printed a new Translation of Tully on old Age;9 please to send me one of them. Mr. Hall continues well, and goes on perfectly to my Satisfaction. My Respects to Mrs. Strahan and Master Billy. I have not Time to add, but that I am, with great Esteem and Affection, Dear Sir Your most oblig’d humble Servant
B Franklin
Addressed: To Mr Wm Strahan Printer London per Capt. Mitchell.
7. Dec. 6, 1750. See above, p. 78.
8. The Compleat Solicitor, Entring-Clerk and Attorney, fully Instructed in the Practice, Methods and Clerkship of all His Majestie’s Courts (London, 1683).
9. Cicero’s Cato Major, translated “by Mr. Loggan,” was published by Stephen Austen, London bookseller, 1750. It lacked BF’s preface (see above, II, 404–5).