To Benjamin Franklin from Elizabeth Grattan, 8 June 1784
From Elizabeth Grattan8
ALS: American Philosophical Society
Camden Street 37.— Dublin 8th. June 1784.
Monsieur
L’opinion que le Monde entretien si justement des vos talens comme Consellier d’Etat, & de votre Sapience comme un Ecolier, et si generalement connu qu’il ne’st point necessaire que je le repete.
Les gens de ce pais vous regarde avec un admiration et un estime que rein ne peut egaler, mais personne plus que Sir Edward Newenham, le vrai Patriote et Soutein de la Liberte; ce’st à son desir que je me fais l’honneur de vous envoyer l’exemple d’un (Œuvrë qui à reçu l’approbation des premiers personnes du Literati ici.9
J’ai pris la libertè de prier votre protection comme le plus grand honneur qui puisse courronner mes travaux.1
J’ai l’honneur d’etre Monsieur avec le plus grand respect le tres humble, et tres obeissante Servante de votre Excellence
Elizabeth Grattan
Addressed: A son Excellence Monsieur Monsieur / Franklin, Plenepotentiaire aux / Etats unï d’Amerique à la Cour / de France / a Paris
8. Elizabeth Warren Grattan, wife of Dublin solicitor Colley Grattan, ran a small academy to teach young ladies French and Italian: Doris O’Keefe, “A Dublin edition of the ‘Emblemata Horatiana,’” Long Room, XXXVI (1991) 35–7.
9. Grattan enclosed a four-page printed prospectus entitled Proposals for Publishing by Subscription … a Translation from the Italian of the Morals of Horace … by Mrs. Elizabeth Grattan (Dublin, 1784). It stated that the translation would be made from a book that Sir Edward Newenham had brought back from Florence. The volume would include 60 passages, each illustrated by an emblematic engraving executed by an Irish artist. Subscriptions were two guineas, half to be paid immediately and the rest upon completion of the project. Names of the first subscribers included Newenham and Henry Grattan (XLI, 152n), who was a relation by marriage. At the bottom of the pages, Mrs. Grattan handwrote the names of 23 additional subscribers of notable rank.
1. It seems that the subscription was never filled and the project never completed beyond the first section, which was issued in 1785. Several copies of that first number are held in libraries in Ireland. More than 8c subscribers are listed on the final sheet, but BF’s name is not among them: O’Keefe, “A Dublin edition,” pp. 35–40.