4. This rumor was initially published in the Courier de l’Europe in mid-February; see the baron d’Haxthausen’s letter of Feb. 26. A new report was published in that same paper on March 18, based on news from Paris dated March 4, linking the proposed statue with the Libertas Americana medal and quoting a 14-line Latin inscription which was said to have been selected for it. The inscription, given also in French translation, praised the Supreme Being for granting this hard-won liberty, extolled the generosity of Louis XVI, and offered the eternal gratitude of the United States: Courier de l’Europe, XIII (1783), 122, 170–1. On March 19 this story was reprinted, with slight variations, in both Métra’s Correspondance secrète (XIV, 194) and in Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets (XXII, 155), the latter of which reproduced the Latin inscription.

This inscription was criticized in a letter, evidently sent to BF from Italy, that only survives in a curious, truncated copy in BF’s hand. The author had read about the statue in a news story from Paris; he finds the inscription (which he quotes) “verbose, if not lapidary” and in poor Latin. BF’s copy is in flawed Italian and trails off before the complimentary close and signature (APS). We speculate that it is an Italian exercise that BF created for himself, in preparation for his anticipated journey to Italy. He may have translated the now-missing original into English, and then produced this re-translation. The text is reprinted in Antonio Pace, Benjamin Franklin and Italy (Philadelphia, 1958), p. [367], and described on p. 9.