Hoping for a “new and more perfect edition”

Hoping for a “new and more perfect edition”

 

Feke's 1748 Ben Franklin
This portrait of Benjamin Franklin, the earliest known, was painted by Robert Feke in 1748.
(Wikimedia Commons)

 

In 1728, when he was still just a young man of twenty-one or twenty-two, Benjamin Franklin composed his own mock epitaph.  It was never actually used, but it seems not entirely inappropriate to mention it as we approach Easter:

 

The Body of
B. Franklin
Printer;
Like the Cover of an old Book,
Its Contents torn out,
And stript of its Lettering and Gilding,
Lies here, Food for Worms.
But the Work shall not be whlly lost:
For it will, as he believ’d, appear once more,
In a new & more perfect Edition,
Corrected and Amended
By the Author.
He was born on January 6, 1706.
Died 17

 

 


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