To which in a letter written next day Franklin replied:[1]
I am heartily glad you approve of our proceedings. * * * I have not time to write larger, nor to wait on you till next week. In general all goes well, and there is a surprising unanimity in all ranks. Near eight hundred have signed the association, and more are signing hourly. One company of Dutch is complete.
In his autobiography he says: "Mr. Logan put into my hands Sixty pounds to be laid out in lottery tickets for the battery, with directions to apply what prizes might be drawn wholly to that service."[2]
Logan's classical studies were not intermitted during his public career, for it was in 1734 he undertook his well known translation of Cicero's De Senectute, which with explanatory Notes was published for him by Franklin in 1744. Franklin makes a preface to the book, entitled the "printer to the reader," and says: some friends, among whom I had the honor to be ranked, obtained copies of it in MS. And, as I believed it to be in itself equal at least, if not far preferable to any other translation of the same piece extant in our language, besides the advantage it has of so many valuable notes, which at the same time they clear up the text, are highly instructive and entertaining, I resolved to give it an impression, being confident that the public would not unfavorably receive it.
He closed by adding his hearty wish that this first translation of a classic in this Western World may be followed with many others, performed with equal judgment and success; and be a happy omen, that Philadelphia shall become the seat of the American muses.
Had Franklin known of George Sandy's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, in Virginia when Treasurer of that colony, more than a century before, he would not have claimed for Logan the honor of making the first American translation of a classic, but while that was "the first English literary production penned in America, at least which has any rank or name in the general history of literature,"[3] it was printed in London in 1626, and it may be claimed for Logan that his was the first American print of such a translation. Other translations of
