FRANKLIN'S "PROPOSED NEW VERSION OF THE BIBLE."
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."1
Sin,—There is, I think, abundant evidence that Franklin's proposition for a new version of the Bible was made in sport. The extravagance of the changes in the specimen he gives would be very strange in a man of his good sense were he in earnest, as would also be the fact that he never made any serious publication of the paper. It was found, after the author's death, in a portfolio with a number of other com- positions, which, as we are told by William Temple Franklin, "were chiefly written by Dr. Franklin for the amusement of his intimate society in London and Paris, and were actually collected in a small portfolio endorsed Bagatelles." It is a bagatelle, a mere jeu d'esprit, written for the amusement of his friends.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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