From Benjamin Franklin to [Robert] Willock, [9 March 1767]
To [Robert] Willock1
MS not found; reprinted from Maggs Bros., Catalogue No. 215 (November 1905), p. 17; and Goodspeed’s Book Shop, The Flying Quill. Autographs at Goodspeed’s, New Series, August, 1962, p. 8.
[Monday March 9, 1767]
Dr. Franklin presents his compliments to Mr. Willock, and requests he would forward the enclos’d with his respects to Dr. Lewis.2 Dr. F. has just received it from Germany.3
1. Robert Willock, bookseller, whose shop, Sir Isaac Newton’s Head, was in Cornhill. H. R. Plomer, G. H. Bushnell, E. R. McD. Dix, A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers ... 1726 to 1775 (Oxford, 1932), p. 266.
2. For William Lewis (1708–1781), chemist, whose studies of platinum and potash brought him medals from the Royal Society and the Society of Arts, respectively, see above, XIII, 189 n.
3. Rudolph Erich Raspe recently sent BF copies of “Alchemistic Letters” by Johann Gerhard Reinhard Andreä (1724–1793), Alchymistische Briefe, von dem Verfasser chymischer Versuche zur Prüfung des Kalches. Herausggeben von ... A., Hanover, 1767. It was one of these copies that BF sent on to Lewis. The editors are indebted for this identification to Robert L. Kahn, “Three Franklin-Raspe Letters,” APS Proc., xcix (1955), 399 n. See also below, p. 210.