to all applicants to him for material for writing his biography.

On february 9, 1816, after the sale of his library, he wrote to Joseph Delaplaine, about to publish his Repository of the Lives and Portraits of Distinguished American Characters : “ . . . you request me, in your last letter, to give you the facts of my life, birth, parentage, profession, time of going to Europe, returning, offices &c. I really have not time to do it, and still less inclination. to become my own biographer is the last thing in the world I would undertake. No. if there has been anything in my course worth the public attention, they are better judges of it than I can be myself, and to them it is my duty to leave it. there was a work published in England under the title of ‘Public characters’ in which they honored me with a place. I never knew, nor could suspect, who wrote what related to myself; but it must have been some one who had been in a situation to obtain tolerably exact and minute information. I do not now possess the book, and therefore cannot say whether there were inaccuracies in it . . . ”

To a similar request from Horatio Gates Spafford, Jefferson wrote, on May 11, 1819: “ . . . there was a book published in England about 1801. or soon after, entitled ‘Public characters’, in which was given a sketch of my history to that period. I never knew, nor could conjecture by whom this was written; but certainly by someone pretty intimately acquainted with myself and my connections. there were a few inconsiderable errors in it, but in general it was correct . . . ”

On the same day he wrote in almost the same words to Sir John Phillipart in London: “ . . . there was a book published in England about 1801. or soon after, entitled ‘Public characters’, in which was given a sketch of my life to that period. I never knew, nor could conjecture by whom this was written; but certainly by some one intimately acquainted with myself & my connections. I observed in it some errors indeed; but they were inconsiderable, and on the whole it was tolerably correct . . . ”

Public Characters was a series of biographies of eminent persons, edited and published annually by Alexander Stevens.

Francis Peter Plowden, 1749-1829, English writer, a Jesuit, was a whig in politics and opposed to the policy of Pitt. The first edition of this book was published earlier in the same year, 1794.