John Mills (encyclopedist)
[1] Mills and Gottfried Sellius are known for being the first to prepare a French edition of Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia for publication in 1745,[2] which eventually resulted in the Encyclopédie published in France between 1751 and 1772.
It combines the results of the experience and observations of such writers as Evelyn, Duhamel, John Worlidge, and Jethro Tull, and was highly commended.
He cancelled those plans because, as he wrote "having met with something more advantageous which engages me to stay in England"[7] Mills married a French woman, and they had two children; one baptised in Paris on 27 April 1742 and another born in May 1743.
[2] In 1743 Mills was in Paris for the purpose of bringing out, in concert with Gottfried Sellius, a German historian, a French edition of Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia; but André le Breton, the printer commissioned by him to manage the undertaking, cheated him out of the subscription money, assaulted him, and ultimately obtained a license in his own name.
In the 1760s he found his true vocation as a writer on agriculture, which started with his translation in 1762 of Duhamel du Monceau's Practical Treatise of Husbandry.
This four-page prospectus was illustrated by Jean-Michel Papillon,[14] and accompanied by a plan (see image), stating that the work would be published in five volumes from June 1746 until the end of 1748.
The Journal reports that Mills had discussed the work with several academics, was zealous about the project, had devoted his fortune to support this enterprise, and was the sole owner of the publishing privilege.
This work was originally written in 10 volumes by Jean-Baptiste Louis Crévier, who was Professor of Rhetoric in the Collège de Beauvais in Paris.
Mills first serious work in the field of agriculture, was the translation of Duhamel du Monceau's Practical Treatise of Husbandry, from the French.
[23] Mills explained in the preface, that "Duhamel and his correspondents have set the world an example which has long been wanted, and greatly desired by all who have the good of their country at heart, and are in the least sensible of the importance of Agriculture.
They have given us a series of experiments in this most useful art, continued for several years together, with accuracy and judgment, and related in a clear, distinct, manner.
"[25] Another of Mills' projects was the continuation and completion of the third volume of Memoirs of the court of Augustus in 1763 from the original papers of Thomas Blackwell.
Blackwell's works, including An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer (1735), Letters Concerning Mythology (1748) and Memoirs of the Court of Augustus (3 vols., 1753–63), established him as one of the premier figures in the Scottish Enlightenment.
An advertisement prefixed to this volume explained the continuation: Mills further stated Blackwell's loose papers were deficient, and he had to recourse to the Ancients.
[3] Mills leads all the previous authors in the arrangement of his work, which undoubtedly carried away the palm of agricultural writing at the time of its appearance.
He joins extensively with John Evelyn and Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, and does ample justice to the system of cultivation proposed by Jethro Tull.
The matter is more descriptive than that of Bradley, but not so practical in the application, though much merit is attached to the knowledge it shows of the origin and progress of the different animals.
[3] Mills also translated "Duhamel's husbandry;" in 1759, "Natural and chemical elements of agriculture, from the Latin of Gustavus Adolphus Gyllenborg;" in 1770, and he was the reputed author of some essays, moral, philosophical, and political.
This was based on the work of Jethro Tull, and supported by Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau in France, Michel Lullin de Chateauvieux in Switzerland, Mills in England.
The Complete Farmer, listed John Mills in the subtitle of this work among the foremost authorities in the field of Husbandry of his time.
