Footnote 1
Millar may have been writing from his childhood home, the manse of Paisley abbey church. Paisley, a parish and town 10 miles west of Glasgow on the south bank of the River Clyde, was the site of a medieval landowning abbey, part of which later became the parish’s Abbey Kirk. Millar’s father Robert (1672–1752) was minister there from 1709–52. This charge was now held by Millar’s brother-in-law James Hamilton (1721–98), who had married Millar’s sister Elizabeth in 1761. Millar’s brothers retained close associations with nearby parishes: John (d.1721), who had been licensed to preach by the Paisley presbytery in 1712 and ordained in 1718, was minister of Old Kilpatrick in nearby Dunbartonshire. Henry (d.1771), who would inherit most of Millar’s fortune in 1768, was minister at nearby Neilston (1737–71), where his grandfather Andrew Millar (c.1630–86) had served. Millar’s sister Anna (d.1768) married another Paisley minister, Peter Scott, in 1741. The youngest sibling, William, built a home at nearby Walkingshaw, described as “a superior dwelling house with garden, offices and ornamental ground”. For the Millar family ministers, see H. Scott, Fasti Esslesiae Scoticanae (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1920) vol. 3, 114, 158, 166, 174.
×Footnote 2
Thomas Cadell had been freed from his standard seven-year apprenticeship to Millar on 2 April 1765. He had been bound on 7 March 1758 by his father, William Cadell of Bristol, for a fee of £105. See
D. F. McKenzie, Stationers’ Company Apprentices 1701–1800 (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1978) 235.
×Footnote 3
Transactions, i.e., record of business transactions.
×Footnote 4
Thomas Hollis (1720–74), book collector and editor. From 1760, he had commissioned Millar to publish works advocating republican government, including John Milton (1760), John Toland (1760), Algernon Sidney (1763), Henry Neville (1763) and John Locke (1764).
×Footnote 5
William Leechman (1706–85), Church of Scotland minister (1736–44), Professor of Divinity (1744–85) and Principal (1761–85) of the University of Glasgow. Leechman had been licensed to preach by the Paisley presbytery (which included Robert Millar) in 1731, and from 1745 his sermons were printed by the Foulis brothers in Glasgow and sold by Millar in London.
×Footnote 6
Hollis may have asked Millar to recommend their mutual friend, the English Presbyterian and biographer William Harris (1720–70), for an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow. Hollis was told on 20 August 1765 that his recommendation had been approved. Millar’s business and family connections linked Hollis, Harris, and Principal Leechman, while another of Millar’s associates recalled that Hollis’s recommendation to Leechman had been made “by the means of a friend”. See F. Blackburne, Memoirs of Thomas Hollis, Esq. F.R. and A.S.S. (London: [John Nichols], 1780) vol. 1, 273. Harris’s entry in the Oxford DNB does not mention Millar as a probable intermediary.
×Footnote 7
Millar had a long and complicated relationship with the Edinburgh bookseller Alexander Kincaid (1710–77). Both men had been apprenticed to James McEuen, and both were close friends of William Strahan, who printed many of their lucrative collaborative publications. These major works included the philosopher David Hume’s Essays Moral and Political (3rd edn, 1748) and Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects (1753); his fellow philosopher Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759); and Lord Kames’s Elements of Criticism (1762). However, between 1749–51, Millar challenged Kincaid in court for “reprinting” titles whose copyrights Millar believed he owned.
×Footnote 8
James Caulfeild, Earl of Charlemont (1728–99), Irish nobleman, architectural patron, member of the Society of Dilettanti, and friend of the painter Joshua Reynolds. He kept a magnificent house in Rutland Square, London.
×Footnote 9
Mark Catesby’s The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands (London: C. Marsh et al., 1754) was printed in two folio volumes on royal paper (20 by 25 inches), with 220 colour engravings. It was the most expensive book of the century; a book auction of 1760 sought bids over £14.14.0. See A Catalogue of the Library of Edward Barker (London: J. Whiston and B. White, 1760) 179.
×Footnote 10
i.e., compromising.
×Footnote 11
not one less wd been sold, i.e., all copies will be sold at this price. In 1748, Millar had commissioned William Bowyer to print 500 copies of The Life of Mæcenas: with Critical, Historical, and Geographical Notes. Corrected and Enlarged by Ralph Schomberg, M. D. For this new edition of 1766, he would order 750 copies, and advertise it at £0.2.6. Millar predicted correctly that it would hold its value, for a “neat” used copy was advertised at £0.2.0 in 1770. The title-page of the first edition (1758) describes the book as a translation from French, but no original French version has been found. This is consistent with Schomberg’s reputation for self-interest and plagiarism. For the second edition (1766) Schomberg dropped the pretence of a French version and implied the work was original, dedicating it to the newly-returned politician William Pitt. Schomberg may have met Millar in Bath, where he had moved in 1761.
×Footnote 12
on his acct: two possible meanings, given Schomberg’s poor financial management: Schomberg may have leveraged the cost of publication against money he owed Millar; or, Millar priced the book at £0.2.6 on account of Schomberg’s needs.
×Footnote 13
The physician Thomas Short (c.1690–1772) spent 30 years researching the therapeutic uses of mineral water. In 1766 he paid the cost of printing, anonymously, A General Treatise on the Different Sorts of Cold Mineral Waters in England; it was sold by three booksellers including Millar.
×Footnote 14
no concern in it, i.e., no financial stake in its production and therefore its sale.
×Footnote 15
Millar was involved in the commission and sale of numerous maps of Scotland.
×Footnote 16
the Waste, i.e., the surplus sheets from a print job. David Lyle (fl.1755–62), unsuccessful stenographer and instrument-maker, was the author of The Art of Short Hand Improved (1762). This book comprised many pages of expensive copperplate engravings, including its title-page. Lyle had not published anything previously, so he probably bore part or all of the engraving costs, and perhaps of printing too—and thus had sought assurance from Millar that the surplus sheets were sold back to the printer. Lyle’s worries about recovering expenses are understandable, given his lack of success with patrons.
×Footnote 17
1/1, i.e., one hundred percent.
×Footnote 19
notes, i.e., bank notes.
×Footnote 20
Archibald Hamilton (1719–93), successful printer and former manager of William Strahan’s print shop (1752–6). He was also a friend of Tobias Smollett, whose novels Millar published.
×Footnote 21
This may refer to the construction of Millar’s splendid townhouse, designed by Robert Adam, at 34 Pall Mall.
×Footnote 22
Mills does not have the funds to cover work Hunter will do; Millar’s shop will cover this expense in the meantime.
×Footnote 23
Miss Boote . . . her Sister: untraced.
×Footnote 24
John Milliken, Dublin bookseller (1742–1812). Milliken would sell a number of books that Millar had commissioned, including William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England vol. 3 (1769); he would also sell a two-volume edition of William Robertson’s History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V (1771), for which copyright was owned jointly by Thomas Cadell and William Strahan. See Journal of the Association for the Preservation of the Memorials to the Dead in Ireland 3 (1897) 455; M. Pollard, A Dictionary of the Members of the Dublin Book Trade, 1550–1800 (London: Bibliographical Society, 2001) 408–9.
×Footnote 26
That share of Cotton, I had amongst John Osborn’s copys, i.e., the share of the copyright in Charles Cotton’s Genuine Poetical Works, which I purchased at the sale of John Osborne’s stock and shares. wc I did not think worth printing in to ye List of copies, i.e., which I chose not to include in a printed list of those copies of the book that show my stake in it. Millar is referring to the new, fifth, edition of The Genuine Poetical Works of the Restoration poet Charles Cotton (1630–87), probably in reply to Cadell asking him to confirm his owning a share in its copyright. Millar confirms he acquired copyright through the copies he purchased from John Osborne. Cotton’s poetry remained popular (and therefore lucrative) throughout the eighteenth century, partly due to his clever burlesques of familiar works from classical literature.
×Footnote 27
The Works of the Late Right Honorable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke (1754) was printed in five quarto volumes. Three guineas was equal to three pounds three shillings; Millar never sold this work for under that price after it was first published.
×Footnote 29
The Last Edit: of ye author printed of the Seasons, i.e., the last edition of The Seasons that the poet James Thomson (1700–1748) saw through the press.
×Footnote 30
Although the corrections Thomson made to his Seasons of 1746 were far less substantial than those he made for his edition of July 1744, this is the edition that provides the final changes he made before his death two years later. In 1750, Millar reprinted the 1746 edition in The Works of James Thomson vol. 1. and included a prefatory note that emphasized the author’s preference for the 1746 edition. Millar may have referred to the 1744 edition because it was the first expanded version of Thomson’s famous poem, it sold quickly, and it may have helped to clarify for Millar that he owned the highly valuable copyright of this book in perpetuity. See J. Thomson, The Seasons, ed. J. Sambrook (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1981) lxiv–lxxi.
×Footnote 31
never a one, i.e., none.
×Footnote 33
William Leechman, Principal of the University of Glasgow; see note 5.
×Footnote 34
my Br ye Capt, i.e., my brother the captain. Archibald Millar (d. 1766) received his first naval commission in 1746; he was made Captain of HMS Lion, a two-decker, 60-gun battleship, in 1761. The Lion was retired on 14 March 1765. See D. Syrett and R. L. DiNardo, Commissioned Sea Officers of the Royal Navy, 1660–1815 (Aldershot: Navy Records Society, 1994) 311; J. Colledge, Ships of the Royal Navy (London: Greenhill, 1987) 203.
×Footnote 35
P: S:, i.e., postscript. The letter would be posted after the meeting in Glasgow with Leechman.
×Footnote 36
General Evening Post, a London broadside printed thrice weekly from 1733.
×Footnote 39
requisite, i.e., request.
×Footnote 40
Probably written after the meeting with Leechman.
×