Talk:John Mills (encyclopedist)

message: Hello, this is a rather strange case. The BBC contribution is not available, and the historicum arcticle (de.WP) mentions John Mills as a financer, not as an author. Does anybody know more about this? --Ziko (talk) 19:16, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope it is all for real, the article just had a few minor details wrong (mills was replaced by de Gua not Diderot, who in turn replaced de Gua further down the road). Sources are added now.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.200.61.15 (talk) 01:35, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: P.S. Fixed the BBC link as well, looks like that just the mp3 file had become unavailable.--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:39, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you very much for your efforts! --Ziko (talk) 12:26, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Fake?

message: ==== 18th century ====
* The History of the Roman Emperors, from Augustus to Constantine, by Mr. Crevier, professor of rhetoric in the college of Beauvais. Translated from the French by John Mills, esq; Vols. 1 and II. 8vo. 5s. each. Knapton... 
:... The above specimens will, we apprehend, in some measure, serve to justify the observations we think it necessary to add, with regard to the translator. Mr. Mills, and his other works, we are alike strangers to; but have been informed he has published some tracts, with reputation, abroad; and that he was the first undertaker and promoter of the translation of Chambers's Cyclopædia into French. If he is an Englishman, which, but for his name, we should doubt, from his manner of expression, it is possible he may have lived so long in foreign countries, as to have somewhat lessened his acquaintance with his vernacular language: for we have met with few writers that have shewn themselves less masters of its purity, Mr. Johnson has judiciously observed, that "the great pest of speech is frequency of translation. No book was ever turned from one language to another, without imparting something of its native idiom; this is the most mischievous and comprehensive innovation; single words may enter by thousands, and 'the fabric of the tongue continue the fame; but new phraseology changes much at once, it alters not the single stones  of the building, but the order of the columns." The translation before us is a recent proof of the justice of these remarks not contented with attempting what Tiberius was told, lay not in an emperor's power, the naturalizing foreign words, Mr. Mills has, in general, left his diction in a Gallic form, that renders it uncouth to an English ear. However, this work is still in its infancy: only two volumes are yet published; and as ten more are expected, it is hoped these strictures will be accepted with the fame candour they are meant, and that the remaining volumes will, consequently, be made more agreeable to the reader, as well as more reputable to the translator...
:* Review of "The History of the Roman Emperors, from Augustus to Constantine" in: The monthly review of literary journal Vol XII. 1755. p. 405-412 
* A practical Treatise of Husbandry: Wherein are contained many useful and valuable Experiments and Observations in the New Husbandry, collected during a Series of Years, by the celebrated, M. Duhamel Du Monceau, Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences dt Paris, Fellow of the Royal Society, London, &c. Also the most approved Practice of the best English Farmers, in the old Method of Husbandry. With Copper-Plates of several new and useful Instruments. , 4tO. 16s. Whiston, &c.
:M. Duhamel's work, in the original, consists of five volumes, published at different times ; so that we are not to expect a translation of the whole in the work before us : on the contrary, we are told by the writer of it, [Mr. John Mills] that he has translated only such experiments as seemed to him most instructive to his Countrymen. And to render this treatise still more useful, he has also given, from the most approved English writers, what appeared to him best in the modern practice of farming, either according to the old or new method. The plainness wherewith the whole is written, Mr. Mills hopes, will shew, that his intention was to make it of as general use as possible... 
:* Review of "A Practical Treatise of Husbandry." in: The Monthly Review, Or, Literary Journal, Volume 21 by Ralph Griffiths, G. E. Griffiths, 1759, p. 139-148 (online)
* The work before us was it seems, continued, and completed, from the original papers of Dr. Blackwell, by John Mills, Esq. a gentleman we are entirely unacquainted with. In an advertisement prefixed to this volume, we are informed , that the volume was printed off to p. 144, when Dr. Blackwell died. "The proprietor, unwilling to let the sets of those gentlemen who had purchased the former volumes remain incomplete, put all the papers left by the author, relative to this work, into the hands of the present editor, who begs leave to observe, that those papers being, in general, Little more than loose leaves, detached notes, memorandums, and, very often, only bare hints of things intended to be said, without any connection, reference to each other, or even paging, he hopes he may justly claim some indulgence from the public, wherever he has erred in his endeavours to give them the order and method which he imagines might have been Dr. Blackwell's, if that gentleman had lived to finish his work." Mr. Mills then informs us, that where the Doctor's loose papers were deficient, he bad recourse to the ancients.It is impossible for us to ascertain the particular passages of this publication thai belong to Mr. Mills; but we will venture to fay, upon the whole, that this volume, both in point of composition and language, is not inferior to its two elder brothers... 
** Tobias Smollett (1763) The Critical Review: Or, Annals of Literature. Vol. 15. p. 289 
:* Review of Thomas Blackwell, Memoirs of the court of Augustus. Vol. 3. Continued and completed by John Mills. A. Millar. 1753-63
* A New and Complete System os Practical Husbandry; containing all that Experience has proved to be most useful in Farming, either in the Old or New Method; with a Comparative View of Both; and whatever is beneficial to the Husbandman, or conducive to the Ornament and Improvement of the Country Gentleman s Estate. By John Mills, Esq. Editor of Du Hamel'; Husbandry. Vol.I. %vo. Pr.6s. Baldwin. FROM the title of this work the public had great reason to imagine that there would certainly be something contained in it worthy of peculiar attention, something new, not to be met with in print, out of the common road, and perhaps the result of the author's particular experience. What experimental knowledge he has had in agriculture, he can himself best acquaint us with; we may, however, venture to assert, that no great portion of it appears in the volume now under our consideration: if, therefore, we allow him some judgment, acquired from reading, in the choice of the very frequent extracts be has made from the works of other writers, he has reason to be abundantly satisfied.In the first part of the introduction to this work, Mr. Mills takes some notice of the long agitated question, whether earth or water conduces most to supply plants with the necessary nourishment? But as he has advanced nothing new on this subject, only retailing the opinions of others, without hazarding any conjectures of his own, we shall pass it over; as also the subsequent part of the introduction, which treats of the food of plants, a subject which is handled more at large by Du Hamel, from whom, with little or no variation, this part is evidently and avowedly borrowed.The work is divided into chapters, of which this volume contains three; and the chapters are subdivided, after the manner of Du Hamel, to whom Mr. Mills is much obliged, into sections and articles....
** Tobias George Smollett (1764) The Critical Review: Or, Annals of Literature. p.87 : Review of A New and Complete System os Practical Husbandry
* Bey Weidmanns Erben und Reich ist des vollstandigen Lehrbegriffs von der praktischen Feldwirlhschaft von John Mills, durch M. E. F. I. aus dem Englischeu übersetzt, Zwevter Band in gr. 8. 478 Seiten 7 Kupfertaffeln, herausgekommen. Man findet hier, wie in dem sonst von uns angezeigten I. B. die lehren der Hauswirthschaft aus den besten Schriftstellern gesammlet. Gegenwärtiger Band enthält vornehm, sich die neue Art mit Hülfe eiues Pferdes das Erdreich aufzuhacken, wo der Verfasser besonders den Hrn. du Hamel und desselben Correspondenten zu Anführern gehabt. Er verwirft indessen den Nutzen der Düngung nicht, den er selbst im l. B> gewiesen hat, und erinnert, daß auch bey dieser neuen Feld« wirthschaft die Wurzeln und Stoppeln der Gewachse, die man auf diese Art erbauet hat, viel zur Zeuchtbarkeit beptragen. Er beschreibet hier ausführlich des Hrn. von Chateauvieur Säepflug und desselben Eultivators. und «ineMenge damit angestellter Versuche. Das ll. Hauptstück dieses Bandes betrifft die Krankheiten des Getreides, wo auser des Herrn du Hamel Schriften auch die Anweisung des Grafen Ginanni, eines Patricius zu Ravenna, gebraucht «orden, der diesen wichtigen Gegenstand unter allen am vollständigsten abgehandelt hat...
** Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen. Vol. 2, (1764) p. 1048 ; Review of A New and Complete System os Practical Husbandry Vol 2. translated into German.
* The natural and chemical Elements of Agriculture. Translated from the Latin of Count GuJIavus Adolphus Gyllen* lorg. By John Mills, Esq; F. R. S. Member of the Royal 'Societies of Agriculture at Paris and Rouen, of the Œconomical Society of Berne, and of the Palatine Academy of Sciences and Belles-Lettres. i2tno. 2 s. 6 d. sewed. Bell, 1770.COUNT Gyllenborg is well known to have applied with great diligence to the study of nature ; and the present work, in its original Latin dress, has been very well received. Mr. Mills...
** The Monthly Review, Vol. 43. R. Griffiths., 1771. p. 427-30 ;Review of The Natural and Chemical Elements of Agriculture.
** See also the review in: Bell's British Theatre, 1870. p. 96
 
* Mr. Mills's system of Husbandry has been so well received by the public, that there is little doubt but the present volume, which is designed as a continuation of that system, will meet with as favourable a reception. It was finished, we are told, and prepared for publication some years ago; when the manuscript was unfortunately burnt, with the stock in trade of the publisher: at whose request it was written anew. The treatise now offered to the reader, says Mr. Mills, is the result of that second labour; in the prosecution of which, the most approved writers of different countries, and the practical experience of some judicious friends in this, have been my principal guides. To these last, in particular, I owe an accession of new materials, which were not in my former copy, and by means of which this is considerably enlarged.So rapid, however, are the improvements in this branch of science, or so determined the spirit of innovation, that it is hardly possible for a writer to keep pace with the reformation, real or pretended, of the arts of agriculture and husbandry. Thus we find Mr. Mills still maintaining, on the authority of Mr. Arthur Young and others, the preference of ploughing with oxen rather than horses without taking any notice of what has been lately urged in support of the contrary practice in a late very plausible treatise, entitled Rural Improvements... 
** Review of "A Treatise on Cattle" in: William Kenrick London review of English and foreign literature. 1776. p. 385
* I had read the translation of the marquis's history of his improvements in Mr.Mills' husbandry,* and thought it the most interesting morsel I had met with, long before I procured the original Memoire sur les defrichemens; and determined that if ever I should go to France to view improvements the recital of which had given me such pleasure..."
** Arthur Young. Travels in france during the years 1787, 1788 & 1789., 1790; 1892 edition, p. 138 
==== 19th century ====
* The Natural and Chemical Elements of Agriculture, by Count Gustavus Adolphus Gyllenborg, a learned Swedish statesman, were translated by John Mills in 1770, and may be considered as the prototype of Davy's Agricultural Chemistry.
** John Claudius Loudon (1829/83) An Encyclopædia of Agriculture. p. 1179
==== 20th century ====
* One of the bee books which are worth reading over and over again is the essay on " The Management of Bees," by John Mills, 1766. This book was never reprinted, and Col. Walker. says, truly enough, that it contains nothing original, but it was nevertheless, an epoch-making book, for Mills was a member of agricultural societies in Paris and Rouen and of another society at Berne, and so he was in touch with the most recent discoveries which had been made in France and Switzerland.
:Two points which interested me greatly were his advocacy of taking bees to the heather. He seems to have been the first man to suggest this, and it must have been difficult to manage in the days of skeps : swarms would be frequent, and it might well be necessary to sulphur the bees and cut out the honey and wax on the moors. (This was actually done in the Luneberger Heath in Germany, but the bee-keepers there worked in large, well-organised bodies.)...
:* British Bee Journal. Vol. 72 (1944) p. 177
* The career and writings of John Mills ^.1784) vividly exemplifies these concerns. Reclaiming the contemporaneity of the ancients. Mills not only highlighted pitfalls of modern natural philosophy, but professed a method that went beyond scientific truths to reach national interests. During the 1760s, Mills was a member of the French Society of Agriculture, the Economical Society of Berne and the Pallatine Academy. From 1763 to 1765, he published five volumes of A New and Complete System of Practical Husbandry, designed to aid the farmer and contribute to "the ornament and improvement of the country gentleman's estate." He also translated Duhamel du Monceau's treatise on husbandry (1762), wrote on bee-management (1766), and in 1767 completed the unfinished "Memoirs of the Court of Augustus," begun by Thomas Blackwell, the Greek classicist from Abberdeen. In An Essay in the Weather Mills wrote that despite two centuries of philosophical work, no account of the weather had been proposed that could in certainty match those of the earliest authors...
** Vladimir Janković (2000) Reading the Skies: A Cultural History of English Weather..., p. 139 
* A fundamental work in the history of agricultural chemistry, being the English translation by John Mills (d. ca. 1784) of Agriculturae Fundamenta Chemica (Uppsala, 1761), a dissertation prepared by Count G. A. Gyllenborg (fl. 1761) under the... 
** Roy G. Neville (2006) The Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library. p. 569
==== 21th century ====
* ... The most significant fact to be gleaned from the present work, a propos the author’s biography, is that Benjamin Franklin was his ‘highly respected friend’, and the work is permeated by Franklinian ideas. The Shepherd of Banbury, John Claridge by name, published The Shepherd’s Legacy in 1670, a text which was popular and which enjoyed a revival in the second half of the eighteenth century. Due to a cataloguing error, repeated by several bibliographers, it was for a long time denied that there ever had been such a personage.
** "Mills (John): An Essay on the Weather" Note, at rarebooks.blackwell.co.uk. Accessed March 3, 2014.
-- Mdd (talk) 15:08, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  About his work on husbandry, bees, weather etc. 

message: * ... The most significant fact to be gleaned from the present work, a propos the author’s biography, is that Benjamin Franklin was his ‘highly respected friend’, and the work is permeated by Franklinian ideas. The Shepherd of Banbury, John Claridge by name, published The Shepherd’s Legacy in 1670, a text which was popular and which enjoyed a revival in the second half of the eighteenth century. Due to a cataloguing error, repeated by several bibliographers, it was for a long time denied that there ever had been such a personage.
** "Mills (John): An Essay on the Weather" Note, at rarebooks.blackwell.co.uk. Accessed March 3, 2014.
-- Mdd (talk) 15:08, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  21th century 

message: As long as the content is that small it is sufficient to simply list the 2 sources it is based on under references at the end of the article. However there is of course nothing wrong with switching to footnotes anyway. Personally I'm fine with either way. 
Unfortunately recent edits which introduced the footnotes also rearranged and changed content in such a way that Sellius gets confused with Mills and as a consequences some of the biographical information on Mills has become plain wrong. For that reason i simply reset the article to an earlier version, where the content was still correct. Feel free to readd footnotes, if you want, but please make sure the content stays correct and that you read/access the sources you reference.--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:37, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: No problem to take a temporary step back. I did already noticed a discrepancy between the German source and the text, and took a closer look at the second source as well. I will look into it some more later on... (to be continued). -- Mdd (talk) 15:41, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: recent edits