Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/425

 thought to be intended for the bishop, all his hopes of preferment from that quarter were destroyed.

Several of Miller's plays were performed with considerable success, but in 1737 two of the characters in his comedy ‘The Coffee-house’ were supposed to be aimed at Mrs. Yarrow and her daughter, who kept Dick's Coffee-house, between the Temple gates. This offended the residents in the Temple, who went in a body to the theatre to damn the piece. Miller denied the charge, but as the engraver of the frontispiece had sketched that very coffee-house he was not believed, and henceforward the templars ruined every piece which they imagined to be written by Miller. He was now dependent on the church, and his high-church principles did not aid his advancement. A large offer was made him by the agents of the ministry, but in vain. However, in 1743 he was presented by Nicholas Carey to the living of Upcerne, Dorset, which his father had held before him. There he prepared an adaptation of Voltaire's ‘Mahomet,’ which was successfully performed at Drury Lane 25 April 1744. It was not thought to be his, as all his previous plays had been comedies, and the fifth act was, in fact, written by John Hoadly. Miller died on the night of his first benefit, 26 April 1744, at his lodgings in Cheyne Walk. He left a widow and a son and daughter.

The ‘Humours of Oxford’ is the play that is most entirely his own. The plots of the others are generally taken from the French, chiefly from Molière. Miller wrote several political pamphlets against Sir Robert Walpole, one of which, ‘Are these things so?’ attracted considerable attention. A volume of sermons was published after his death by his widow.

His principal plays are:—1. ‘The Humours of Oxford,’ 1730, several editions with a frontispiece drawn by Hogarth. 2. ‘Vanelia: or the Amours of the Great: an opera (in three acts) as it is acted by a private company near St. James's’ [1732]. This vivacious work, containing twenty-one songs of the Beggar's Opera type, is founded on the amour between the Prince of Wales and a lady named Vane. It was never acted, but rapidly went through six editions. 3. ‘The Man of Taste: or the Guardians’ [1735], a successful mélange from Molière, played at Drury Lane, March 1735. This piece must be distinguished from a piece also called ‘The Man of Taste,’ which was published under that title in 1733, being a reissue with a new title of ‘Mister Taste, the Poetical Fop: or the Modes of the Court,’ a comedy [1732]; an insolent attack on Pope, for which Hogarth designed a satirical frontispiece (cf., Anecdotes of Hogarth, 1833, p. 176). 4. ‘Universal Passion,’ 1737. 5. ‘The Coffee-house,’ 1737. 6. ‘Art and Nature,’ 1738. 7. ‘The Hospital for Fools,’ 1739. 8. ‘Mahomet the Impostor,’ 1744. 9. ‘Joseph and his Brethren,’ 1744. 10. ‘The Picture, or the Cuckold in Conceit,’ taken from Molière's ‘Cocu Imaginaire,’ 1745. 11. ‘Harlequin Horace’ and other poems. Miller also joined with Henry Baker, F.R.S., in a complete translation of Molière (1739). 

MILLER, JAMES (1812–1864), surgeon, born at the manse, Essie, Forfarshire, 2 April 1812, was third son of the Rev. James Miller (1777–1860). His mother was Barbara, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin of Monimail in Fife (, Fasti Eccl. Scotic. pt. vi. p. 727). He was taught by his father, and in 1824 was sent to St. Andrews University, where in three winter sessions he completed his general education. In 1827 he became a pupil of Dr. Ramsay of Dundee, but later in the same year he was transferred to Mr. Mackenzie of Edinburgh, and entered upon the ordinary course of a medical student. He obtained the license of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1832, and he was subsequently elected a fellow. He acted for many years as an assistant to Robert Liston [q. v.], and on the removal of that surgeon to London in 1834 Miller succeeded to the more lucrative part of his practice. In 1842 he was appointed professor of surgery in the university of Edinburgh, in succession to Sir Charles Bell [q. v.] In 1848 he was surgeon in ordinary in Scotland to the queen and Prince Albert. He was also surgeon, and later consulting surgeon, to the Royal Infirmary, professor of pictorial anatomy to the School of Design at the Royal Institution, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

At the disruption of the presbyterian church in Scotland, Miller, like his father, who since 1827 had been minister of Monikie, sided with the free kirk party, and rendered it substantial service by speech and pen. Although he held the position of professor of surgery in Edinburgh, Miller practised both as a physician and as an operating surgeon, and it is rather remarkable that, in spite of his long association with Liston, Miller, even in his youth, was conservative in his methods, only re-