Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/427

 ‘No. 1’ of his ‘System of Linnæus explained … To be compleated in 15 Numbers, one Guinea each. Each Number contains 4 plants coloured and 4 plain.’ John Ellis wrote to Linnæus of this undertaking on 28 Dec. 1770, ‘There is a valuable work now carrying on upon your system by Mr. John Miller, a German painter and engraver, under the direction of Dr. Gowan Knight, of the British Museum. This will make your system of botany familiar to the ladies, being in English as well as Latin. The figures are well drawn, and very systematically dissected and described. I have desired that he may send to your ambassador for you the two first numbers to know your opinion of it, and if you approve you may get him subscriptions’ (Correspondence of Linnæus, i. 255). The plates are dated from 1771 to 1776, and in 1777 the work was issued complete in three volumes folio, containing 108 coloured plates, 104 uncoloured, and 109 sheets of letter-press in Latin and English, ‘published and sold by the author.’ The English title was ‘An Illustration of the Sexual System of the Genera Plantarum of Linnæus.’ A list of eighty-two subscribers, taking about 125 copies, and including the name of David Garrick, is prefixed, and in the preface are given four letters to the author from Linnæus, in one of which he writes, ‘Donum tuum operis immortalis chariori veniet pretio quam, ut id remunerare valeam. Figuræ enim sunt et pulchriores et accuratiores quam ullæ quas vidit mundus a condito orbe.’ In Linnæus's own copy of the work, now in the Linnean Society's library, in that in the King's library (36 i. 1–3), in the Banksian copy, at the Natural History Museum, and in that at Kew, formerly belonging to James Lee of the Vineyard, Hammersmith, some plates are proofs before letters.

In 1779 Miller published an octavo edition of the ‘Illustration,’ with 107 uncoloured plates and a preface containing a letter of encouragement from the younger Linnæus, and promising a second volume to exhibit specific characters. This second volume was not issued until 1789, the delay being stated in the preface to be due to ‘a particular engagement.’ It is entitled ‘An Illustration of the Termini Botanici of Linnæus,’ and contains eighty-six uncoloured plates. New title-pages for the folio edition and the first volume of the octavo edition of the ‘Illustration’ seem to have been issued subsequently, copies at the Natural History Museum bearing the imprint, ‘Printed for Robert Faulder, New Bond Street, 1794.’ The ‘Illustration’ was published in German in folio by Konrad Felsing, Darmstadt, 1792, and at Frankfurt-on-Maine, 1804, both coloured; the octavo edition, by Dr. F. G. Weiss, at Frankfurt in 1789, with the plates of the first volume, re-engraved by Charles Goepfert and coloured, in a separate volume, entitled ‘Johannis Milleri Tabulæ Iconum centum quatuor plantarum ad illustrationem systematis sexualis Linnæani.’

Meanwhile Miller attempted another ambitious work dealing with new plants. Of this seven folio plates, dated 1780, were published, with a half-sheet of letter-press, but no title. In the botanical department of the Natural History Museum are five volumes, including in all 1072 original coloured drawings, with the manuscript title, ‘Drawings of the Leaves, Stalks, and Ramifications of Plants for the purpose of ascertaining their several Species, executed for the Rt. Honble. the Earl of Bute, for the years 1783 and 1784, by John Miller, Author of the Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnæus.’ These drawings were not utilised in Lord Bute's great work, ‘Botanical Tables’ (1785); but all the plates in the nine volumes of that work are also signed by Miller.

Miller engraved numerous plates other than botanic from his own designs; they are somewhat feeble in drawing and treatment, but his plates from compositions by good masters have much merit. To the former class belong ‘The Ladies' Lesson,’ 1755; frontispiece to Smollett's ‘History of England,’ 1758; ticket for the marriage of George III, 1761; the Oxford Almanacks for 1763–1765; ‘The Passions Personifyed in Familiar Fables;’ ‘Morning,’ a domestic interior, 1766; and ‘The Confirmation of Magna Carta by Henry III,’ 1780. Of Miller's engravings after other artists, the most important are the plates to Gray's ‘Poems,’ after R. Bentley, 1753; twelve plates to Milton's ‘Paradise Lost,’ after Hayman; ‘Apollo and Marsyas,’ after Claude; ‘Moonlight,’ after A. van der Neer, 1766; four plates of Roman monuments, after Pannini; ‘The Continence of Scipio,’ after Vandyck; ‘Writing the Billet,’ after Pantoja de la Cruz; ‘The Repose in Egypt,’ after Murillo; and a ‘Holy Family,’ after Barocci. From Miller's own statement, made in a letter to Van Murr, it appears that the originals of the three last-mentioned prints were painted by himself, and that he sold them to English connoisseurs as genuine works of the masters. Miller produced some excellent prints of antiquities, including four views of the temples at Pæstum, 1767; the whole of the plates in ‘Marmora Oxoniensia,’ a work on the Arundelian marbles, with text by Chandler, 1763;