The sale was really enormous for those days, and Millar, the successful publisher, could afford to be generous to Fielding, as he had been to others, thus winning for himself the position of a patron as well as publisher. Johnson called him "the Mæcenas of literature." "I respect Millar, sir;" said he, "he has raised the price of literature."
Horace Walpole gives us an account of the dealing of this remarkable man in this case. He says, in a letter to George Montagu: "Millar, the bookseller, has done very generously by him [Fielding]; finding 'Tom Jones' for which he gave him £600. sell so greatly, he has since given him another £100."
A second edition in four volumes was issued the same year, and a third, also in four volumes, the year following. The book has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, and Swedish. It was frequently dramatized, and was also turned into a comic opera.
An original document in the possession of the owner of the book from which the facsimile was made shows that the value of _Tom Jones_ had not decreased with successive editions, or else the various partners, whose well-known names are signed to it, would not have thought it worth their while to prosecute.
"At the Chapter Coffee-house, it is agreed by the Partners in Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, to prosecute Alexander Donaldson, Bookseller in the Strand, for printing the above Books, in the Court of Chancery, and do agree to pay our respective Shares of the Expence of the Proscecution.
WILL: STRAHAN THO^S. LONGMAN W. JOHNSTON ROBERT HORSFIELD THO: CADELL T BECKET ROBINſON & ROBERTS HAWES, CLARKE & COLLINS STANLEY CROWDON EDM^D. & CH^S DILLY WM. & J. RICHARDſON THO^S. LOWNDES THOMAS CASLON"
49. An | Elegy | Wrote In A | Country Church Yard | London: | Printed for R. Dodsley in Pall-mall; | And ſold by M. Cooper in Pater-noſter-Row. 1751. | [Price Six-pence.]
In 1750 Gray finished a poem which he had begun eight years before, and it was circulated freely, in manuscript, among his delighted friends. One of them, Horace Walpole, received the following communication from the author, dated at Cambridge, February 11, 1751:
"As you have brought me into a little sort of distress, you must assist me, I believe, to get out of it as well as I can.