[MILLS (John).]. D'Horsay; Or, The follies of the day. By A man of fashion. In one volume. William Strange, 21 Paternoster Row, 1844. Demy 8vo; engraved frontispiece, vignette title, and ten plates by George Standfast (his name appearing on the engraved title); letterpress title leaf followed by leaf bearing Preface; pp.[iv]+174; fine Edwardian full green calf, spine with five raised bands, elaborately tooled gilt in compartments, red label, sides ruled and tooled gilt on borders, guinea-roll edges, inner dentelles elaborately gilt; oil-marbled end-papers; t.e.g., others uncut. A near fine copy.

Sadleir, 1736 and 1736a: issued originally both as parts and in volume form, the present copy being without stab-holes and presumably therefore of the volume issue. There is no list of illustrations, but they are here bound in (correctly) to face pp.34, 42, 48, 66, 73, 104, 112, 132, 140, and 172. Sadleir is mistaken in saying that the plates are all unsigned: Standfast's monogram appears on those facing pp.104, 112, 140, and 172. Rather a scarce title, having been "instantly suppressed" (v. Grego's introduction to the 1902 reprint). Sadleir, ‘Blessington d'Orsay', pp.313-4, remarks: "one is less surprised that it should have been withdrawn than that in 1844 it should have ever have been published. Many of the disguises are impudently thin. We meet the Earl of Chesterlane, the Marquis of Riverford . . . Lord George Bedtick - and other characters no further removed from their originals. Lady Blessington appears as "Lady Rivington" and is presented rather sympathetically as a cast-off mistress of D'Horsay, sitting at home and weeping while he paints the town red. The bulk of the novel describes in detail the riotous living of the hero and his buckish friends; and although d'Orsay himself may have been regarded by 1844 as so declasse as to be fair game for satirists, it is astonishing that a book should have been put on public sale describing Chesterfield as lover and financer of Fanny Elssler; picturing Waterford and Waldegrave in a brothel in St. Giles; representing the well-known auctioneer George Robins as surreptitiously introducing extraneous and worthless material into the great sale of Horace Walpole's collection at Strawberry Hill; and depicting several easily recognisable persons as the victims of horse-copers and fraudulent billiard-saloons. Yet the book was published; and Mills . . . was certainly a member of the very world whose antics he therein describes. Undoubtedly, therefore, his story was founded on fact . . .". Not only is this true of the story: the illustrations equally are recognisable portraits of the real-life models that Mill used. A fascinating glimpse of early Victorian high life! In this copy the following faults have been noted: p.28, last line, ‘censur' for ‘censure'; p.30 ‘-' lacking at end of first line; p.41, l.2, misplaced comma before third ‘of'; p.58, l.32 risen quad instead of full stop after ‘pages'; p.119, l.32, ‘has'nt' for ‘hasn't'; p.130, l.35, ‘i' lacking at start of line; p.132, l.9, ‘t' of ‘time' inverted; p.133, l.33 ‘-' lacking at end of line; p.138, ll.13-4, 27, 28, 29, 31, show badly battered type, l.22, ‘t' lacking in last ‘the', l.33, no space between ‘feigned' and ‘surprise'; p.139, l.7, ‘We're' for ‘We've', l.24, ‘expected' for ‘expect'; p.151, l.13, ‘toot-hache' for ‘tooth-ache'; p.157, l.18, ‘woul dcease' for ‘would cease'

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