Edward Mills was Goldsmith's cousin, the son of Charles Goldsmith's sister. Mills did not respond in any way to Goldsmith's request, as the later letter to Henry Goldsmith shows. This letter is introduced with thoughts upon what would become a quintessentially Goldsmithian opposition of ambition and domestic contentment. Mills, it seems, had forsaken a career at the bar in Dublin – or, more probably and profitably, London – and there is a little needling, possibly, in Goldsmith’s imagining his cousin's lost glories as enhancing his own. Mills has chosen instead his own smaller circle of acquaintance, the ‘cultivation of his paternal acres’. There is an awkwardness of tone in this letter as Goldsmith tries to establish, or re-establish, a connection with Mills only to set up his own request that Mills help to collect Irish subscriptions for Goldsmith's forthcoming Enquiry into the Present state of Polite Learning in Europe, which would be published anonymously in April 1759. Dated 7 August, this is the first letter of a series which Goldsmith wrote to relatives and friends in Ireland seeking such subscriptions in order to preempt Irish piracy.

The copy-text is the manuscript in the British Library. It was first published by Percy in 1801. It is addressed ‘To Edward Mills Esqr. | near | Roscommon | Ireland’ and postmarked 17 August. The bracketed portions, worn away in the manuscript, are supplied by Percy, except where otherwise noted.