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such wonders to the present age. One cannot always easily find the reason for which the world has sometimes conspired to squander praise'. It is not very unlikely that he wrote very early as well as he ever wrote; and the performances of youth have many favourers, because the authors yet lay no claim to publick honours, and are therefore not considered as rivals by the distributors of fame.

He apparently professed himself a poet, and added his name to 4 those of the other wits in the version of Juvenal, but he is a very licentious translator, and does not recompense his neglect of the author by beauties of his own. In his original poems, now and then a happy line may perhaps be found, and now and then a short composition may give pleasure. either of the grace of wit, or the vigour of nature.

writing to him, spoke of 'the great respect I shall always have for so extraordinary a character.' Addison's Works, v. 349.

In Characters of the Court of Queen Anne he is described as a gentleman of admirable natural parts, very learned, one of the best poets now in England, and perhaps equal to any that ever was.' As a marginal note on 'poets' Swift wrote:-'Scarce of a third rate.' Swift's Works, xii.236.

'The learned often bewail the loss of ancient writers whose char

But there is in the whole little

acters have survived their works; but, perhaps, if we could now retrieve them, we should find them only the Granvilles [post, GRANVILLE], Montagues [post, HALIFAX], Stepneys, and Sheffields [post, SHEFFIELD], of their time, and wonder by what infatuation or caprice they could be raised to notice.' The Rambler, No. 106.

2 Post, DRYDEN, 140, 299. Stepney translated Satire viii. Eng. Poets, xvii. 200.

J. PHILIPS

OHN PHILIPS was born on the 30th of December, 1676, at

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Bampton in Oxfordshire; of which place his father Dr. Stephen Philips, archdeacon of Salop, was minister. The first part of his education was domestick, after which he was sent to Winchester, where, as we are told by Dr. Sewel, his biographer', he was soon distinguished by the superiority of his exercises; and, what is less easily to be credited, so much endeared himself to his schoolfellows by his civility and good-nature, that they without murmur or illwill saw him indulged by the master with particular immunities. It is related that when he was at school he seldom mingled in play with the other boys, but retired to his chamber, where his sovereign pleasure was to sit hour after hour while his hair was combed by somebody, whose service he found means to procure 2. 2 At school he became acquainted with the poets ancient and modern, and fixed his attention particularly on Milton 3.

3 In 1694 he entered himself at Christ-church, a college at that time in the highest reputation, by the transmission of Busby's scholars to the care, first of Fell*, and afterwards of Aldrich 5.

The Life and Character of Mr. John Philips, written by Mr. [George] Sewell. 2nd ed. London, 1715.

2 'I have been informed by one who was at school with him, that he would sit almost absolutely without motion for several hours together, enjoying the pleasure it gave him with the highest degree of sensibility. It was in these intervals chiefly, that he read Milton.' Biog. Brit. p. 3353.

Many people take delight in the combing of their hair. ... More than once I have fallen into the hands of men who could imitate any measure of songs in combing the hair, so as sometimes to express very intelligibly Iambics, Trochees and Dactyls, &c., whence there arose to me no small delight.' Isaac Vossius's De Poematum Cantu, &c., 1673, p. 62, quoted in Hawkins's Hist. of Music, iv. 275. Biog. Brit. p. 3353; Life, p. 5.

3

For Dr. Busby, Head Master of Westminster School, see post, DRYDEN, 4, and for the link between the School and Christ Church see post, SMITH, 4.

John Fell, Bishop of Oxford and Dean of Christ Church, 'kept up the exercise of his house severely.... He would constantly take his rounds in his coll. go to the chambers of noblemen and gent. commoners, and examine what progress they made in their studies.' Ath. Oxon. iv. 196.

'Feb. 24, 1665. Dr. Fell preached before the King, a very formal discourse, and in blank verse, according to his manner.' EVELYN, Diary, i. 413.

He was the servile Dean, who, in compliance with the demand of the Court, deprived Locke of his studentship. King's Life of Locke, 1858, PP. 147, 149, 175.

5 Between Fell, who died in 1686,

Here he was distinguished as a genius eminent among the eminent, and for friendship particularly intimate with Mr. Smith, the author of Phædra and Hippolytus. The profession which he intended to follow was that of physick; and he took much delight in natural history, of which botany was his favourite part2.

His reputation was confined to his friends and to the university; 4 till about 1703 he extended it to a wider circle by The Splendid Shilling, which struck the publick attention with a mode of writing new and unexpected 3.

This performance raised him so high, that when Europe 5 resounded with the victory of Blenheim he was, probably with an occult opposition to Addison, employed to deliver the acclamation of the Tories +. It is said that he would willingly have declined the task, but that his friends urged it upon him. It appears that he wrote this poem at the house of Mr. St. John.

Blenheim was published in 1705. The next year produced his 6 greatest work, the poem upon Cider', in two books; which was received with loud praises, and continued long to be read, as an imitation of Virgil's Georgick, which needed not shun the presence of the original 3.

and Aldrich, who was made Dean in 1689, came John Massey,' one of the new converts to Romanism.' Burnet's Hist. ii. 321; Hearne's Remains, i. 82. 'Aldrich visited the chambers of young gentlemen, on purpose to see that they employed their time in useful and commendable studies.' Ib. i. 211. Philips praises him in Cyder. Eng. Poets, xvii. 290.

I

Post, SMITH, 15, 51.

2 Smith wrote of him :'Judicious physic's noble art to gain, All drugs and plants explored, alas

in vain!' Eng. Poets, xxv. 115. 3 'I find it in A Collection of Poems printed in 1701 for David Brown and Ben. Tooke.' Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, ii. 22. It was published separately in 1705.

Eng. Poets, xvii. 239. Addison, in The Tatler, No. 249, makes a shilling ' in a soft-silver sound give an account of his life and adventures... The first adventure was my being in a poet's pocket, who was so taken with the brightness and novelty of my appearance, that it gave occasion to the finest burlesque poem in the

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He then grew probably more confident of his own abilities, and began to meditate a poem on The Last Day', a subject on which no mind can hope to equal expectation 2.

8 This work he did not live to finish; his diseases, a slow consumption and an asthma, put a stop to his studies3, and on Feb. 15, 1708*, at the beginning of his thirty-third year, put an end to his life. He was buried in the cathedral of Hereford; and Sir Simon Harcourt, afterwards Lord Chancellor, gave him a monument in Westminster Abbey. The inscription at Westminster was written, as I have heard, by Dr. Atterbury, though commonly given to Dr. Freind".

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his days,

The towering bard had sung in nobler lays

How the last trumpet wakes the lazy dead;

How saints aloft the cross triumphant spread;

How opening heavens their happy regions shew;

And yawning gulphs with flaming vengeance glow;

And saints rejoice above, and sinners howl below.'

Eng. Poets, xxv. 113.

2 Post, YOUNG, 155. 3 A passage in Smith's poem shows a great difference in domestic arrangements. Addressing a friend he says:

'Your care had long his fleeting life restrained,

One table fed you, and one bed contained;

For his dear sake long restless nights you bore,

While rattling coughs his heaving vessels tore.' Eng.Poets, xxv. 108. 1709 N.S. [Underhill's Poetical Works of John Gay, 1893, i. 275].

4

5 Philips, in Cyder, addressing Harcourt's son, who was in Italy, continues :

'At length, dear youth, return,

Return, and let thy father's worth excite

Thirst of pre-eminence.'

Eng. Poets, xvii. 297. For Pope's epitaph on the 'dear youth' see post, POPE, 401.

'Hearne describes it as 'a burlesque upon monuments.' Remains, iii. 141.

'I am against stuffing Westminster Abbey with any one's statue till a hundred years or so have proved whether posterity is as warm about a man's merits as we are. What a vast monument is erected to Cider Philips!' E. FITZGERALD, More Letters, &c., p. 26.

1 Post, PRIOR, 44 n. ; John. Misc. ii. 378 n.

Qualis quantusque Vir fuerit,
Dicat elegans illa et preclara,
Quæ cenotaphium ibi decorat,
Inscriptio.

Quàm interim erga Cognatos pius et officiosus,
Testetur hoc saxum

A MARIA PHILIPS Matre ipsius pientissimâ
Dilecti Filii Memoriæ non sine Lacrymis dicatum.

His Epitaph at Westminster :

Herefordiæ conduntur Ossa,

Hoc in Delubro statuitur Imago,
Britanniam omnem pervagatur Fama
JOHANNIS PHILIPS:
Qui Viris bonis doctisque juxta charus,
Immortale suum Ingenium,
Eruditione multiplici excultum,
Miro animi candore,
Eximiâ morum simplicitate,
Honestavit.

Litterarum Amoniorum sitim,
Quam Wintoniæ Puer sentire cœperat,
Inter Ædis Christi Alumnos jugiter explevit.
In illo Musarum Domicilio

Præclaris Emulorum studiis excitatus,
Optimis scribendi Magistris semper intentus,
Carmina sermone Patrio composuit
A Græcis Latinisque fontibus feliciter deducta,
Atticis Romanisque auribus omnino digna,
Versuum quippe Harmoniam
Rythmo didicerat,

Antiquo illo, libero, multiformi

Ad res ipsas apto prorsus, et attemperato, Non Numeris in eundem ferè orbem redeuntibus, Non Clausularum similiter cadentium sono

Metiri :

Uni in hoc laudis genere Miltono secundus',
Primoque pœne Par.

Res seu Tenues, seu Grandes, seu Mediocres
Ornandas sumserat,

Nusquam non quod decuit,

Et vidit, et assecutus est,
Egregius, quocunque Stylum verteret,
Fandi author, et Modorum artifex.
Fas sit Huic,

Ante, MILTON, 136.

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