at most can rife only to elegance. Contending angels may shake the regions of heaven in blank verfe; but the flow of equal meas fures, and the embellishment of rhyme, muft Stond recommend to our attention the art of engrafting, and decide the merit of the redfreak and pearmain.

What study could confer, Philips had ob'tained; but natural deficience cannot be fupplied. He feems not born to greatness and elevation. He is never lofty, nor does he often surprise with unexpected excellence; but perhaps to his laft poem may be applied what Tully faid of the work of Lucretius, that it is written with much art, though with few blazes of genius.

10

The following fragment, written by Edmund Smith, upon the works of Philips, has been tranfcribed from the Bodleian manufcripts.

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"A prefatory Difcourfe to the poem on Mr. Philips, with a character of his writings.

"It is altogether as equitable fome account fhould be given of those who have distinguished themselves by their writings, as of thofe who are renowned for great actions. It is but reasonable they, who contribute fo much to the immortality of others, should have some share in it themfelves; and fince their genius only is discovered by their works, it is just that their virtues should be recorded -qui 5d.10 by their friends. For no modeft men (as the br perfon I write of was in perfection) will write their own panegyricks; and it is very hard that they fhould go without reputation, only because they the more deferve it. The end of writing Lives is for the imitation of the readers. It will be in the power of very few to imitate the duke of Marlborough; we must be content with admiring his great qualities and actions, without hopes of following them. The private and focial virtues are

inore eafily tranfcribed. The Life of Cowley is more inftructive, as well as more fine, than any we have in our language. And it is to be wished, fince Mr. Philips had fo Philips had fo many of the good qualities of that poet, that I had fome of the abilities of his hiftorian.

The

The Grecian philofophers have had their Lives written, their morals commended, and their fayings recorded. Mr. Philips had all the virtues to which most of them only pretended, and all their integrity without any of their affectation.

The French are very juft to eminent men in this point; not a learned man nor a poet can die, but all Europe must be acquainted with his accomplishments. They give praise and expect it in their turns: they commend their Patru's and Molieres as well as their Condés and Turennes; their Pellifons and Racines have their elogies, as well as the prince whom they celebrate; and their poems, their mercuries, and orations, nay their very gazettes, are filled with the praises of the

learned.

I am fatisfied, had they a Philips among them, and known how to value him; had they one of his learning, his temper, but above all of that particular turn of humour, that altogether new genius, he had been an example to their poets, and a fubject of their

pane

panegyricks, and perhaps fet in competition with the ancients, to whom only he ought to fubmit.

I fhall therefore endeavour to do juftice to his memory, fince nobody elfe undertakes it. And indeed I can affign no caufe why fo many of his acquaintance (that are as willing and more able than myself to give an account of him) fhould forbear to celebrate the memory of one fo dear to them, but only that they look upon it as a work entirely belonging to me.

I fhall content myself with giving only a character of the perfon and his writings, without meddling with the transactions of his life, which was altogether private: I fhall only make this known obfervation of his family, that there was fcarcely fo many extraordinary men in any one. I have been acquainted with five of his brothers (of which three are still leaving), all men of fine parts, yet all of a very unlike temper and genius. So that their fruitful mother, like the mother of the gods, feems to have produced a numerous offspring, all of different though unVOL. I.

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common

common faculties. Of the living, neither their modefty nor the humour of the prefent age, permits me to fpeak: of the dead, I may fay fomething.

One of them had made the greatest pro! grefs in the ftudy of the law of nature and nations of any one I know. He had perfectly mastered, and even improved, the notions of Grotius, and the more refined ones of Puffendorff. He could refute Hobbes with as much folidity as fome of greater name, and expose him with as much wit as Echard. That noble study, which requires the greatest reach of reafon and nicety of diftinction, was not at all difficult to him. 'Twas a national lofs to be deprived of one who understood a fcience fo neceffary, and yet fo unknown in England. I fhall add only, he had the fame honesty and fincerity as the perfon I write of, but more heat: the former was more inclined to argue, the latter to divert: one employed his reafon more; the other his imagination: the former had been well qualified for thofe pofts, which the modefty of the latter made him refufe. His other dead brother would have been an ornament to the college of