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His happiest undertaking was of a paper called The Freethinker3, in conjunction with associates, of whom one was Dr. Boulter, who, then only minister of a parish in Southwark, was of so much consequence to the government that he was made first bishop of Bristol, and afterwards primate of Ireland, where his piety and his charity will be long honoured".

It may easily be imagined that what was printed under the direction of Boulter would have nothing in it indecent or licentious: its title is to be understood as implying only freedom from unreasonable prejudice3. It has been reprinted in volumes, but is little read; nor can impartial criticism recommend it as worthy of revival.

Boulter was not well qualified to write diurnal essays, but he knew how to practise the liberality of greatness and the fidelity of friendship. When he was advanced to the height of ecclesiastical dignity he did not forget the companion of his labours. Knowing Philips to be slenderly supported he took him to Ireland as partaker of his fortune; and, making him his secretary, added such preferments as enabled him to represent the county of Armagh in the Irish Parliament 5.

In December, 1726, he was made secretary to the Lord Chancellor, and in August, 1733, became judge of the Prerogative Court".

It came out twice a week from March 24, 1718, to Sept. 30, 1720. See Cibber's Lives, v. 132.

2

Ante, SWIFT, 81. He was made Bishop in 1719 and Archbishop in 1724.

3 It is so explained in the first number. This use of freethinker is not noticed either in Johnson's Dict. or in the New Eng. Dict.

'Does not one table Bavius still
admit?

Still to one bishop Philips seem a

wit?' POPE, Prol. Sat. 1. 99. 5 Cibber's Lives, v. 133. Swift wrote to Pope on Sept. 29, 1725:'I have not seen Philips, though formerly we were so intimate [ante, PHILIPS, 4 n. 3].' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 55. Nov. 26 he wrote: Mr. Philips is fort chancelant whether he shall turn parson or no. But all employments here are engaged or in reversion.

On

Cast wits and cast beaux have a proper sanctuary in the Church. Yet we think it a severe judgment that a fine gentleman, and so much the finer for hating ecclesiastics, should be a domestic humble retainer to an Irish prelate. He is neither secretary nor gentleman-usher, yet serves in both capacities.' Ib. p. 62.

On July 8, 1726, Swift wrote to Sheridan:-There is not so despised a creature here as your friend with the soft verses on children. I heartily pity him.' Swift's Works, xvii. 38. Nevertheless in Apollo's Edict he

wrote:

'Simplicity alone can grace
The manners of the rural race.
Theocritus and Philips be
Your guides to true simplicity.'
Ib. xiv. 129.

"In Gent. Mag. Sept. 1734, p. 512, is his appointment as Register (not Judge) of the Prerogative Court at

After the death of his patron' he continued some years in 32 Ireland; but at last longing as it seems for his native country, he returned (1748) to London, having doubtless survived most of his friends and enemies, and among them his dreaded antagonist Pope. He found, however, the duke of Newcastle still living3, and to him he dedicated his poems collected into a volume.

Having purchased an annuity of four hundred pounds, he now 33 certainly hoped to pass some years of life in plenty and tranquillity; but his hope deceived him : he was struck with a palsy, and died June 18, 1749, in his seventy-eighth year 6.

Of his personal character all that I have heard is that he was 34 eminent for bravery and skill in the sword, and that in conversation he was solemn and pompous". He had great sensibility of censure, if judgement may be made by a single story which I heard long ago from Mr. Ing, a gentleman of great eminence in Staffordshire 3. " 'Philips,' said he, 'was once at table when I asked him, How came thy king of Epirus to drive oxen, and to

Dublin. Macaulay, repeating Johnson's mistake, adds to it by making Philips's appointment one of the splendid rewards of literary merit which ceased with Walpole's administration. 'Johnson,' he says, 'came up to London' in 'a dark night between two sunny days.' Essays, i. 394. Walpole had been first minister thirteen years when the appointment was made, and Philips had held office but three years when Johnson came up to London.

Boulter died on Sept. 28. 1742. Gent. Mag. 1742, p. 499. For his character see ib. p. 547.

"In the notice of his death the following year he is described as 'the last survivor of the excellent authors

of the Spectators. Tatlers, and Guardians. Gent. Mag. 1749, p. 284.

3 The Duke lived twenty years longer. For the Dedication see Eng. Poets, lvii. 3.

• Cibber's Lives, v. 142.

5 Hawkins (Life of Johnson, p. 429) mentions finding in the Life of the Lord Keeper Guilford (ed. 1742, p. 226) 'the case of the Duke of Buckinghamshire and Ambrose Philips,

who had purchased of the duke an estate as for Mr. Heneage Finch, but in truth for himself, at £2,000 less than he would have sold it for to anybody but Mr. Finch.'

Gent. Mag. 1749, p. 284. He was seventy-four. Ante, PHILIPS, I N. 7 Dr. Young reported how 'in a conversation Philips asked what sort of person they supposed Julius Caesar was. He was answered that from medals, &c., it appeared that he was a small man, and thin-faced. "Now for my part," said Ambrose, "I should take him to have been of a lean make, pale complexion, extremely neat in his dress, and five feet seven inches high"-an exact description of Philips himself.' Spence's Anec. p. 375.

Pope calls him 'lean Philips,' and describes him under the character of Macer. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iv. 467, 482: Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, iii. 269. He and Prior (ante, PRIOR, 45 n.) were perhaps the only lean men among the 'wits' of the age.

8 There is a bare mention of him in John. Letters, ii. 325.

say 'I'm goaded on by love'1? After which question he never spoke again.'

35 Of The Distrest Mother not much is pretended to be his own2, and therefore it is no subject of criticism: his other two tragedies, I believe, are not below mediocrity, nor above it. Among the Poems comprised in the late collection 3, the Letter from Denmark✦ may be justly praised; the Pastorals, which by the writer of The Guardian were ranked as one of the four genuine productions of the rustick Muse, cannot surely be despicable. That they exhibit a mode of life which does not exist, nor ever existed, is not to be objected; the supposition of such a state is allowed to Pastoral. In his other poems he cannot be denied the praise of lines sometimes elegant; but he has seldom much force or much comprehension. The pieces that please best are those which, from Pope and Pope's adherents, procured him the name of Namby Pamby, the poems of short lines by which he paid his court to all ages and characters, from Walpole the 'steerer of the realm',' to miss Pulteney in the nursery. The numbers are smooth and spritely, and the diction is seldom faulty. They are not loaded with much thought, yet if they had been written by Addison they would have had admirers: little things are not valued but when they are done by those who can do greater9.

36

In his translations from Pindar 10 he found the art of reaching all the obscurity of the Theban bard, however he may fall below

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'The trial of skill between the musician and the nightingale, which forms the subject of the fifth Pastoral, is narrated with singular sweetness. In true poetic feeling it is much beyond anything in the Pastorals of his scoffing critic.' ELWIN, Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), i. 253. See Appendix R. 7'Steerer of a mighty realm, Pilot waking o'er the helm.' Eng. Poets, lvii. 76.

8 She is addressed as 'Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling, All caressing, none beguiling.'

Ib. p. 73.

9 I have restored the reading of the first edition. In that of 1783, evidently by a blunder, can is changed into cannot.

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his sublimity: he will be allowed, if he has less fire, to have more smoke.

He has added nothing to English poetry, yet at least half his 37 book deserves to be read1: perhaps he valued most himself that part which the critick would reject.

APPENDIX P (PAGE 314)

It was of Hacket Addison wrote:-'It was the motto of a Bishop very eminent for his piety and good works in King Charles the Second's reign, Inservi Deo et laetare-Serve God and be cheerful.' The Freeholder, No. 45.

He died in 1670. His Life of Williams, under the title of Scrinia Reserata, was published in folio in 1693; Philips's abridgment, a small quarto, in 1700. The following is an instance of the two styles :

HACKET (p. 17).

:

'As the Greek Adagy goes, Nil sine Theseo, Theseus made one in every Master-piece of chivalry: Such was our Theseus to the Athens where he lived. And he was considerately lookt upon for such service, for he well understood anything he went about, he had a fineness to be Gracious with them to whom he was sent, and no man could deliver a Tale more smoothly, or wrinkle it less with digressions or Parentheses. To say much in brief, he had the Policy and Gravity of a Statesman before he had a Hair upon his Chin.'

PHILIPS (p. 19).

'He began to grow into considerable Repute and Esteem in his College. For, by that time he was 25 years old, or thereabout, he had the Honour to be imploy'd by his Society in some concerns of theirs.'

Coleridge said of the Life :-'You learn more from it of that which is valuable towards an insight into the times preceding the Civil War than from all the ponderous histories and memoirs now composed about that period.' Table Talk, 1884, p. 229.

APPENDIX Q (PAGE 315)

'Addison used to speak often very slightingly of Budgell, "One that calls me cousin," "the man that stamped himself into my acquaintance.' POPE, Spence's Anec. p. 161. Spence adds that 'Budgell lodged in the

His poems fill little more than 100 pages of Eng. Poets, lvii. Pope calls him the bard who

'Just writes to make his barrenness appear,

And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a-year.'
Prol. Sat. 1. 181.

See also Pope's Macer, 1. 9. For 'Philips' costive head' see ante, PHILIPS, 25 n. 4. [Gray's poems fill only 61 pages of Eng. Poets, lxiv.]

room over Addison's. He walked much, and was troublesome to him. One night Addison was so tired of the noise that he invited him down to sup with him, and that began their acquaintance.'

[The second part of the anecdote can scarcely be true, for they were cousins, Addison's mother being a sister of William Gulston, Bishop of Bristol, while Budgell's was the Bishop's only daughter. N. & Q. 5 S. vi. 350 and Dict. Nat. Biog. i. 131, vii. 224.]

Perhaps Budgell was provincial in using the word 'cousin.' R. Polwhele, who was born in 1760, wrote in 1822 of Devonshire :-'Among the little gentry there are many affected people who think it vulgar to call their kinsmen, cousins. But not many years ago the Courtenays and the Fortescues had not dismissed the word from their vocabulary.' Traditions and Recollections, p. 722. Budgell was a Devonshire man. He drowned himself on May 4, 1737, 'by jumping out of a boat at London Bridge. The Coroner's Jury brought him in lunatick.' Gent. Mag. 1737, p. 315. He was accused of forging a will. See Boswell's Johnson, ii. 229, v. 54; Pope's Prol. Sat. 1. 378; ante, ADDISON, 44, 115.

APPENDIX R (PAGE 324)

[In 1729 Carey, the author of Sally in our Alley, published with other poems one entitled Namby Pamby, intended as a parody on Philips's Ode To the Honourable Miss Carteret the infant daughter of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (Eng. Poets, lvii. 61). Carey, in ridicule of its 'infantine sentiments' and adopting the same metre, wrote this parody ' in which all the songs of children at play are wittily introduced, and called it by a name which children might be supposed to call the author whose name was Ambrose [Philips], Namby Pamby.' Hawkins's Hist. of Music, v. 185. See also Cibber's Lives, v. 139. The following lines will serve as a specimen :

'Let your little verses flow

Gently sweetly, row by row;
Let the verse the subject fit,
Little subject, little wit.
Namby Pamby is your guide,
Albion's joy, Hiburnia's pride.

Now methinks I hear him say
Boys and girls come out to play,
Moon does shine as bright as day.
Now my Namby Pamby's found
Sitting on the Friar's ground
Picking silver, picking gold;
Namby Pamby's never old.'

Namby Pamby; or, a Panegyric on the New Versification, appended

to Carey's Chrononhotonthologos, ed. 1777.]

In The Dunciad, ed. 1729, l. 322 in Bk. iii runs :

'And Namby Pamby be preferr'd for wit.'

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