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 public honours, and are therefore not considered as rivals by the distributors of fame. He apparently professed himself a poet, and added his name to 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. But there is in the whole little either of the grace of wit, or the vigour of nature. a 1693. J. PHILIPS. JOHN PHILIPS was born on the 30th of December, 1676, at Bampton in Oxfordshire, of which place his father Dr. Stephen Philips, Archdeacon of Salop, was minister. The first part of his education was domestic, 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 ill-will 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. At school he became acquainted with the poets ancient and modern, and fixed his attention particularly on Milton. 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. 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 physic, and he took much delight in natural history, of which botany was his favourite part. His reputation was confined to his friends and to the University, till about 1703 he extended it to a wider circle by the "Splendid Shilling," which struck the public attention with a mode of writing new and unexpected. This performance raised him so high, that when Europe 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 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 "Georgic," which needed not shun the presence of the original. 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. This work he did not live to finish, his diseases, a slow consumption and an asthma, put a stop to his studies, and on February 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. His epitaph at Hereford :— Ossa si requiras, hanc Urnam inspice: Quàm interim erga Cognatos pius & officiosus, A MARIA PHILIPS Matre ipsius pientissimâ, His epitaph at Westminster : "Herefordiæ conduntur Ossa, Qui Viris bonis doctisque juxta charus, Litterarum Amoniorum sitim, Quam Wintoniæ Puer sentire cœperat, Præclaris Æmulorum studiis excitatus, A Græcis Latinisque fontibus feliciter deducta, Antiquo illo, libero multiformi Ad res ipsas apto prorsus, & attemperato, Metiri: Uni in hoc laudis genere Miltono secundus, Res seu Tenues, seu Grandes, seu Mediocres Nusquam, non quod decuit, Et videt, & assecutus est, Auso licet à tuâ Metrorum Lege discedere Vatum certe Cineres, tuos undique stipantium SIMON HARCOURT Miles, Viri benè de se, de Litteris meriti Post Obitum piè memor, Hoc illi Saxum poni voluit. J. PHILIPS, STEPHANI, S. T. P. Archidiaconi Philips has been always praised, without contradiction, as a man modest, blameless, and pious, who bore narrowness of fortune without discontent, and tedious and painful maladies without impatience, beloved by those that knew him, but not ambitious to be known. He was probably not formed for a wide circle. His |