the world has fometimes confpired to fquander praife. 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 confidered as rivals by the distributors of fame. He apparently profeffed himself a poet, and added his name to thofe of the other wits in the version of Juvenal; but he is a very licentious tranflator, and does not recompenfe 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 fhort compofition may give pleafure. But there is in the whole little either of the grace of wit, or the vigour of nature. J. PHI J. PHILIP S HN PHILIPS was born on the JOHN 30th of December, 1676, at Bampton in Oxfordshire; of which place his father Dr. Stephen Philips, archdeacon of Salop, was minifter. The first part of his education was domestick, after which he was fent to Winchester, where, as we are told by Dr. Sewel, his biographer, he was foon diftinguished by the fuperiority of his exercises; and, what is lefs easily to be credited, fo much endeared himfelf to his fchoolfellows, by his civility and good-nature, that they, without murmur or ill-will, faw him indulged by the master with particular immunities. It is related, that, when he was at fchool, he feldom mingled in play with the other boys, but retired to his chamber; where VOL. I. G g his his fovereign pleasure was to fit, hour af ter hour, while his hair was combed by fomebody, whose service he found means to pro cure. At school he became acquainted with the poets ancient and modern, and fixed his attention particularly on Milton. In 1694 he entered himself at Christchurch; a college at that time in the highest reputation, by the tranfmiflion of Busby's scholars to the care firft 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 Phedra and Hippolytus. The profeffion which he intended to follow was that of Phyfick; 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 univerfity; till about 1703 he extended it to a wider circle by the Splendid Shilling, which ftruck the publick attention with a mode of writing new and unexpected. |