This performance raised him so high, that when Europe resounded the victory of Blenheim, he was, probably with an occult opposition to dison, employed to deliver the acclamation of the Tories. It is said that would willingly have declined the task, but that his friends urged it up 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 great work, the poem upon Cider, in two books; which was received with k praises, and continued long to be read, as an imitation of Virgil's Geor which needed not shun the presence of the original. He then grew probably more confident of his own abilities, and begar meditate a poem on the Last Day; a subject on which no mind can hope equal expectation. This work he did not live to finish; his diseases, a slow consumptione an asthma, put a stop to his studies; and on Feb. 15, 1708, at the beginn of his thirty-third year, put an end to his life. He was buried in the cat dral of Hereford; and Sir Simon Harcourt, afterwards Lord Chancell gave him a monument in Westminster Abbey. The inscription at Westmin was written, as I have heard, by Dr. Atterbury, though commonly giver Dr. Freind. His Epitaph at Hereford : Cujus Ossa si requiras, hanc Urnam inspice; Templum adi Westmonasteriense : Quam interim erga Cognatos pius & officiosus, A MARIA PHILIPS Matre ipsius pientissimâ, His Epitaph at Westminster. Immortale suum Ingenium, Erudition Eruditione multiplici excultum, Litterarum Amoniorum sitim, Præclaris mulorum studiis excitatus, Optimis scribendi Magistris semper intentus, Antiquo illo, libero multiformi Ad res ipsas apto prorsus, & attemperato, Uni in hoc laudis genere Miltono secundus, Res seu Tenues, seu Grandes, seu Mediocres. Ornandas sumserat, Et videt, & assecutus est, Egregius, quocunque Stylum verteret, Auso licèt à tuâ Metrorum Lege discedere Vatum certe Cineres, tuos undique stipantium SIMON HARCOURT Miles Viri benè de se, de Litteris meriti Quoad viveret Fautor, Post Obitum piè memor, Hoc illi Saxum poni voluit. J. PHILIPS, STEPHANI, S. T. P. Archidiaconi Salop, Filius, natus est Bamptoniæ. 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 Vol. I. knew him, but not ambitious to be known. He was probably not formed for a wide circle. His conversation is commended for its innocent gaiety, which seems to have flowed only among his intimates; for I have been told, that he was in company silent and barren, and employed only upon the pleasures of his pipe. His addiction to tobacco is mentioned by one of his biographers, who remarks that in all his writings, except Blenheim, he has found an opportunity of celebrating the fragrant fume. In common life he was probably one of those who please by not offending, and whose person was loved because his writings were admired. He died honoured and lamented, before any part of his reputation had withered, and before his patron St. John had disgraced him. His works are few. The Splendid Shilling has the uncommon merit of an original design, unless it may be thought precluded by the ancient Centos. To degrade the sounding words and stately construction of Milton, by an applicarion to the lowest and most trivial things, gratifies the mind with a momentary triumph over that grandeur which hitherto held its captives in admiration; the words and things are presented with a new appearance, and novelty is always grateful where it gives no pain. But the merit of such performances begins and ends with the first author. He that should again adapt Milton's phrase to the gross incidents of common life, and even adapt it with more art, which would not be difficult must yet expect but a small part of the praise which Philips has obtained: he can only hope to be considered as the repeater of a jest. "The parody on Milton," says Gildon, "is the only tolerable production "of its author." This is a censure too dogmatical and violent. The poem of Blenheim was never denied to be tolerable, even by those who do not alJow his supreme excellence. It is indeed the poem of a scholar, all inexpert of war; of a man who writes books from books, and studies the world in a college. He seems to have formed his ideas of the field of Blenheim from the battles of the heroic ages, or the tales of chivalry, with very little comprehension of the qualities necessary to the composition of a modern hero, which Addison has displayed with so much propriety. He makes Marlborough behold at a distance the slaughter made by Tallard, then haste to encounter and restrain him, and mow his way through ranks made headless by his sword. He imitates Milton's numbers indeed, but imitates them very injudiciously. Deformity is easily copied; and whatever there is in Milton which the reader wishes away, all that is obsolete, peculiar, or licentious, is accumulated with great care by Philips. Milton's verse was harmonious, in proportion to the general state of our metre in Milton's age; and, if he had written after the Improvements made by Dryden, it is reasonable to believe that he would have admitted a more pleasing modulation of numbers into his work; but Philips gits down with a resolution to make no more musick than he found; to want all that his master wanted, though he is very far from having what his master had had. Those asperities, therefore, that are venerable in the Paradise Lost, are contemptible in the Blenheim. There is a Latin ode written to his patron St. John, in return for a present of wine and tobacco, which cannot be passed without notice. It is gay and elegant, and exhibits several artful accommodations of classick expressions to new purposes. It seems better turned than the odes of Hannes.*. To the poem on Cider, written in imitation of the Georgicks, may be given this peculiar praise, that it is grounded in truth; that the precepts which it contains are exact and just; and that it is therefore, at once, a book of entertainment and of science. This I was told by Miller, the great gardener and botanist, whose expression was, that there were many books written on the same subject in prose, which do not contain so much truth as that poem. In the disposition of his matter, so as to intersperse precepts relating to the culture of trees, with sentiments more generally alluring, and in easy and graceful transitions from one subject to another, he has very diligently imitated his master; but he unhappily pleased himself with blank verse, and supposed that the numbers of Milton, which impress the mind with veneration, combined as they are with subjects of inconceivable grandeur, could be susained by images which at most can rise only to elegance. Contending angels may shake the regions of heaven in blank verse; but the flow of equal measures, and the embellishment of rhyme, must recommend to our attention the art of engrafting, and decide the merit of the redstreak and pearmain. What study could confer, Philips had obtained; but natural deficience cannot be supplied. He seems not born to greatness and elevation. He is never lofty, nor does he often surprise with unexpected excellence, but perhaps to his last poem may be applied what Tully said of the work of Lucretius, that it is written with much art, though with few blazes of genius. The following fragment, written by Edmund Smith, upon the works of Philips, has been transcribed from the Bodleian manuscripts. "A prefatory Discourse to the poem on Mr. Philips, with a character of his writings. "It is altogether as equitable some account should be given of those who have distinguished themselves by their writings, as of those who are renowned for great actions. It is but reasonable they, who contribute so much to the immor tality * This ode I am willing to mention, because there seems to be an error in all the printed copies, which is, I find, retained in the last. They all read; tality of others, should have some share in it themselves; and since their genius only is discovered by their works, it is just that their virtues should be recorded by their friends. For no modest men (as the person I write of was in perfection) will write their own panegyricks; and it is very hard that they should go without reputation, only because they the more deserve 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 social virtues are more easily transcribed. The Life of Cowley is more instructive, as well as more fine, than any we have in our language. And it is to be wished, since Mr. Philips had so many of the good qualities of that poet, that I had some of the abilities of his historian. The Grecian philosophers have had their Lives written, their morals commended, and their sayings 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 just 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 Pellisons and Racines have their clegies, 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 satisfied, 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 subject of their panegyricks, and perhaps set in competition with the - ancients, to whom only he ought to submit. I shall therefore endeavour to do justice to his memory, since nobody else undertakes it. And indeed I can assign no cause why so many of his acquaintance (that are as willing and more able than myself to give an account of him) should forbear to celebrate the memory of one so dear to them, but only that they look upon it as a work entirely belonging to me. I shall content myself with giving only a character of the person and his writings, without meddling with the transactions of his life, which was altogather private: I shall only make this known observation of his family, that there were scarce so many extraordinary men in any one. I have been acquainted with five of his brothers (of which three are still living), 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, seems to have produced a numerous offspring, all of different though uncommon faculties. Of the living, neither their modesty nor the humour of the present age permits me to speak; of the dead, I may say something. One |