JOHN

See also:

• PHILIPS, AMBROSE (c. 1675-1749)
• JOHN PHILIPS (1676-1708)
• PHILIPS, KATHARINE (1631-1664)

PHILIPS (1676-1708)  , English poet and man of letters, son of Dr Stephen Philips, archdeacon of Shropshire, was born at his father's vicarage at Bampton, Oxfordshire, on the 3oth of December 1676 . He was educated at Winchester and Christ Church, Oxford . He was a careful reader of Virgil and of Milton . In 1701 his poem, The Splendid Shilling, was published without his consent, and a second unauthorized version in 1705 induced him to print a correct edition in that year . The Splendid Shilling, which Addison in The Taller called " the finest burlesque poem in the British language," recites in Miltonic blank verse the miseries consequent on the want of that piece of money . Its success introduced Philips to the notice of Robert Harley and Henry St John, who commissioned him to write a Tory counter-blast to Joseph Addison's Campaign . Philips was happier in burlesquing his favourite author than in genuine imitation of a heroic theme . His Marlborough is modelled on the warriors of Homer and Virgil; he rides precipitate over heaps of fallen horses, changing the fortune of the battle by his own right arm . Cyder (1708) is modelled on the Georgics of Virgil . Cerealia, an Imitation of Milton (1706), although printed without his name, may safely be ascribed to him . In all his poems except Blenheim he found an opportunity to insert a eulogy of tobacco . Philips died at Hereford on the 15th of February 1708/9 .

There is an inscription to his memory in

Westminster Abbey . See The Whole Works of . . . John Philips . To which is prefixed his life, by Mr [G.j Sewell (3rd ed., 172o); Johnson, Lives of the Poets; and Biographia Britannica .